Famous Love Quotes

58 Quotes: Sorted by Search Results (Descending)

About Famous Love Quotes

Keyword: Famous Love

Quotes: 58 total. 12 About.

Sorted by: Search Results (Descending)

Meta dataAverageRange
Words (count)23213 - 3334
Search Results1810 - 220
Date (year)1835-495 - 2005
View Related Quotes

About Love Quotes 36 quotes

For Love Quotes 329 quotes

I Love You Quotes 255 quotes

In Love Quotes 873 quotes

Love Saying Quotes 265 quotes

Love Words Quotes 7 quotes

Lovely Quotes 572 quotes

Loving Quotes 966 quotes

Of Love Quotes 1452 quotes

On Love Quotes 77 quotes

Words Of Love Quotes 13 quotes

I think Washington is a magical place. I lived there for thirteen years, and until the day I left I never wanted to live anywhere else. I went back for the first time two years ago, after over a decade's absence; it was like seeing an old lover and discovering — with great relief — that the flame is still there.
Gore Vidal famously remarked of walking through the city with his grandfather, a senator, and the old man telling him, "Someday all this will make marvelous ruins."
(Season 1 intro)
Off camera interviewer: Danny Bonaduce former child star?
Danny Bonaduce: If I weren't the guy from the Partridge Family, I'm just a lunatic.
Off camera interviewer: Danny Bonaduce husband?
Danny Bonaduce: Without Gretchen I'm a 30 second sound bite "Danny Bonaduce ex-child star found dead".
Off camera interviewer: Danny Bonaduce obsessive personality?
Danny Bonaduce: I take enough pills to get full.
Off camera interviewer: Who is Danny Bonaduce?
Danny Bonaduce: I'm not real clear on who Danny Bonaduce is... Mentally unsound... broken... screwed up... happy... open wound... I'm lost... fairly famous... I get bent... I don't love me... have you met me?... If he hadn't asked the question "Have you ever been unfaithful to your wife" then my whole life would not have imploded.
Off camera interviewer: Who is Danny Bonaduce?
Danny Bonaduce: I'm a car crash man and you have ever right to slow down and watch the car crash.
"And I was almost famous / Everybody loves Kanye / Im almost Raymond"
There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.
Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon's promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies.
My wife and child and I were on a camping trip and we stopped in Virginia City. In the Opera House, I saw a photograph of Maude Adams, the famous American actress. It was such a great photograph that creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?
The famous Shalimar Bagh lies at the far end of the Dal Lake. According to a legend, Pravarsena II, the founder of the city of Srinagar, who reigned in Kashmir from A.D. 79 to 139, had built a villa on the edge of the lake, at its north-eastern corner, calling it Shalimar, which in Sanskrit is said to mean "The Abode or Hall of Love." …The Emperor Jahangir laid out a garden on this same old site in the year 1619.
Riches, glory, power are mere smoke, vanity! The rich man will find a richer than himself; the greater glory of another will eclipse a man who is famous; a strong man will be conquered by a stronger. But can Cæsar himself, can any god even, experience greater delight or be happier than a simple mortal at the moment when at his breast there is breathing another dear breast, or when he kisses beloved lips? Hence love makes us equal to the gods, O Lygia.
While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
The day following the publication of "Boule de Suif," his reputation began to grow rapidly. … From this time on, Maupassant, at the solicitation of the entire press, set to work and wrote story after story. His talent, free from all influences, his individuality, are not disputed for a moment. With a quick step, steady and alert, he advanced to fame, a fame of which he himself was not aware, but which was so universal, that no contemporary author during his life ever experienced the same. … He was now rich and famous . . . He is esteemed all the more as they believe him to be rich and happy. But they do not know that this young fellow with the sunburnt face, thick neck and salient muscles whom they invariably compare to a young bull at liberty, and whose love affairs they whisper, is ill, very ill. At the very moment that success came to him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance. … The famous young man trembled in secret and was haunted by all kinds of terrors.
I think that not being loved by your parents or not having a brother or not being liked at school or even wearing glasses can be a lot worse than having a famous father.
The famous saying 'God is love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God.
I love people of Manipur and they also love … The Manipuri dance is famous throughout the world. Here women do much of the work including the outdoor work and men are relived to a great extent.
