Quotes about yard (191 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Next day, at the time of the noon prayer, we went out for seeing those places in Gwalior which we had not yet seen' Going out of the Hathipole Gate of the fort, we arrived at a place called Urwa'…'Solid rocks surround Urwa on three sides' On these sides people have carved statues in stone. They are in all sizes, small and big. A very big statue, which is on the southern side, is perhaps 20 yards high. These statues are altogether naked and even their private parts are not covered'…'Urwa is not a bad place. It is an enclosed space. Its biggest blemish is its statues. I ordered that they should be destroyed.”

Babur Baburnama

Baburnama, Translated from the Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi included in Mughal Kãlîna Bhãrata: Bãbur, Aligarh, 1960, In Goel, S.R. Hindu Temples - What happened to them

People , Time , Parting

“If you'd given me the choice of going out and beating four men and smashing a goal in from thirty yards against Liverpool or going to bed with Miss World, it would have been a difficult choice. Luckily, I had both.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

In the book The Afterlife by Paul Morley " http://footyfactor.com/tag/the-afterlife", Footy Factor (April 23, 2009).

Men , World

“If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Love , Dogs , Hell

“Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls (all our buglers were amateurs--I first learned the Spanish bugle-calls by listening to them outside the Fascist lines), the tramp-tramp of hobnailed boots in the barrack yard, the long morning parades in the wintry sunshine, the wild games of football, fifty a side, in the gravelled riding--school.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

School , Game , Learning , Football

“These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.”

Nelson Algren book A Walk on the Wild Side

In jail, Cross-Country Kline to Dove Linkhorn.
Source: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Context: But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man's jolt. And never you cop another man's plea. I've tried 'em all and I know. They don't work. / Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Life , Money

“We'd get into these little towns and tell 'em to get out the fastest guy in town and Jesse Owens would spot him ten yards and beat him.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

Guy

“One day I had painted a bunch of keys on a canvas, my bunch of keys. I didn't know what to put next to them. I needed something that would be the absolute opposite of a bunch of keys. So when I finished work I went out. I had only walked a few yard when what should I see in a shop windows? A postcard of the Mona Lisa! At once I knew that was what I needed; what could have made a greater contrast to the keys?... Then I also added a can of sardines. It was such a strong contrast.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

on his painting 'La Joconde aux Clés'
Quote from La vie fait de l'Oeuvre de Fernand Léger, Dora Vallier, 'Cahiers d'Art', 2, 1954, p. 153
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's

Strong , Painting

“This Jerónimo, my grandfather, swineherd and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Lecture (1998)

Death , Feeling , Tree , Cry

“The trouble is, Roosevelt hasn't taken all of my ideas; just part of them. I'm about one hundred yards ahead of him. We're on the same road, but I'm here and he's there.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long (Williams p. 637)

Idea , Parting

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Constant, “the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,” said Constant, “has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 12 “The Gentleman from Tralfamadore” (p. 290)

Universe

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

Life , Appearance

“My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Letter to Margaret Anderson (1941)

Waiting

“I am so afraid of people's words.
They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder
In Celebration of Me (1909)

People , Dogs , Mountain , Housing

“August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm yards. Dr. Luther said: “I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them. We read in the old law, that the priests threw the first stone at such malefactors, `Tis said this stolen butter turns rancid, and falls to the ground when any one goes to eat it. He who attempts to counteract and chastise these witches, is himself corporally plagued and tormented by their master, the devil. Sundry schoolmasters and ministers have often experienced this. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What, then, must be his wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The jurisconsults who have so learnedly and pertinently treated of rebellion, affirm that the subject who rebels against his sovereign, is worthy of death. Does not witchcraft, then, merit death, which is a revolt of the creature against the Creator, a denial to God of the authority it accords to the demon?””

