Quotes about skiing

A collection of quotes on the topic of ski, skiing, likeness, eye.

Quotes about skiing

“If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
Crying to the moo-oo-oon,
"If only, If only.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

Tree, Wolf, Waiting, Cry

“And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies.”

Leonard Cohen book Let Us Compare Mythologies

Source: Let Us Compare Mythologies

Secret

“I'm Kan, the Louis Vouitton don / Bought my mom purse, now she Louis Vuitton mom / I didn't play the hand I was dealt I changed my cards / I prayed to the skies and I changed my stars / I went to the malls and I balled too hard / Oh My God is that a Black card / I turned around and replied why yes, but I prefer the term African American Express”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Last Call
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

God, Star, Moms, Change

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Life, Spring, Flowers, Thinking

“Oh, the tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Death is Not the End

Life, Tree, Light

“There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Teachers' Day, Teachers

“I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Thinking, Drawing

“Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force--a wild pain and decay--also accompanies everything.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Pain, World, Feeling, Flowers

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 8
Source: On the Road (1957)

Goodbye, People, World, Feeling

“In her eyes is the living Hght
Of a wanderer to earth
From a far celestial height:
Summers five are all the span —
Summers five since Time began
To veil in mists of human night
A shining angel-birth.

Does an angel look from her eyes?
Will she suddenly spring away,
And soar to her home in the skies?
Beatrice! Blessing and blessed to be!”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

Beatrice (1862), st. 1
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Birth, Angels, Home, Spring

“I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote in a letter, from Paris 14 June 1869, to family-friend Ferdinand Martin; as cited by Colin B. Bailey in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publisher, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 7
Boudin felt himself detained in the big city Paris and longed fort the beach
1850s - 1870s

Thinking, Sun, Joy, Painting

“But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,
And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd,
In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain,
Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain,
Your pains they witness, but they can no more,
While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

"To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, aged one Year." st. 2, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Death, Pain, Tear

“If there was a God of sorrow, he would grow black heavy wings, to soar not for the skies, but for inferno.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

God

“…just like anybody else with an obsession, whether it be fishing, bowling or skiing, he has ways he can vicariously satisfy it. Maybe he is going to peep shows and reading detective magazines. I think there's an excellent chance that one way he gets off is by going to look at what that call the slasher films.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1984 interview with Detective Robert Keppel (regarding the Green River Killer)

Way, Thinking, Fish, Chance

“The foundation upon which our nation stands is much richer and firmer than the sympathies that may occasionally divide us. And we never know this more truly than in Christmas time. In good times or in bad, under clear skies or under the shadow of uncertainty, the Christmas message is the imperishable one of joy, hope and brotherhood.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Christmas message to overseas Filipinos (25 December 1979)
1965

Hope, Time, Joy, Christmas

“Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.”
Pronaque quum spectent animalia cetera terram, Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book I, 84 (as translated by John Dryden)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.”

Edgar Allan Poe Ulalume

St. 1.
Ulalume (1847)

Night

“There is in stillness oft a magic power
To calm the breast, when struggling passions lower;
Touch'd by its influence, in the soul arise
Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Solitude http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse1.html (1818).

Feeling, Soul, Passion

“Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?”

Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) German, later an American, aerospace engineer and space architect

In letter to California State board of Education (14 September 1972)

Reality, Night

“We got arms but wont reach for the skies”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"Be (Intro)" (Track 1)
Albums, Be (2005)

“Here is the hatchet of war, of enmity, of bad feeling, which I now bury in Arrowe," said the Chief, at the same time plunging a hatchet in the midst of a barrel of golden arrows."

"From all corners of the earth," said the Chief as soon as the cheering had subsided "you have journeyed to this great gathering of World Fellowship and Brotherhood. Today I send you out from Arrowe to all the World, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship, each one of you my ambassador bearing my message of Love and Fellowship on the wings of Sacrifice and Service, to the end of the Earth. From now on the Scout symbol of Peace is the Golden Arrow. Carry it fast and far so that all men may know the Brotherhood of Man."