'If I never make another film, I don't care as long as I'm true to what I believe in, which is being kind,' THE GIRL WHO WOOED JUDE Wealthy and well connected, Sienna Miller now has a famous lover - just like her mum By: ALISON BOSHOFF Daily Mail, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-8017484-the-girl-who-wooed-jude.do04/12/2003
My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Even when I am not in sympathy with the person, I have to be in love with him or her while I'm doing their portrait. Le Pen adored me (at least until his photo ran alongside Hitler's in Le Monde), and we got on extremely well.
I lost my father when I was 13-years-old. He was a great man, my father, and very intelligent. I love him very much. I believe it's very important that parents have a personal connection with their children. It helps kids feel more secure, have a feeling of family, makes them feel loved. imdb.com, work: Preity Zinta's famous quotes, retrieved: 27 November, 2006
Philip Larkin, a big, fat, bald librarian at the University of Hull, was unquestionably England's unofficial laureate: our best-loved poet since the war; better loved for our poet than John Betjeman, who was loved also for his charm, his famous beagle, his patrician Bohemianism and his televisual charisma, all of which Larkin notably lacked.
Ten years later, Larkin is now something like a pariah, or an untouchable.
Well I'd certainly have to have a tip of the hat to Little Richard. I'd say it's sort of a composite guy, because obviously I love Wilson Pickett, and there are a few guys who have that sort of high, edgy thing, Little Richard being the best and the most famous. Wilson even screamed in tune. My voice came out a certain way and I've learned to be that way.
“A lot of people would say to me, “So Chris, you were bullied in high school and now you’re famous, so you've had a Cinderella story.” And I’d think, “What? Are you kidding?” Fame is not a solution. I’m a Cinderella story because I was in an unfortunate situation, and now I’m in a place where I get to do what I love.”http://timeoutchicagokids.com/things-to-do/hipsqueak-blog/159486/glees-chris-colfer-heads-to-chicago-for-book-signings-interview, Chris Colfer interviewed by Chicago Kid Journalists.
I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Even when I am not in sympathy with the person, I have to be in love with him or her while I'm doing their portrait. Le Pen adored me (at least until his photo ran alongside Hitler's in Le Monde), and we got on extremely well.
I wanted to have a voice, and it was okay if I wasn't going to be so famous or so rich. And this the one thing I learned: How do you recognize what's your true dream and what is the dream that you are dreaming for other people to love you? … The difference is very easy to understand. If you enjoy the process, it's your dream. … If you are are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it's somebody else's dream.
The 2,500-year-old Rukmini temple stands alone on a barren land two kilometres outside the town of Dwarka. The reason for this distance is said to be a curse by the infamous Durvasa rishi. The story syas: While pulling Durvasa’s chariot, Rukmini got so thirsty that she drank water without offering it to her guest, Durvasa. This angered him and he cursed Rukmini to be separated from her beloved husband. Some locals also believe that it was on Krishna's behest that Durvasa had cursed Rukmini (Krishna had wanted to punish Rukmini for her arrogance).
The mystery surrounding it does not dim its beauty. It has been called one of the wonders of the world. In modern times millions of visitors journey to India every year to see the tomb, its grounds and the buildings around it. Sixty thousand people visit the site every day, making it one of the popular tourist attractions in the world. They find an extraordinary white marble building, shimmering like a jewel on the banks of the Yamuna River – the famous Taj Mahal, tangible evidence of a love story that has endured for centuries.
First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things.... But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them.... My soul is that of a drummer.... It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.
Ringo Starr
• As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli
• Source: Wikiquote: "Ringo Starr" (Quotes)
The sequel of today unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made, —