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Statement of 25 August 1538, in Table-Talk, as translated by William Hazlitt (1857), DLXXVII

Death , God , Law , Reading

“Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house — in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Lyman, Act 2
The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991)

Girl , Intelligence , Housing

“Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving….”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Colour Out of Space (1927)

Tree

“One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), pp. 140–141

Life , People , World , Way

“I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a white girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them? I thought with rage. I glared at them for a bit, and then decided I had been insulted enough. I angrily walked toward them and bumped the Asian guy aside, trying to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl. My drunken state got the better of me, and I almost fell over to the floor after a few minutes of this. They said something along the lines that I was very drunk and that I needed to get some water, so I angrily left them and went out to the front yard, where the main partying happened. Rage fumed inside me as I realized that I just walked away from that confrontation, so I rushed back into the house and spitefully insulted the Asian before walking outside again.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Beauty , Guy , Girl , Boy

“I just said that the Hawkins girl's head was severed and taken up the road about twenty-five to fifty yards and buried in a location about ten yards west of the road, on a rocky hillside. Did you hear that?”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

Discussing the murder of Georgann Hawkins to Detective Robert Keppel, days before his execution. Quoted in Keppel, Robert (2005) The Riverman, Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. Simon and Schuster, pp. 29

Girl

“Let me not so much be lost in involvements
as would make me incapable of
recognizing the fragrance of the flower
beaming in my own yard.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> Entanglements http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zl7d1</span>
From Poetry

Flowers

“It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
Context: It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards. … The secret is, first, get a thoroughbred horse because they are the most nervous animals on earth. Then get the biggest gun you can find and make sure the starter fires that big gun right by the nervous thoroughbred's ear.

Animals , Horse

“To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
Context: To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first "second" is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final "second" — the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete — is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.

“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2H_4_0002
Christian Science (1907)

Family , Housing , Light , Mountain

“I just love family meetings. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Love , Family , Christmas , Tea

“Oh-do be careful with that! That's my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.”

Anthony Horowitz Alex Rider

Source: Snakehead

“Marry an outdoors woman. That way, if you have to throw her out into the yard for the night, she can still survive.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Way , Night

“To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.”

Washington Irving book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Peace , Thinking , Sleep , Grass

“The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Love , World , Tree , Perfection

“The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Feeling , Tree , Grass , Cry

“Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Valley of Fear

Source: The Valley of Fear

Hope , Feeling , Lying

“No: What the heck happened?
Or: Why did you go from nearly kissing me to tossing me across your yard and into the patio furniture?”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

Kiss

“Don't sit back and wait for God to do it all. Ask for His advice, but be prepared to do the hard yards yourself.”

Morris Gleitzman (1953) Australian writer

Source: Grace

God , Waiting

“Remember when you picked me up like a frisbee and tossed me across you yard?”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

“Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard.”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Star , Spring , Night

“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Heart

“Thank you, Daniel, that is very good to know. But if staying here means working within 10 yards of you, frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

“P. S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

“When you've come face-to-face with the dark side of the school yard, life doesn't hold many surprises.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: Half-Moon Investigations

Life , School

“Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Men

“Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had.”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Source: Tuck Everlasting

Fear

“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Robert Frost : The Trial By Existence (1960) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, p. 351, and Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (1981) by William Richard Evans, p. 223
General sources
Context: Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.

Housing

“It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!”

Hans Christian Andersen The Ugly Duckling

Source: The Ugly Duckling

“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.”