"To THE NORTH—From the Northlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homelands across the great North Seas as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE SOUTH—From the Southland you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Southern Cross as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE WEST—From the Westlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes in the Great Westlands to the Pacific and beyond as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE EAST—From the Eastlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Starry Skies and Burning Suns to your people of the thousand years, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship to the Nations of the Earth, pledging you to keep my trust.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

"I bid you farewell."
Burying the Hatchet - BP Closing Address at the 3rd World Jamboree, Arrowe Park, 12 August 1929

Love, Men, War, People

“Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sir Jadunath Sarkar Shivaji and His Times, 1919, p. 406

Art, Literature, Tree, Dead

“What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything? It's the mathematicians you have to trust, and they measure the skies like we measure a field.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

"Matteo" in Concerning the New Star (1606)
Other quotes

“It comes searing ‘cross the skies. It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is "the undauntable thought", my friend,
That thought that says "I'm right!"”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Rhythm of Time
Context: It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race. It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies. It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is "the undauntable thought", my friend,
That thought that says "I'm right!"

Light

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)
Context: The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

Health, Drawing

“I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: “The person often experiences this instability of self-image as chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom.” My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous. A partial list follows. I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals.

School

“We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

World, Painting

“As soon as I take down her book and open it… My skies rise higher and hang younger stars.”

Eavan Boland (1944) Irish poet

Books, Star

“Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Wine

“Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Tree

“Whereever you end up;" Jack whispered into my ear."I wish you clear skies. Always”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

“We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Fear

“If you've never seen an elephant ski, then you've never been on acid.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Definite Article (1996)

“If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.”

Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) major French Renaissance writer

Hope

“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Love, Life, Heart

“To die,
so young to die.
No, no, not I,
I love the warm sunny skies,
light, song, shining eyes,
I want no war, no battle cry,
No, no, not I.”

Hannah Senesh (1921–1944) Jewish poet and anti-nazi fighter in World War II

Love, War, Light, Cry

“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.”

Sharon Kay Penman book Time and Chance

Source: Time and Chance

Beauty, Autumn, Painting

“Are not the mountains, waves, and skies as much a part of me, as I of them?”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Mountain, Parting

“As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXI
Adonais (1821)

Night

“Always seek less turbulent skies.
Hurt. Fly above it.
Betrayal. Fly above it.
Anger. Fly above it.
You are the one who is flying the plane.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Hurtful, Betrayal, Hurt, Flying

“Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?”

“You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Men, Kiss

“Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 18:

Dreams, Search, Bird, Fight

“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Mayakovsky, st. 4, from Meditations in an Emergency (1957).

Beauty, Thinking, Laughter, Tree

“A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Life, Kiss, Time

“It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Goodbye

“It is the middle of December now, and we are about to travel to Switzerland - where we plan to ski a little, relax a little, and shoot a Dutch politician a little.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Travel

“He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either."
I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Moms, Thinking

“I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Thinking, Dance

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“rainbows apologizing for angry skies”

Barbara Ann Kipfer (1954) American linguist and lexicographer

14,000 Things to Be Happy About

“A jolly young fellow from Yuma
Told an elephant joke to a puma;
now his skeleton lies
beneath hot western skies-
the puma had no sense of huma”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Sense

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies
in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love, Time, Summer

“We shall take a star out of the skies and shall set thousands of worlds on fire…”

Cordwainer Smith book The Rediscovery of Man

Source: The Rediscovery of Man

World, Star

“Cross-country skiing is fine as long as you live in a small country.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Country

“Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

Lift Every Voice and Sing, st. 1 (1900).

Singing, Sea

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”

George Gordon Byron book Hebrew Melodies

She Walks in Beauty http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-SWB42.htm, st. 1. The subject of these lines was Mrs. R. Wilmot.—Berry Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 7. <br class="br">Hebrew Melodies (1815)

Beauty, Light, Night

“To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

World

“Tears could not be equal, if I wept diamonds from the skies.
Jenks (Black Magic Sanction)”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Tear

“O Beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain

for strip-mined mountains' majesty, above the asphalt plain

America, America, man sheds his waste on thee

and hides the pines, with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Class Clown (1972)

Beauty, Mountain, Sea

“From every place below the skies
The grateful song, the fervent prayer,—
The incense of the heart, —may rise
To heaven, and find acceptance there.”

John Pierpont (1785–1866) American writer

Every Place a Temple, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "This is that incense of the heart / Whose fragrance smells to heaven" Nathaniel Cotton, The Fireside, stanza 11.

Heart

“Heaven is not gained by a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies;
And we mount to its summit round by round.”

Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881) Novelist, poet, editor

Variant: Heaven is not gained by a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies;
And we mount to its summit round by round.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 564.