Though Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more; but, let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten through the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Foremost among his friends stands Francis Bacon, who 'loved to converse with him,' and employed him on the translation of some of the famous Essays... into Latin. This connection can be shown to belong to the years 1621-6 when Bacon, after his political disgrace, was devoting himself entirely to scientific work... The influence of Bacon, however, has left no trace on Hobbes's own matured thought. He... has no place for 'Baconian induction' in his own conception of scientific method. Bacon's zeal for experiment, the redeeming feature in an otherwise chaotic scheme of thought, is entirely alien to the essentially deductive and systematic spirit of the Hobbian philosophy.
Kurt was fairly quiet and introverted most of the time. Jeff was the opposite. He was very much full of life and had a lot to say. He was somebody in love with experiencing everything. Within a very short time, he had all these famous old rock stars coming to his shows, which put a lot of pressure on him. People talked about his concerts the way they used to talk about Hendrix. They'd sit there, wide-eyed, telling you stories about him. He definitely had an aura. It's impossible to say what it is exactly a guy like that has, that is so attractive to other people. But he had more of it than anyone I had ever met.
He has grasped it, but no one is interested. He is of interest to no one. He is fascinating. He is unnoticed. Since no one understands, how could they notice him? Because there is only understanding, he is beloved, and no one comes to see him. Because there is only truth, he is likely to become famous. Since there is only joy, he will not be remembered. Because you have already understood, you find it necessary to touch his hand. Since you love so much and are not understood, you find it possible to touch his ears. He smiles at you. You notice a sudden spiritual "Brightness". Aham Da Asmi. I Am He. Everything has already died. This is the other world.
Roman Viktyuk: Her destiny on Earth is to be the sun, the light. Her name in Ukrainian is Sonia, Solnyshko ["Sunny" in English]. That is how she is bringing throughout her whole life to people and throws handfuls of light, love and warmth into the concert halls... Sonechka, you know there was no way I would not appear on this stage since two nice parts of Western Ukraine are hereRoman Viktyuk, famous Ukrainian and Russian actor, theatre director, just as Sofia Rotaru, comes originally from Bukovina (a region in Western Ukraine). Sonia, Sonechko, there is no "our" or "your" sun, here is Light - Sonechka. Do keep on lighting, remain as tender, beautiful, talented, young as ever. You are unique, thank you Sonia. (Golden Grammy Awards Russia 2006, song "Do Not Love" [Russian: Не люби/Ne lubi)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1NY1hpsdI
Think about some of the highest status men in modern societies: sports stars, rock stars, politicians. At first glance, it might seem that these individuals provide further proof of men’s polygynous nature: They are often notorious for their sexual antics and infidelities (the famous scandal with Tiger Woods is a case in point)... However, the picture is not so simple. Many of these men are in the position where they have essentially an unlimited supply of potential sexual partners. Do all of them or even most of them eschew long-term relationships and opt instead for as many one-night stands and brief love affairs as possible? Sometimes, perhaps, but often they do not. These men — the most eligible bachelors, the highest status males in our species — often do what male chimpanzees never do: They fall in love and form long-term pair bonds.
Steve Stewart-Williams
• (pp. 156-157)
• Source: Wikiquote: "Steve Stewart-Williams" (Quotes, The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013): Stewart-Williams, S., & Thomas, A. G. (2013). The ape that thought it was a peacock: Does evolutionary psychology exaggerate human sex differences? Psychological Inquiry, 24, 137-168.)
No one does children's stories like Maurice Sendak … over a hundred books in all. He's won nearly every major prize for children's literature plus the national medal of arts. And no wonder.
Just look at these titles: In the Night Kitchen; Higglety Pigglety Pop!; Outside Over There; Chicken Soup with Rice; and of course, the most loved and famous of all, Where the Wild Things Are. Our own tattered copy is a Moyers family keepsake. We read it to our children when it was first published forty years ago. We've read it to our grandchildren in the last decade and we fully expect that one day they will be reading it to their grandkids, too.
But let me share a Sendak secret with you. A seven-year-old hearing this story couldn't have more fun than a 70-year-old reading it. Where the Wild Things Are is ageless and timeless.
I am a sincere Catholic as it were Corneille, Racine, La Bruyère, Bossnet, Bourdaloue, Fènelon, as were and still are so many of the most of the honor of out science, philosophy and literature, and have conferred such brilliant ustre on our Academies. I share the deep conviction openly manifested in words, deeds and writings by so many savants of the first rank, by a Ruffini, a Haüy, a Laënnec, an Ampere, a Pelletier, a Freycinet, a Coriolis and I avoid naming any of those living, for fear of paining their podesty. I may at least be allowed to say that I loved to recognize all the noble generosity of the Christian Faith in my illustrious friends the creator of Crystallography (Haüy), the introducers of quinine and stethoscope (Pelletier and Laënnec), the famous voyager on board of the 'Urania', and the immortal founders of the theory of Dynamic Electricity (Frencinet and Ampère).
Oleg Cassini is the rarest of rare species: a man who genuinely loves women. And for all his talk it is he that has served them for most of his years. He has devoted his life to making women look and feel beautiful with his classically designed clothes most famously creating 'The Look' for Jacqueline Kennedy when she was First Lady. As the first designer to license in 1951, he has been creating everything from evening dresses to sunglasses in more than 60 countries ever since. His name has always suggested glamour, champagne, polo ponies, a box at the opera, he was married to a movie star, and engaged to Grace Kelly before she became a princess. The son of Russian aristocrats banished to Europe after the revolution...he designs clothes that betray a lifelong ache for lost grandeur, there is about him in every gesture from knocking ash from his cigar to straightening his tie an echo of old world distinction.
It'd be ludicrous, because the idea of the British Empire is such an outmoded idea. The British Empire now, if it were a being, would be living out its days in some sunshine home on the South Coast, wouldn't it? - boring the tits off everyone, shuffling around in oversize slippers, boring everyone with their press cuttings of when they were famous: 'Ooh look! ooh yes! I was very popular in the world once. Ooh yes! I went all over the world. Look, you see here; they loved me here - Sri Lanka. Of course, we used to call that Ceylon. Now, let me see; what have we here? Oh yes! they loved us there - Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe! Of course, we didn't call it Zimbabwe then. It was Rhodesia. Rhodesia, you see? And this; oh, this marvellous tour I had here - now what was it? India! India - what did we used to call that? Oh yes... Ours!' (Linda Live, 1993)
It was expected of me that I was to bow to the name of Andrew Jackson, and follow him in all his motions, and windings, and turnings, even at the expense of my consciences and judgment. Such a thing was new to me, and a total stranger to my principles. … His famous, or rather I should say infamous Indian bill was brought forward and, and I opposed it from the purest motives in the world. Several of my colleagues got around me, and told me how well they loved me, and that I was ruining myself. They said it was a favorite measure of the President, and I ought to go for it. I told them I believed it was a wicked unjust measure, and that I should go against it, let the cost to myself be what it might; that I was willing to go with General Jackson in everything that I believed was honest and right; but further than this, I wouldn't go for him, or any other man in the whole creation.
I do admire Van Gogh - I do think he was one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived. He did some very silly things. Top of the list, famously – after a row with Gaugin - absolutely ripped to the tits on absinthe – girlfriend had left him – so, he chopped his ear off and sent it to her. Do you think she came back? Do you think that did the trick? Hasn't really caught on, has it? For a start, you wouldn't try that trick today with our post, would you? Six months later, she'd be saying 'Ooh! a sun-dried tomato!' And what was he thinking? What was this girl going to do? Open up this package, fish out this lug, and go 'Ooh, Vinny! I thought you were all mad and driven and weird and a loner, and our relationship was doomed, and you go and do a lovely thing like this. Ooh, you know how to get round me. I SAID, YOU KNOW HOW TO GET ROUND ME!' (Wrap Up Warm tour, May 2004)
Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival..
Eugene N. Borza
"Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999
• Source: Wikiquote: "Eugene N. Borza" (Sourced)
Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival.
Macedonia
Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Macedonia" (On modern Macedonian history, On the Republic of Macedonia’s History, Historians)