Raymond Carver book Elephant

Source: Elephant and Other Stories

People

“Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Time , Training

“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89

Men , Children , World

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

Life , People , Way , Travel

“Darab Khan who had been sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and to demolish the great temple of the place, attacked the place on the 8th March/5th Safar, and slew the three hundred and odd men who made a bold defence, not one of them escaping alive. [16 October 1678] The temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood were demolished…'On Sunday, the 25th May/24th Rabi. S., Khan Jahan Bahadur came from Jodhpur, after demolishing the temples and bringing with himself some cart-loads of idols, and had audience of the Emperor, who highly praised him and ordered that the idols, which were mostly jewelled, gold en, silver y, bronze, copper or stone, should be cast in the yard (jilaukhanah) of the Court and under the steps of the Jam'a mosque, to be trodden on. They remained so for some time and at last their very names were lost' [25 May 1679]…Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana's palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers Twenty machator Rajputs who were sitting in the temple vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images…..”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: “Darab Khan was sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and demolish the great temple of that place.” (M.A. 171.) “He attacked the place on 8th March 1679, and pulled down the temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood.”(M.A. 173.) Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Life , Strong , Fight , Age

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol , Food , Hell , Drink

“Western field-work conjures up images of struggle on horseback […]—toughing it out on one canteen a day as you labor up and down mountains. The value of a site is supposedly correlated with the difficulty of getting there. This, of course, is romantic drivel. Ease of access is no measure of importance. The famous La Brea tar pits are right in downtown Los Angeles. To reach the Clarkia lake beds, you turn off the main road at Buzzard's Roost Trophy Company and drive the remaining fifty yards right up to the site.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Magnolias from Moscow", p. 403
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Angels , Mountain

“Whin annything was wrote about a man 'twas put this way: "We undhershtand on good authority that M-l-chi H---y, Esquire, is on thrile before Judge G---n on an accusation iv l--c-ny. But we don't think it's true." Nowadays th' larceny is discovered be a newspa-aper. Th' lead pipe is dug up in ye'er back yard be a rayporther who knew it was there because he helped ye bury it. … Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explainin' th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.”

Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) author

"Newspaper Publicity" in Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902) https://books.google.com/books?id=97c_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA240&dq=%22newspaper+does+ivrything%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioqKzz5MvPAhUJrD4KHROmCdsQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=%22newspaper%20does%20ivrything%22&f=false; part of this has sometimes been paraphrased (ignoring its original satiric meaning): The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Way , Thinking , Affliction , Help

“My father, William C. Boulding, was a working plumber in business for himself. At the back of the house was the yard, a corrugated iron shed full of pipes, wrenches, and blow torches, and other mysterious and rather frightening apparatus. He had two faithful employees, Billy Fox, who was moody and regarded as a little queer, and Billy Sankey, who was short and cheerful. They and my father always smelled strongly of some kind of grease. My father was a gentle man. I never I never heard his voice raised in anger. He had had a very hard childhood. His father died soon after he was born; his mother married again, a man known in the family legends as "Pa Hardacre," about whom endless stories were told. He was a bigamist. He drove my father out of the house at the age of twelve to earn his own living on the streets of Liverpool. He constantly mistreated my half-aunts, Ethel and Rosie. He died before I was born, but my mother's accounts of him sounded like something out of Dickens.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms, 1980, p. 5

Age , Family , Faith , Business

“Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet [30 m] and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards.”

David Livingstone (1813–1873) Scottish explorer and missionary

Exploring Magnificent Waterfalls http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102004126?q=livingstone&p=par

“I had wanted to talk with you about lots of things... I am anxious to get to work for the fall – it is always my best time I had one particular painting – that tree in Lawrence's front yard as you see it when you lie under it on the table – with stars – it looks as tho it is standing on its head – I wanted you to see it..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, Taos, August 1929; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 226
1917 - 1929

Lie , Star , Tree , Time

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way , Personality

“The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America (1983) by W.C, Seitz, p. 88
1970s and later

World , Way , Idea

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , God , Children , World

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Life , Men , Money , War

“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105

Life , Way , Chance

“I heard of your marriage, Cathy, not long since; and, while waiting in the yard below, I meditated this plan — just to have one glimpse of your face — a stare of surprise, perhaps, and pretended pleasure; afterward settle my score with Hindley; and then prevent the law by doing execution on myself. Your welcome has put these ideas out of my mind; but beware of meeting me with another aspect next time!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. X).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Marriage , Pleasure , Law , Idea

“There should be a Kettle's Yard in every university.”

