Quotes about touch
page 13

Deepak Chopra photo
Edmund Spenser photo

“To kerke the narre from God more farre,
Has bene an old-sayd sawe;
And he that strives to touche a starre
Oft stombles at a strawe.”

The Shepheardes Calender, July, line 97; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ihara Saikaku photo
Leslie Stephen photo

“The poet should touch our heart by showing his own”

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) British author, literary critic, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography

Quote by Thomas Hardy from The life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1928 by Florence Emily Hardy ASIN: B0027MJJSI Macmillan (1 Jan 1962)
Attributed

Johannes Tinctoris photo

“Rhythmical music is that which is made by instruments which render the sound by touch.”

Johannes Tinctoris (1435–1511) Flemish composer

Dictionary of Musical Terms (1475)

Sherilyn Fenn photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Ralph Waldo Trine photo
D.H. Lawrence photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
J.B. Priestley photo

“Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"The Dark Hours", in Too Many People, and Other Reflections http://books.google.com/books?id=WXRMy9eD_GkC&q="Those+no+sooner+have+I+touched+the+pillow+people+are+past+my+comprehension+There+is+something+suspiciously+bovine+about+them"&pg=PA80#v=onepage (1928).

Andy Warhol photo

“I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don't want to get to close: I don't like to touch things, that's why my work is so distant from myself”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Nicolas Love, April 1987
1975 - 1987, BBC interview (1981)
Source: Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz, in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467

Henry Van Dyke photo
Richard Bach photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Andy Partridge photo
Edward Bernays photo
St. Vincent (musician) photo

“The Arabs made a profession of robbing and murdering the non-Muslims in the name of Allah, but they called it jihad. Egypt and Iran were the early casualties. It was the pillaged wealth and abducted daughters and sisters of the foreign nations which lent the golden touch to this Arab era.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Anwar Shaikh, Islam, The Arab National Movement, p. 54. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Auguste Rodin photo

“The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won't have that to worry about anymore.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis

Derren Brown photo

“This week, we’re in Whitby on the North-east coast where my great-uncle, Count Dracula, first touched British soil in the shape of a big dog.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

“My friend Mercedes Pena made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. "How do you Latinas do this—all the time in touch with your emotions?" I asked her. "That's why we take siestas," she replied.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Time Magazine, Who Needs Breasts, Anyway? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001832-1,00.html, Feb. 18, 2002. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

Nasreddin photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Le propre d’un grand homme est de dérouter les calculs ordinaires. Il est sublime et attendrissant, naïf et gigantesque.
Part I, ch. XV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Suzanne Collins photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 302

Peter Gabriel photo
Amy Schumer photo

“I'm the last person he called that night. I wonder, how many girls didn't answer before he got to fat freshman me? Am I in his phone as Schumer? Probably. But I was here, and I wanted to be held and touched and felt desired, despite everything. I wanted to be with him. I imagined us on campus together, holding hands, proving, "Look! I am lovable! And this cool older guy likes me!"”

Amy Schumer (1981) American comedian and actor

I can't be the troll doll I'm afraid I've become.
Ms. Foundation for Women’s Gloria Awards and Gala [Vulture, http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/read-amy-schumers-ms-gala-speech.html, May 2014, Read Amy Schumer’s Powerful Speech About Confidence, Jennifer, Vineyard]

Anthony Burgess photo
Alvin C. York photo

“I noticed the bushes all around where I stood in my fight with the machine guns were all cut down. The bullets went over my head and on either side. But they never touched me.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