Petrarch, a character on whom I never think but with love, formed his mind entirely in Solitude, and there rendered himself capable of transacting the most important political affairs. Petrarch was, doubtless, sometimes what persons frequently become in Solitude, satirical, peevish and choleric. He has, in particular, been reproached with great severities, on account of his lively pictures of the manners of his age, and especially his description of the infamous vices practised at Avignon, during the pontificate of the sixth Clement. But Petrarch possessed a profound knowledge of the human heart, and extraordinary address in working upon the passions and directing them as he pleased. The Abbé de Sade, the best historian of his life, says, that he is scarcely known, but as the tender and elegant poet, who loved with ardor and sung in the most impassioned strains the charms of his mistress; and that nothing more is known of his character. Even authors are ignorant of the obligations which literature owes him; that he rescued it from the barbarism beneath which it had so long been buried; that he saved the best works of the ancient writers from dust and destruction, and that all these treasures would have been lost to us, if he had not sought and procured correct copies of them.
At few other moments has one person become the fulcrum of such weighty imperatives — to win a famous victory for America and vindicate a vast investment of national treasure, to penetrate a hostile frontier, to master a new technology, to navigate a harrowing descent to the unknown — all in the glare of rapt global attention. By the time he landed in the Sea of Tranquility, the country boy from Ohio had already spent most of his adult life in jobs where intensity of focus and the threat of violent death were part of his daily routine. He was used to all of that. It was, instead, the loss of privacy that appalled him. He loved to fly, and he loved his country, and in the name of those passions he was willing to risk not only his hide but a piece of his soul. Only a piece, however — a mere finger's worth — and no more. … Those who know him say he is a smart and intensely private, even shy, man determined to live life on his own terms despite having floated down that ladder into the public domain. Whether as an astronaut, naval combat aviator, test pilot, civil servant, engineer, absent-minded professor, gentleman farmer, businessman, civic booster, amateur musician, husband or father, Neil Armstrong has followed his own code.
I bore with the ill-humor of my chief. What would he have said if he had known that I had in my pocket an interview and in my head an anecdote which were material for a most successful story? And he has never had either the interview or the story. Since then I have made my way in the line where he said I should fail. I have lost my innocent look and I earn my thirty thousand francs a year, and more. I have never had the same pleasure in the printing of the most profitable, the most brilliant article that I had in consigning to oblivion the sheets relating my visit to Nemours. I often think that I have not served the cause of letters as I wanted to, since, with all my laborious work I have never written a book. And yet when I recall the irresistible impulse of respect which prevented me from committing toward a dearly loved master a most profitable but infamous indiscretion, I say to myself, "If you have not served the cause of letters, you have not betrayed it." And this is the reason, now that Fauchery is no longer of this world, that it seems to me that the time has come for me to relate my first interview. There is none of which I am more proud.
Paul Bourget
• Source: Wikiquote: "Paul Bourget" (Quotes, The Age for Love: Whether or not the interview with Pierre Fauchery by "Jules Labarthe" in this short story represents an actual one by Bourget is not known. Full text online)
Once, along with The Transfigured Night, he played a class Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. Most of the class had not seen the painting, so he went to the library and returned with a reproduction of it. Then he pointed, with a sober smile, to a painting which hung on the wall of the classroom (A Representation of Several Areas, Some of Them Grey, one might have called it; yet this would have been unjust to it—it was non-representational) and played for the class, on the piano, a composition which he said was an interpretation of the painting: he played very slowly and very calmly, with his elbows, so that it sounded like blocks falling downstairs, but in slow motion. But half his class took this as seriously as they took everything else, and asked him for weeks afterward about prepared pianos, tone-clusters, and the compositions of John Cage and Henry Cowell; one girl finally brought him a lovely silk-screen reproduction of a painting by Jackson Pollock, and was just opening her mouth to— He interrupted, bewilderingly, by asking the Lord what land He had brought him into. The girl stared at him open-mouthed, and he at once said apologetically that he was only quoting Mahler, who had also diedt from America; then he gave her such a winning smile that she said to her roommate that night, forgivingly: “He really is a nice old guy. You never would know he’s famous.” “Is he really famous?” her roommate asked. “I never heard of him before I got here. ...”