Jim Ede (1895–1990) art collector

From Introduction to the Handlist 1970

Universe

“Houses stretched off on all sides, sometimes dipping below the ground and sometimes emerging out of it, piling themselves into pyramids, into almost toppling waves, never one rooftree more than eighty yards from the next. The planet was covered. There were the old, open-air cities planted with whatever would grow, mountains honeycombed, resorts in Antarctica, covered roads crammed with carrier traffic only, hovercraft, sea-craft, masses, structures, and installations under the sea, nets of algae towed in the air, some insects and no animals whatever, but people, people, people everywhere.
What’s the opposite of the Garden of Eden?”

Joanna Russ (1937–2011) American author

Source: Fiction, And Chaos Died (1970), Chapter 3 (p. 120)

People , Mountain , Animals , Housing

“Every neighborhood on the planet has a house like this on the block. We've all driven past it. A bunch of people living there, too old to be kids, but never gonna be adults… You can tell that by the "AEROSMITH ROCKS" banner in the living room window… Four sociopathic pitbulls roaming the yard at all times… The brown one has one leg, just flops to the fence every couple of hours… You can tell when the family's doubled their net worth 'cause they parked a new gutted Chevelle in the driveway… The mailman's afraid to bring the mail, so he just gives it to the cops, 'cause hell, they're gonna be there anyway… And if you don't recognize this house in your neighborhood, you live in this house in your neighborhood.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Love is Evol (2009)

People , Family , Hell , Time

“The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Love , World , Universe , Memory

“Krupp cannon have thundered over the battlefields where German unity was fought for and won, and Krupp cannon are the energy of the German army and navy today. The ships constructed in the Krupp yards carry the German flag into every sea. Krupp steel protects our vessels and our forts…But the Krupp works has not only been an exploiter in this sense. It has also been the first in Germany to recognize the new social problems and to seek to solve them, thus leading to social legislation.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech at the Krupp Centenary in Essen (8 August 1912), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 303
1910s

Problem , Sense , Sea

“The "control mechanism" view of culture begins with the assumption that human thought is basically both social and public — that its natural habitat is the house yard, the market place, and the town square.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 45

Nature , Housing

“I am an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. A graffiti artist beautifies walls; I beautify parkways and yards. I treat the garden as a piece of cloth and the plants and the trees are the embellishment of that cloth. You’d be surprised what soil can do if you let it be your canvas.”

Ron Finley American fashion designer and urban gardener

Ron Finley at TED2013 (2013)

Tree , Clothes

“[the painting 'Yard with Lunatics' shows].. a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks; (it is a scene I witnessed at first hand in Zaragoza).”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Bernardo de Iriarte, 7 Jan, 1794; as quoted by Jane Kromm, in The art of frenzy, 2002, p. 194 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_with_Lunatics
The painting 'Yard with Lunatics' (Spanish: Corral de locos) is a small oil-on-tinplate painting completed by Goya between 1793 and 1794; Goya says here that the painting was informed by scenes of institutions he witnessed in his youth in Zaragoza
1790s

Fight , Painting

“If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

The American Mercury (March 1936) - referring to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1930s

Housing

“…the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 11 "Like Father, Like Son"

“No way! You've gotta be kidding me!…It's gotta be one of the dumbest calls offensively in Super Bowl history. You are on the 1-yard line and you have #24 (Marshawn Lynch) and you drop back pass? Are you kidding me? And also, they ran a pick play - an illegal pick! You deserve an interception!”

Scott Zolak (1967) American football quarterback

On the Patriots radio broadcast on 98.5 The Sports Hub after Malcolm Butler's game-winning interception of Russell Wilson at the goal line in Super Bowl XLIX. Seahawks Opponent Audio Recap - Super Bowl XLIX - Scott Zolak & Bob Socci (Patriots, 98.5 The Sports Hub) http://www.sportsradiokjr.com/media/play/opponent-audio-recap-sb-xlix-patriots-25788776/ KJR

Way , History

“Engvall: Yesterday, my son was out in the yard playing with his friend, and he hit his friend. I walked up to him, and I said, "Hey…" (pantomimes hitting his son) "We don't hit". He looked at me like, "Here's your sign, Dad".”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)
Here's Your Sign, "Here's <i>MY</i> Sign..."

“There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

This I Believe (1951)

Fear , Evil , Housing

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe , Chance , Flying

“I had first learned that I was an idiot in the school yard. I was taunted and poked at and jeered, as were the other one or two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, who were beaten and chasen, was that I was sullen. When surrounded I was not terrified. They never attacked me but would finally turn on one of the others and beat them as I watched.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 52

School , Learning

“I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. The similarity of the two disciplines struck me at once. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our textbooks and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my 'deductions' were futile…
Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem — how we think… And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey's notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination—they don't think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorists had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject—the orthodox types particularly — when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem…
Of course Veblen fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side… There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises…
William Hill set me a course paper on 'Wool Growing and the Tariff.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new sidelight on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data... That was my first 'investigation'.
Wesley Clair Mitchell in letter to John Maurice Clark, August 9, 1928. Originally printed in Methods in Social Science, ed. Stuart Rice; Cited in: Arthur F. Burns (1965, 65-66)

Way , Behavior , Game , Idea

“Lang kept at it until everyone had had a turn shooting an AK-47. Then he said, "This weapon can do one other thing I haven't shown you yet. When you move the change lever all the way down instead of to the middle position, this is what happens." He stuck a fresh clip in the repeater, turned toward the target circle, and blasted away. He went through the whole magazine almost before Caudell could draw in a startled breath. "Good God almighty," Rufus Daniel said, peering in awe at the brass cartridge cases scattered around Lang's feet. "Why didn't he show us that in the first place?" He was not the only one to raise the question; quite a few shouted it. Caudell kept quiet. By now, he was willing to assume Lang knew what he was doing. The weapons instructor stayed perfectly possessed. He said, "I didn't show you that earlier because it wastes ammunition and because the weapon accurate past a few meters- yards- on full automatic. You can only carry so many rounds. If you shoot them all off in the first five minutes of battle, what will you do once they're gone? Think hard on that, gentlemen, and drill it into your private soldiers. This weapon requires fire discipline- requires it, I say again."”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 31

God , Way , Question , Thinking

“Imagine a day when this yard will be crowded with hundreds of leaders of the country. They will compete with each other, argue with each other, insult each other, throw shoes, leather bags, teacups, microphones and chairs at each other, break each other’s neck and determination, and then, at the end of the day, shamelessly compromise with each other for the sake of the party, and on the order of the leader.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

Shoe , Imagination , Country

“A motte and bailey castle consists of a man-made hill (the motte) supporting a tower and a walled yard (the bailey). (…) Early castle builders looked for a natural hill on which to erect a timber tower, but since a hill might not be available where fortifications were needed, they raised a flat-topped, conical earthen mound by digging a circular trench or ditch the desired diameter and heaping up the dirt in the center.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 1 : The Great Tower : Norman and Early Plantagenet Castles

Support , Nature

“Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece
a roll of paper thirty yards long
which I filled completely with minute handwriting
in my dungeon years ago
It vanished when the Bastille fell
it vanished as everything written
everything thought and planned
will disappear”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Sade, act 2, scene 28 (p. 82)
Marat/Sade (1963)

“To all the unheard wisdom in the school yard: you think you're the right ones; you swear you're the charmed ones I'm sure. But how can you go on with such conviction? Who do you think you are when you question me?”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Can't Not
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998)

Wisdom , School , Question , Thinking

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

World , Business , Water , Personality

“The first one I hit pretty flush with one hand - went about 200 yards. And the second one I shanked, and it rolled into a crater about 40 yards away.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

Describing his golf shots made on the Moon — reported in Philip Morgan (April 4, 1993) "'Boy, what a ride!' - On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard went from being a mere Navy commander to an American icon - the country's first man in space. That 15-minute, 28-second flight on Freedom 7 catapulted him into fame, searing his name and face into the collective imagination of a generation", The Tampa Tribune, p. 1.