Hazrat Inayat Khan photo
Will Eisner photo

“1920
The Times
London, Saturday, May 8, 1920.
“The Jewish peril.”
A disturbing pamphlet
Call for inquiry.
(From a correspondent.)
The Times has not as yet noticed this singular little book. Its diffusion is, however, increasing, and its reading is likely to perturb the thinking public. Never before have a race and a creed been accused of a more sinister conspiracy. We in this country, who live in good fellowship with numerous representatives of Jewry, may well ask that some authoritative criticism should deal with it., and either destroy the ugly “Semitic” body or assign their proper place to the insidious allegations of this kind of literature.
In spite of the urgency of impartial and exhaustive criticism, the pamphlet has been allowed, so far, to pass almost unchallenged. The Jewish Press announced, it is true, that the anti-semitism of the “Jewish Peril” was going to be exposed. But save for an unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ and for an almost equally unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of contribution to the ‘’Nation’’ of March 27, this exposure is yet to come. The article of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ is unsatisfactory, because it deals mainly with the personality of the author of the book in which the pamphlet is embodied, with Russian reactionary propaganda, and the Russian secret police. It does not touch the substance of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The purely Russian side of the book and its fervid “Orthodoxy.” Is not its most interesting feature. Its author-Professor S. Nilus-who was a minor official in the Department of Foreign Religions at Moscow, had, in all likelihood, opportunities of access to many archives and unpublished documents. On the other hand, the world-wide issue raised by the “Protocols” which he incorporated in his book and are now translated into English as “The Jewish Peril,” cannot fail not only to interest, but to preoccupy. What are the these of the “Protocols” with which, in the absence of public criticism, British readers have to grapple alone and unaided?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Billy Joel photo
Robert Frost photo

“Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" To Earthward http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-earthward-2/", st. 1 (1923)
1920s

James Bradley photo

“Hitherto we have considered the apparent motion of the star about its true place, as made only in a plane parallel to the ecliptic, in which case it appears to describe a circle in that plane; but since, when we judge of the place and motion of a star, we conceive it to be in the surface of a sphere, whose centre is our eye, 'twill be necessary to reduce the motion in that plane to what it would really appear on the surface of such a sphere, or (which will be equivalent) to what it would appear on a plane touching such a sphere in the star's true place. Now in the present case, where we conceive the eye at an indefinite distance, this will be done by letting fall perpendiculars from each point of the circle on such a plane, which from the nature of the orthographic projection will form an ellipsis, whose greater axis will be equal to the diameter of that circle, and the lesser axis to the greater as the sine of the star's latitude to the radius, for this latter plane being perpendicular to a line drawn from the centre of the sphere through the star's true place, which line is inclined to the ecliptic in an angle equal to the star's latitude; the touching plane will be inclined to the plane of the ecliptic in an angle equal to the complement of the latitude. But it is a known proposition in the orthographic projection of the sphere, that any circle inclined to the plane of the projection, to which lines drawn from the eye, supposed at an infinite distance, are at right angles, is projected into an ellipsis, having its longer axis equal to its diameter, and its shorter to twice the cosine of the inclination to the plane of the projection, half the longer axis or diameter being the radius.
Such an ellipse will be formed in our present case…”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), Demonstration of the Rules relating to the Apparent Motion of the Fixed Stars upon account of the Motion of Light.

Roger Manganelli photo
Helen Maria Williams photo
Henry Timrod photo

“I could almost hear him scrabbling about in his brain for a deft, light opening. His Oscar Wilde touch. Martland has only two personalities – Wilde and Eeyore.”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Don't Point That Thing At Me (1972), Ch. 1.

Richard Aldington photo
Kate Bush photo

“In the warm room
She'll touch you with your Mamma's hand.
You'll long to kiss those red lips,
But when you do
It'll feel like kicking a habit.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Nicholas D. Kristof photo
Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd photo

“O England's hate is my love unsleeping, Gwynedd my land,
Golden on every hand to the myriad reaping.
For her bounty of mead I love her, winter content,
Where turbulent wastes of the sea but touch and are spent;
I love her people, quiet peace, rich store of her treasure
Changed at her prince's pleasure to splendid war.”

Caraf trachas Lloegyr, lleudir goglet hediw,
ac yn amgant y Lliw lliwas callet.
Caraf am rotes rybuched met,
myn y dyhaet my meith gwyrysset.
Carafy theilu ae thew anhet yndi
ac wrth uot y ri rwyfaw dyhet.
"Gorhoffedd" (The Boast), line 3; translation from Robert Gurney Bardic Heritage (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 39.