Randall Jarrell
• Chapter 4, pp. 138–139
• Source: Wikiquote: "Randall Jarrell" (Quotes, Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel]: pagination according to the University of Chicago Press edition (1986) )
I could tell you a long story (and you know it as well as I do) about what is to be gained by beating the enemy back. What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she realty is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. If they ever failed in an enterprise, they made up their minds that at any rate the city should not find their courage lacking to her, and they gave to her the best contribution that they could. They gave her their lives, to her and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchers — not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men's minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark diem out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people's hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for you to try to be like them. Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
I accidentally wound up at this "dance...place", gentleman clubby place. I wasn't driving, it was an accident; we pulled up to the place, ya know (car engine, brakes), ah! I knew where I was, you can be drunk and know where you are, so long as you hear (drum beats), AAAH! I walked in there and I got recognized by one of the dancers. You gotta call them "dancers" or "entertainers" or they'll get mad at you, "(feminine voice) I am not a stripper, ok?! I'm an entertainer." And I said, "No, I'm an entertainer, you're nasty!" Some girl recognized me, and she said, "Omigawd I know who you are, you're faamous!" And I'm like, "Oh no, oh no!" And some other dancer who was spinning around on a pole overheard famous and she stopped [eek! Looks over]. She walks over, "(feminine voice) Oh my gawd, you're famous? Can I have your autograph?" I was like, "You don't even know who I am." "I don't care; SIGN IT!" "Ok, relax; what's your name?" "Diamond." "What's your last name?" "Rodriguez." "(writing)To Diamond, with all my love and affection..." "HURRY UP!" I got so mad, so I wrote, "Signed, George Lopez." I was so drunk, I didn't care; and she freaked out, she was like, "Oh my gawd! OH MY GAWD! You're George Lopez!" I can't help it guys, I was so drunk, I did this; I said, "[George Lopez voice] I know, huh? Ay, ay, cabrona, why you cry? Why you cryin'? Bella, bo-chink-o-na!" I'm not gonna lie to you guys, George knows that I do it; I don't think he likes it!
When I went to live in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, opposite my windows, at the Hôtel de Pontchartrain, there was a clock. For more than a month I did my utmost to teach her how to tell the time by it, but, even now, she can hardly do so. She has never been able to give the names of the twelve months of the year in correct order, and does not know a single figure, in spite of all the trouble I have taken to teach her. She can neither count money nor reckon the price of anything. The words which she uses in speaking are often the very opposite of those which she means. I once made a dictionary of the phrases she used, to amuse Madame de Luxembourg, and her absurd mistakes have become famous in the society in which I lived. But this person, so limited in understanding – so stupid, if you will – is a most excellent adviser in cases of difficulty. Frequently, in Switzerland, in England, and in France, at the time of the misfortunes which befell me, she saw what I did not see myself, gave me the best advice to follow, rescued me from dangers into which I was rushing blindly, and, in the presence of ladies of the highest rank, of princes and the great ones of the world, her opinions, her good sense, her answers, and her behaviour have gained for her the esteem of all, and for me, compliments upon her good qualities, which I felt convinced were sincere. When we are with those we love, sentiment nourishes the mind as well as the heart, and we have little need to search for ideas elsewhere. I lived with my Thérèse as pleasantly as with the most brilliant genius in the world.
Thank you, Donald, for that well-meant but rather pedestrian introduction. Regarding yourself, I quote from the third part of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Act Two, Scene One. Richard speaks, "Were thy heart as hard as steel/ As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds/ I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine." To translate into your own idiom, Donald; you're a yo-yo. Now I direct my remarks to Dean Martin, who is being honored here tonight...for reasons that completely elude me. No, I'm not being fair to Dean because - this is true - in his way Dean, and I know him very well, has the soul of a poet. I'm told that in his most famous song Dean authored a lyric which is so romantic, so touching that it will be enjoyed by generations of lovers until the end of time. Let's share it together. [Opens a songsheet for Dean's "That's Amore" and reads in a monotone] "When the moon hits your eye/ Like a big pizza-pie/ That's amore" Now, that's what I call 'touching', Dean. It has all the romanticism of a Ty-D-Bol commercial. "When the world seems to shine/ Like you've had too much wine/ That's amore" What a profound thought. It could be inscribed forever on a cocktail napkin. Hey, there's more. "Tippy-tippy-tay/ Like a gay tarantella" Like a gay tarantella? Apparently, Dean has a 'side Dean' we know nothing about. "When the stars make you drool/ Just like a pasta fazool .... Scuzza me, but you see/ Back in old Napoli/ That's amore" No, Dean; that's infermo, Italian for "sickened". Now, lyrics like that - lyrics like that ought to be issued with a warning: a song like that is hazardous to your health. Ladies and gentlemen...[motions to Dean] you are looking at the end result!
I was sitting alone in an empty locker room, left leg injured. I need to prove my worth when the opportunity is given. I look at my leg, powerless, and wonder why I had to get hurt in this moment. Then, Coach Hiddink appears out of nowhere with an interpretor and speaks to me in English. Not understanding, I stare at the interpretor. He says you have great mentality. With that kind of mental strength, you will become a great player. I was shocked. Before I could murmur the easy 'thank you' in English, he was gone. My heart was pounding. The coach always seemed to be so far away, but he came to me and told me I have great mentality. Somewhere inside, energy was rousing up.... mentality. I have nothing else to boast, but one thing I could do is to never give up. I will endure all hardships, even if I would die from it. And I will keep this mentality.... in the entire World Cup, I played with those words ringing in my ears. With my mentality, I can become a great player. I kicked the ball and ran around the field clinging on to those words. For better or for worse, I am calm and quiet, so not many people take notice of me. But I was sure that Coach Hiddink would be looking at me and urging me to move on. This gave me courage. If it was not for Coach Hiddink, I would not be where I am now. With the words 'where I am now,' I am not referring to me becoming famous or being able to purchase a spacious condo for my parents. I am referring to the fact that I learned to love myself more. Within a minute, what Coach Hiddink said to me changed my life forever. I feel a bit shy thinking about what he would think after reading this, but he is my 'master' and I owe him everything and I won't be able to repay it in my lifetime.
Is there any God, any justice, is there either good or evil? None, none, none, none! There is nothing but a pitiless destiny which broods over the human race, iniquitous and blind, distributing joy and grief at haphazard. A God who says, "Thou shalt not kill," to him whose father has been killed? No, I don't believe it. No, if hell were there before me, gaping open, I would make answer: "I have done well," and I would not repent. I do not repent. My remorse is not for having seized the weapon and struck the blow, it is that I owe to him — to him — that infamous good service which he did me — that I cannot to the present hour shake from me the horrible gift I have received from that man. If I had destroyed the paper, if I had gone and given myself up, if I had appeared before a jury, revealing, proclaiming my deed, I should not be ashamed; I could still hold up my head. What relief, what joy it would be if I might cry aloud to all men that I killed him, that he lied, and I lied, that it was I, I, who took the weapon and plunged it into him! And yet, I ought not to suffer from having accepted — no — endured the odious immunity. Was it from any motive of cowardice that I acted thus? What was I afraid of? Of torturing my mother, nothing more. Why, then, do I suffer this unendurable anguish? Ah, it is she, it is my mother who, without intending it, makes the dead so living to me, by her own despair. She lives, shut up in the rooms where they lived together for sixteen years; she has not allowed a single article of furniture to be touched; she surrounds the man's accursed memory with the same pious reverence that my aunt formerly lavished on my unhappy father. I recognize the invincible influence of the dead in the pallor of her cheeks, the wrinkles in her eyelids, the white streaks in her hair. He disputes her with me from the darkness of his coffin; he takes her from me, hour by hour, and I am powerless against that love.