“The future is in the skies.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Atatürk's comment on aerospace-aeronautics, as quoted in Modernism and Nation-Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (2001), p. 126 by Sibel Bozdoğan

Future

“Seeing the water birds on the lake increase in number day by day, I thought to myself how nice it would be if it snowed before we got back to the Palace—the garden would look so beautiful; and then, two days later, while I was away on a short visit, lo and behold, it did snow. As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, taking note of the flowers, the birds in song, the way the skies change from season to season, the moon, the frost and snow, doing little more than registering the passage of time. How would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to the very full.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring (Penguin Books, 1996)
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Life, Beauty, Way, Home

“Thirty years and more
I worked to nullify myself.
Now I leap the leap of death.
The ground churns up
The skies spin round.”

Lanxi Daolong (1213–1278) Buddhist monk

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6; Cited in: Eugene Thacker. " Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/07/02/books/black-illumination-zen-poetry-death/#.Wy4PIqczZEY," Special to the JAPAN TIMES, July 2, 2016.

Death

“This planet is haunted by us; the other occupants just evade boredom by filling our skies and seas with monsters.”

John A. Keel book The Mothman Prophecies

The Mothman Prophecies (1976)

Sea

“When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will be shining the brightest star of the northern skies — Vega of the Lyre, twenty-six years away at the speed of light, near enough to the point of no return for us short-lived creatures. Past this blue-white beacon, fifty times as brilliant as our sun, we may send our minds and bodies, but never our hearts.
For no man will ever turn homewards beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)

Love, Star, Light, Time

“One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 499.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Art, Angels, Light, Memory

“Ships, houses, mills… in one word everything that is made by people must stand upright and be painted with care. This is actually a good presentation compared to other, less symmetrical things, like the trees, skies, etc. It doesn't create the painting, but it certainly strengthen the illusion. It's just like somebody who is neatly dressed, but whose tie is coming off. The windows of a house must be straight, a mill in a pure construction, the blades well-positioned in perspective.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Schepen, huizen, molens eb in één woord alles, wat door menschen gemaakt is, moet recht staan en met zorg geschilderd worden. Dit staat juist zeer goed tegenover andere, minder symmetrische dingen, als boomen, luchten enz. Het maakt het schilderij wel niet, maar draagt toch bij tot de illusie. 't Is er net mee, als met iemand, die keurig gekleed is, maar wiens das los zit. De ramen van een huis moeten recht, een molen zuiver van constructie zijn, de wieken in het perspectief staan.
Quote of Roelofs; as cited by H.F.W. Jeltes, in Willem Roelofs : bizonderheden betreffende zijn leven en zijn werk, met brieven en andere bijlagen, Van Kampen, Amsterdam, 1911, pp. 86-87
undated quotes

People, Tree, Painting, Housing

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Men, People, Stupidity, Light

“Great Iraqi men and women, members of the families of the martyrs, You have offered the homeland the best thing you could afford. Thus you have come to merit love and gratitude from all Iraqis and from its plains, mountains, skies and waters. You are good sons of this country. You have offered to the country great men who have averted harm from the country and paved its way to glory and greatness.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Love, Women, Men, Family

“Thou too take courage, wealth despise,
And fit thee to ascend the skies,
Nor be a poor man's courtesies
Rejected or disdained.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VIII, p. 286

Courage, Wealth

“Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!”

Joseph Hopkinson (1770–1842) United States federal judge

Hail, Columbia! (1798).

War, Peace, Freedom, Happiness

“The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.”

Sri Aurobindo book Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Savitri (1918-1950), Book One : The Book Of Beginnings

Idea

“You move me, you move me.
with your buildings and your eyes
Autumn woods and Winter skies.
You move me, you move me.
Open sea and city lights, busy streets and dizzy heights.
You call me, you call me.
-- The Analog Kid (1982)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Business, Autumn, Light, Winter

“We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colours as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green, are not very different from these children. They get indignant if they see other colours in a picture, but if we try to forget all we have heard about green grass and blue skies, and look at the world as if we had just arrived from another planet on a voyage of discovery and were seeing it for the first time, we may find that things are apt to have the most surprising colours.”

Ernst Gombrich book The Story of Art

Source: The Story of Art (1978), p. 26.