Alexander Haig photo
John F. Kerry photo
Francis Marion Crawford photo
Mark Akenside photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
George William Russell photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Don Soderquist photo

“If you want to be an effective leader, you need to cultivate one-on-one feedback from trusted individuals throughout your organization, touching all the different levels. Not people who will tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 124.
On Leading Well

Johannes Lichtenauer photo
Gregory Scott Paul photo

“How would we think and feel about predatory dinosaurs if they were alive today? Humans have long felt antipathy toward carnivores, our competitors for scarce protein. But our feelings are somewhat mollified by the attractive qualities we see in them. For all their size and power, lions remind us of the little creatures that we like to have curl up in our laps and purr as we stroke them. Likewise, noble wolves recall our canine pets. Cats and dogs make good companions because they are intelligent and responsive to our commands, and their supple bodies make them pleasing to touch and play with. And, very importantly, they are house-trainable. Their forward-facing eyes remind us of ourselves. However, even small predaceous dinosaurs would have had no such advantage. None were brainy enough to be companionable or house-trainable; in fact, they would always be a danger to their owners. Their stiff, perhaps feathery bodies were not what one would care to have sleep at the foot of the bed. The reptilian-faced giants that were the big predatory dinosaurs would truly be horrible and terrifying. We might admire their size and power, much as many are fascinated with war and its machines, but we would not like them. Their images in literature and music would be demonic and powerful - monsters to be feared and destroyed, yet emulated at the same time.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 19
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Bill Nye photo

“Everything you can touch and depend on in our society goes back to science.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[N1, Champs Science Bowl goes to NOHO, Daily News of Los Angeles, February 20, 2000, Amy Raisin, NewsBank]

Daniel Suarez photo

“…we know instantly whenever anyone touches our data—and who touched it. That’s the best one can hope for in a technologically advanced society.”

Source: Freedom™ (2010), Chapter 5: Getting with the Program, Character: Laney Price

Barbara Hepworth photo

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

Jacques Lacan photo
William Herschel photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo

“For centuries we have labored under the illusion that Western Christianity was something that could be exported, and only recent events have at last made it obvious to us how vain and futile have been the labors and zeal of devoted missionaries for five centuries. When Cortez and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest and devoted missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Christian gospel to the natives. And they soon sent back home, with innocent enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. You can feel their sincerity, their piety, their ardor, and their joy in the pages of Father Sagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. And for their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they had really played in the religious conversions that gave them such joy. Far more effective than their words and their book had been the Spanish cannon that had breached the Aztec defenses and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who had slain the Aztec priests at their altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids. The Aztecs accepted Christianity as a cult, not because their hearts were touched by doctrines of love and mercy, but because Christianity was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors made them invincible.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Rob Enderle photo

“Apple has recently done more with the tablet format with the iPod Touch and iPhone then any other vendor but the jury is still largely out on this format with challenging devices from RIM, Palm, and Google often showcasing that keyboards are necessary.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Why JooJoo may critically savage the Apple Tablet http://tgdaily.com/electronic/44975-why-joojoo-may-critically-savage-the-apple-tablet in TG Daily (8 December 2009)

Manmohan Acharya photo

“The slippers of the mortal Earth, Now touched the chest of the Moon. Oh, It is shameful that”

Manmohan Acharya (1967–2013) Poet, lyricist

Song of the Bumblebee (2008)

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Total knowledge is annihilation of the desire to see, to touch, to feel the world sensed only through senses and immune to the knowledge without feeling.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Knowledge http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21394/Knowledge
From the poems written in English

Jacques Derrida photo
Colum McCann photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Perhaps it is a benevolent provision of Nature that we remember more what touches than what pains us.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Łukasz Pawlikowski photo

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Georges Braque photo
John Banville photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“Language is a sense, like touch. (p. 271)”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011)

Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Zail Singh photo

“At one stage, Venkataraman had agreed to become prime minister but he never told me this directly…. Once the news of his being in touch with the dissidents was leaked out, he was offered the presidency and that was the end of it.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

On being asked if R. Venkataraman showed any interest in becoming prime minister. In: K.R. Sundar Rajan "Presidential Years:Zail Singh's posthumous defence of his controversial tenure".

Manisha Koirala photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Zooey Deschanel photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Jane Goodall photo
Giorgio Morandi photo

“.. before I die I should like to bring two paintings to completion. What matters is to touch the limit, the essence of things.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in an interview, Sept. 1939; as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 44
1925 - 1945

The Mother photo
Genesis P-Orridge photo
George W. Bush photo
John Fante photo
Bill Gates photo
Amir Taheri photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo