Quotes about velvet

A collection of quotes on the topic of velvet, likeness, look, black.

Quotes about velvet

Haruki Murakami photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“What is a throne? — a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public — people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.
Statement to the Senate (1814) He echoes here the remark attributed to Louis XIV L'état c'est moi ( "The State is I" or more commonly: "I am the State.")
Variant translation: A throne is only a bench covered with velvet...

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Dylan Thomas photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Barack Obama photo

“For decades, this vision stood in sharp contrast to life on the other side of an Iron Curtain. For decades, a contest was waged, and ultimately that contest was won -- not by tanks or missiles, but because our ideals stirred the hearts of Hungarians who sparked a revolution; Poles in their shipyards who stood in Solidarity; Czechs who waged a Velvet Revolution without firing a shot; and East Berliners who marched past the guards and finally tore down that wall. Today, what would have seemed impossible in the trenches of Flanders, the rubble of Berlin, or a dissident’s prison cell -- that reality is taken for granted. A Germany unified. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe welcomed into the family of democracies. Here in this country, once the battleground of Europe, we meet in the hub of a Union that brings together age-old adversaries in peace and cooperation. The people of Europe, hundreds of millions of citizens -- east, west, north, south -- are more secure and more prosperous because we stood together for the ideals we share. And this story of human progress was by no means limited to Europe. Indeed, the ideals that came to define our alliance also inspired movements across the globe among those very people, ironically, who had too often been denied their full rights by Western powers. After the Second World War, people from Africa to India threw off the yoke of colonialism to secure their independence. In the United States, citizens took freedom rides and endured beatings to put an end to segregation and to secure their civil rights. As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies, and Asian nations showed that development and democracy could go hand in hand.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Barack Obama photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“All authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? This wooden frame covered with velvet? No, I am the throne.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Address to the Legislative Body (December 1813) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_Addresses/Part_V#Address_to_the_Legislative_Body,_December,_1813.; he here echoes the remark attributed to Louis XIV L'état c'est moi ( "The State is I" or more commonly: "I am the State.")

Jonathan Franzen photo
Margaret Mitchell photo
Celia Rees photo

“In the town live witches nine: three in worsted, three in rags, and three in velvet fine…”

Celia Rees (1949) English author

Source: Witch Child

“Self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness.”

Mark Mirabello (1955) American writer

Source: The Cannibal Within

Karen Marie Moning photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Robin Hobb photo
Brian Jacques photo
Rufus Wainwright photo
Adolf Eichmann photo

“After the speech he looked at us ironically and added softly: "Otherwise you would die". The words were icy but the tone like velvet, almost friendly.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Benjamin Murmelstein, Theresienstadt: Eichmanns Vorzeige-Ghetto, .

Dylan Moran photo
George Eliot photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Ahmad Khatami photo
Damian Pettigrew photo

“We lunched in Fregene: grilled sardines sprinkled with parsley and lemon. Federico ate daintily, like someone with no appetite. The beach was deserted, the wind brisk. In the distance stood the abandoned lighthouse he filmed for 8 1/2. Like someone about to propose a toast, he stood up and "recited" from King Lear :
Hark! Have you heard the news? The king fell off a cliff.
O horrible! Were you very close to him?
Indeed, sir. Close enough to push.
We laughed until he brusquely sat down again, scraping the fish scales off his fingers, staring at the age spots that covered his hands. The beautiful adolescent waitress asked for his autograph. He drew himself as a man-lion in a hat and scarf with huge paws chasing her, and signed it "Féfé." We spent the afternoon visiting Ostia and returned to Rome in a sweltering twilight. He asked to be driven home for a change of clothes. We invited Giulietta, who wore a green velvet turban, to join us for dinner. (Had she already lost her hair from chemotherapy?) Graciously, she declined while smoking cigarette after cigarette. At Cesarina's, Federico drew hilarious, pornographic sketches on the table napkin saying, "If you have not made love today then you have lost a day!"”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

The entire restaurant was at his feet. He was twenty years old now and as thin as Kafka. He was Rome. He had adopted us the way Rome adopts everyone, and we loved him.
On Fellini's final years
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Captain Beefheart photo

“Pena
Her little head clinking
Like a barrel of red velvet balls
Full past noise
Treats filled her eyes
Turning them yellow like enamel coated tacks
Soft like butter hard not to pour”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

Pena, sung by Jeff Cotton, better known as Antennae Jimmy Semens
Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Roger Ebert photo
Jean Froissart photo

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Elinor Glyn photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“A final splash plops … all water-movement ceases and the screen is a black velvet void.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Final words of the published script.
Prospero's Books

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo

“Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

‎note in her Journal, 3 June, 1902; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals, ed. Günter Busch and ‎Liselotte von Reinken (1998), p. 278
1900 - 1905
Variant: Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Annie Dillard photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Tom Petty photo
Charlotte Brontë photo

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5878. You cannot make Velvet out of a Sow's Ear.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Brigham Young photo
Alain de Botton photo

“Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm’s Human Resources department.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 244.

Alan Keyes photo

“The heart of government, coated with whatever velvet gloves you want to put on it, is a mailed fist of force and coercion.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Renew America rally in Orem, Utah, March 8, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_03_08utah.htm.
2000

Pietro Badoglio photo

“I slowly strangle my enemies with a velvet glove.”

Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956) Italian general during both World Wars and a Prime Minister of Italy

Io i miei nemici li strangolo lentamente col guanto di velluto.
Quoted in "Italienisch-ostafrika(1936-1941)"‎ - Page 18 - by Stefan Plenk - 2008

Stevie Nicks photo

“That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on the inspiration for "Gypsy") Leah Greenblatt, "Stevie Nicks On Her Favorite Songs: A Music Mix Exclusive", http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/03/31/stevie-nicks-in/ Entertainment Weekly, 31 March 2009

Richard Wurmbrand photo
Neil Strauss photo

“Love is a velvet prison.”

Neil Strauss (1973) American writer

Rules of the Game: The Style Diaries (2007)

Mohammad Javad Zarif photo

“The concept of a velvet revolution in Iran should not be considered as groundless fear.”

Mohammad Javad Zarif (1960) Iranian politician

18 November 2008, According to Archived copy, 2015-07-06, yes, https://archive.is/20120908203416/http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/75784.html, 8 September 2012, dmy-all http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/75784.html,
Interview to CNN, Revolution

John Cale photo

“John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Jayne County, attributed without citation at About Cale, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/quote_others.html,

“Under an arch o’ bramble
Saftly she goes,
Dark broon een like velvet,
Cheeks like the rose.”

Helen Cruickshank (1886–1975) British poet

In Glenskenno Woods

Antonio Fresco photo

“I got that white girl
No-scrimnate
Chocolate lemon red velvet
I eat all the cake
They outside hating
Cause they can't get in
The whole city's out
We maxed it to ten.”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

Written by Antonio Fresco, Jonn Hart, and Clayton William
Song lyrics, Blow It https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Clayton-William-Jonn-Hart-Antonio-Fresco/Blow-It 2015

Marek Forgáč photo

“After the so-called Velvet Revolution Slovakia became part of the Western Civilization, and along with a lot of good things, Christians here are confronted with problems such as relativism and materialism, but I think that a lot of people look forward to meeting the Pope.”

Marek Forgáč (1974) Slovak bishop

Source: Auxiliary Bishop of Košice: Pope comes to strengthen the faith https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-09/auxiliary-bishop-of-kosice-pope-comes-to-strengthen-the-faith.html (13 September 2021)