“The battle raged with great fury: victory was long doubtful, till two Indian princes, Brahman Dew and Dabishleem, with other reinforcements, joined their countrymen during the action, and inspired them with fresh courage. Mahmood at this moment perceiving his troops to waver, leaped from his horse, and, prostrating himself before God implored his assistance' At the same time he cheered his troops with such energy, that, ashamed to abandon their king, with whom they had so often fought and bled, they, with one accord, gave a loud shout and rushed forwards. In this charge the Moslems broke through the enemy's line, and laid 5,000 Hindus dead at their feet' On approaching the temple, he saw a superb edifice built of hewn stone. Its lofty roof was supported by fifty-six pillars curiously carved and set with precious stones. In the centre of the hall was Somnat, a stone idol five yards in height, two of which were sunk in the ground. The King, approaching the image, raised his mace and struck off its nose. He ordered two pieces of the idol to be broken off and sent to Ghizny, that one might be thrown at the threshold of the public mosque, and the other at the court door of his own palace. These identical fragments are to this day (now 600 years ago) to be seen at Ghizny. Two more fragments were reserved to be sent to Mecca and Medina. It is a well authenticated fact, that when Mahmood was thus employed in destroying this idol, a crowd of Brahmins petitioned his attendants and offered a quantity of gold if the King would desist from further mutilation. His officers endeavoured to persuade him to accept of the money; for they said that breaking one idol would not do away with idolatry altogether; that, therefore, it could serve no purpose to destroy the image entirely; but that such a sum of money given in charity among true believers would be a meritorious act. The King acknowledged that there might be reason in what they said, but replied, that if he should consent to such a measure, his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmood the idol-seller', whereas he was desirous of being known as 'Mahmood the destroyer': he therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work'…'The Caliph of Bagdad, being informed of the expedition of the King of Ghizny, wrote him a congratulatory letter, in which he styled him 'The Guardian of the State, and of the Faith'; to his son, the Prince Ameer Musaood, he gave the title of 'The Lustre of Empire, and the Ornament of Religion'; and to his second son, the Ameer Yoosoof, the appellation of 'The Strength of the Arm of Fortune, and Establisher of Empires.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

He at the same time assured Mahmood, that to whomsoever he should bequeath the throne at his death, he himself would confirm and support the same.'
Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 38-49 (Alternative translation: "but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan)." in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3)
Sack of Somnath (1025 CE)

Death , Money , God , Faith

“Dear Polly,
Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair.
This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can.
Yours ever, Sam.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 265.

Hope , Understanding , Thinking , Sun

“My proposition is this: A vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new — i. e., future — illegal immigration. Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

"First a wall — then amnesty" in The Washington Post (7 April 2006) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/04/07/first-a-wall-then-amnesty/3a4e0da4-653c-45fe-b651-59e0f06d34c3/?utm_term=.21a76dc8d370
2000s, 2006

Fear , Change , Future , Forgetting

“Gilt-tooled on yard-square panels of green leather—imitation, of course—the zodiacal signs looked down from the walls of the executive lunch-room. The air was full of the chatter of voices and the clink of ice-cubes. Waiting to be attacked when the president of the company joined them (he had promised to show at one sharp) was a table laden with expensive food: hard-boiled eggs, shells intact so that it could be seen they were brown, free-range, rich in carotene; lettuces whose outer leaves had been rasped by slugs; apples and pears wearing their maggot-marks like dueling scars, in this case presumably genuine ones though it had been known for fruit growers to fake them with red-hot wires in areas where insects were no longer found; whole hams, very lean, proud of their immunity from antibiotics and copper sulphate; scrawny chickens; bread as coarse as sandstone, dark as mud and nubbled with wheat grains...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “HOUSE TO HOUSE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Food , Waiting