Children, People, World, Star

“When you’ve parked the second car in the garage, and installed the hot tub, and skied in Colorado, and wind-surfed in the Caribbean, when you’ve had your first love affair and your second and your third, the question will remain, where does the dream end for me?”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Commencement address at Syracuse University, quoted in New York Times (12 May 1986)

Love, Dreams, Cars, Question

“Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanza 45.
Beppo (1818)

Soul, Heart

“A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Un roman est un miroir qui se promène sur une grande route. Tantôt il reflète à vos yeux l’azur des cieux, tantôt la fange des bourbiers de la route. Et l’homme qui porte le miroir dans sa hotte sera par vous accusé‚ d’être immoral ! Son miroir montre la fange, et vous accusez le miroir! Accusez bien plutôt le grand chemin où est le bourbier, et plus encore l’inspecteur des routes qui laisse l’eau croupir et le bourbier se former.
Vol. II, ch. XIX
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Water

“In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The angels with us unawares.”

Gerald Massey (1828–1907) British poet

Babe Cristabel, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World, Angels

“I am busy working on a large painting with sheep; the last days I am working with real pleasure, the weather is.... not too hot and with nice skies. It's great here!!!! I shout with joy the whole day and more and more I desire to stay here until the end.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Ik ben druk bezig aan een groot schilderij met schapen, in de laatste dagen ben ik met waar genoegen aan het werk, het weer is.. ..niet al te warm en mooie luchten. 't Is hier heerlijk!!!! Ik jubel steeds en verlang hoe langer hoe meer hier te blijven tot het einde.
In a letter of Mauve, from Laren 1885, to his student nl:Arina Hugenholtz, as quoted by Arina Hugenholtz in In Memoriam Anton Mauve; as cited in Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw, Arsine Nazarian, Juli 2008 Utrecht University; studentnummer: 0360953, p. 85
Mauve's mood was frequently moving between depression and cheerful moods, as many related people knew
1880's

Pleasure, Business, Joy, Painting

“I fall in love with Britain every day, with bridges, buses, blue skies… but it’s a brutal world, man.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Metro, August 25, 2006
Britain

Love, World

“Full of great changes
My three and fifty years have been.
I commented on the holy writ - a heavy sin
That echoes to the skies.
Now I will sail on the lake of lotus blooms
And break into the skies within the water.”

Tetsugen Doko (1630–1682) Japanese Zen Master

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6)

Water, Change

“I'll always be a fan of ol' stray dogs and guitars playin'.
One room churches, back road walks and front porch swingin'.
Sunset skies, bonfire nights, I love the simple things.
That's how I'll always be.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

How I'll Always Be
Song lyrics, Damn Country Music (2015)

Love, Dogs, Night

“I call on the Libyan people, men and women, to go out into the squares and the streets in all the cities in their millions. … Go peacefully… be courageous, rise up, go to the streets, raise our green flags to the skies. … Don't be afraid of anyone. You are the people. You have right on your side. You are the rightful people of this land.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Audio message broadcast on the pro-Gaddafi Syrian Al Rai TV on 20 September 2011, as quoted in Libya conflict: Muammar Gaddafi urges mass protests http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15206478, BBC World News, 6 October 2011 <br class="br">Speeches

Women, Men, People, Courage

“That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua Reynolds speaking of the "Landscape" of Titian & Salvator & Claude says 'Even their skies seem to sympathise with the Subject.' I have often been advised to consider my sky as a 'hite Sheet thrown behind the Objects'. Certainly, if the sky is 'obtrusive,' (as mine are) it is bad, but if they are 'evaded' (as mine are not) it is worse, they must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the 'key note,' the 'standard of Scale' and the chief 'Organ of sentiment.'”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

You may conceive, then, what a "white sheet" would do for me, impressed as I am with these notions.
Letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 42
1820s

Parting

“Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause. Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!”

Henry Timrod (1828–1867) Poet from the American South

"Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867", st. 1 & 5

Beauty, Angels, Sleep

“It was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneth inmense skies, and everything about them is drowned. Where go? what do? what for?”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

sleep."
Part Two, Ch. 8
On the Road (1957)

Sadness, Sleep

“If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling splash of rain.

If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence.
To break the endless song.

If life were always merry,
Our souls would seek relief,
And rest from weary laughter
In the quiet arms of grief.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

If All the Skies.

Life, World, Music, Feeling

“The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We shall see — we shall see.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

citation needed

World, Dogs, Clothes

“The sky is the 'source of light' in nature, and governs every thing. Even our common observations on the weather of every day, are suggested by them, but it does not occur to us. Their difficulty in painting both as to composition and execution is very great, because, with all their brilliancy and consequence, they ought not to come forward, or be hardly thought about in a picture… I know very well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has in all her movements.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 229 and also in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 42
1820s

Nature, Light, Appearance, Painting