“[regarding Sarah Palin] "I know about Russia because I can see it from my front yard!" You have amazing eyesight, number one… Well, I can see San Quentin from my house, but that doesn't make me an expert on prison reform.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Housing

“When you fell in the sea, you should have heard them cheer. I made them rope the yard and fish you up. I said a ducking in water washes the witch-skill out of a woman until next full moon, and it would be bad luck to let you drown. How about that for a clever story? They’d believe anything if you make it sound silly enough.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Short fiction, The Winter Players (1976), Chapter 3, “Red Ship” (p. 136)

Bad luck , Fish , Water , Sea

“Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Art , Exercises , Learning

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness , Dreams , Disappointment , Home

“A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Question , Christ

“This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade… But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

London Bridge to the Royal Albert Dock
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Life , Men , Lie , World

“Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Quoted by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay "A History of Eternity"
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Imagination , Cats , Thinking , Madness

“The very saddest sound in all my memory was burned into my awareness at age five on my uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin. A cow had given birth to a beautiful male calf. The mother was allowed to nurse her calf but for a single night. On the second day after birth, my uncle took the calf from the mother and placed him in the veal pen in the barn—only ten yards away, in plain view of the mother. The mother cow could see her infant, smell him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse him. The heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour, for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant and painful auditory memories I carry in my brain. Since that age, whenever I hear anyone postulate that animals cannot really feel emotions, I need only to replay that torturous sound in my memory of that mother cow crying her bovine heart out to her infant. Mother's love knows no species barriers, and I believe that all people who are vegans in their hearts and souls know that to be true.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook (Lowell House, 1998), pp. 39-40.

Love , Pain , People , Age

“There is an aphorism about a farmer who before sunrise on a cold and misty morning, saw a huge beast on a distant hill. He seized his rifle and walked cautiously toward the ogre to head off an attack on his family. When he got nearer, he was relieved to find that the beast was only a small bear. He approached more confidently and when he was within a few hundred yards the distorting haze had lifted sufficiently so that he could recognize the figure as only that of a man. Lowering his rifle, he walked toward the stranger and discovered he was his brother.”

Louis Nizer book My Life in Court

My Life in Court (1961), p. 443.

Family , Confidence , Distant

“First off, I'm actually perfectly well off. I live in a good-sized house, with a nice yard, with deer occasionally showing up and eating the roses (my wife likes the roses more, I like the deer more, so we don't really mind). I've got three kids, and I know I can pay for their education. What more do I need? The thing is, being a good programmer actually pays pretty well; being acknowledged as being world-class pays even better. I simply didn't need to start a commercial company. And it's just about the least interesting thing I can even imagine. I absolutely hate paperwork. I couldn't take care of employees if I tried. A company that I started would never have succeeded – it's simply not what I'm interested in! So instead, I have a very good life, doing something that I think is really interesting, and something that I think actually matters for people, not just me. And that makes me feel good.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

-- 8/15/07 -- http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/TechGovernment/News.asp?id=44682&PageMem=2 --
Attributed

Life , Hate , People , World

“Mulla had lost his ring in the living room. He searched for it for a while, but since he could not find it, he went out into the yard and began to look there. His wife, who saw what he was doing, asked: “Mulla, you lost your ring in the room, why are you looking for it in the yard?” Mulla stroked his beard and said: “The room is too dark and I can’t see very well. I came out to the courtyard to look for my ring because there is much more light out here.””

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Diane L. Wilcox, Classic Tales of Mulla Nasreddin, Retold by Houman Farzad (1989), , p. 26

Search , Light

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

God , Books , Fear , Imagination