''Sara Cox Show, BBC Radio 1
Sara Cox 'Beauty is in the eye of the...'
Contestant Tiger.
Fifteen-to-One, Channel 4''
William G. Stewart: Above the entrance to which place do the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” appear?
Contestant: A church?
Stewart: Er, sorry, no, hell.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: Where was the recent Winter Olympics held?
Contestant: Taunton.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: The Grapple in the Apple, recently held in New York, was a debate between the journalist Christopher Hitchens and the politician George who?
Contestant: George Washington.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: In which film did Harry Lime say 'In Switzerland they had brotherly love and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!'?
Contestant: One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: In Italian history, in 1919 which former journalist set up the Fascist Party?
Contestant: Silvio Berlusconi.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: Name the man who was President of Italy until May 2006.
Contestant: Don Corleone.
Beg, Borrow or Steal, BBC Two
Jamie Theakston: Where do you think Cambridge University is?
Contestant: Geography isn't my strong point.
Jamie Theakston: There's a clue in the title.
Contestant: Leicester.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: A selection of small, highly coloured sweets is known as Dolly...
Contestant: Parton.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: In politics, what is the current occupation of David Blunkett?
Contestant: Blind.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: The adjective Rubenesque, meaning a plump, voluptuous woman, is derived from the work of which 17th century Flemish artist?
Contestant: Aretha Franklin.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: He was known as the King of the Cowboys. He was Roy who?
Contestant: Keane.
''Sara Cox Show, BBC Radio 1
Sara Cox What was Bram Stoker's most famous creation?
Contestant Branston Pickle.
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: In the 1940s which politician was responsible for the welfare state; William...?
Contestant: The Conqueror.
The Vault, ITV
Melanie Sykes: What is the name given to the condition where the sufferer can fall asleep at any time?
Contestant: Nostalgic
The Weakest Link, BBC Two
Anne Robinson: What force of nature is responsible for keeping the Earth, planets and asteroids in orbit around the Sun?
Contestant: Delta Force.
Another Dominican mystic of this period is the Blessed Henry Suso, or Heinrich Seuse, to give him his original German name. The son of a noble Swabian family, he was born near Lake Constance, on the border between Switzerland and Germany. His father was very worldly, his mother deeply devout. As he tells us in his own Life, written in later years, one of his earliest memorable experiences occurred on the death of his mother when he was still young. She appeared in a vision and told him to love God, then kissed and blessed him, and disappeared. Suso’s sense of loneliness and abandonment, his excessive asceticism in later life, harshly maltreating his body in imitation of Christ’s suffering, and his expressions of tender love addressed to God may all have been linked to “starved human affections seeking an outlet,” as Evelyn Underhill has suggested. Suso entered the Dominican order at the age of thirteen, but found monastic life rather difficult until he experienced a conversion and spiritual awakening. He subsequently studied under Eckhart in Cologne and became a devoted follower and great admirer of his beloved teacher. By 1326 Suso was back in Constance, where he wrote his famous Büchlein der Wahrheit, or Little Book of Truth, which is full of mystical reflection...Suso experienced intense mystical states and visions that made him see ultimate reality as eternal, uncreated truth in which all things have their source and being. He goes even beyond Eckhart in his understanding of divine and human oneness—a state in which “something and nothing are the same.”...Suso preached widely in the Upper Rhineland and Switzerland, enjoying great popularity wherever he went...The savage asceticism and austerities that he practiced over many years are vividly described in his Life, where he speaks of himself in the third person...But after some twenty years of severe ascetic practices he abandoned them as nothing more than a beginning on the way to the highest knowledge of God, whose overwhelming beauty he praised with great tenderness: “Ah, gentle God, if Thou art so lovely in Thy creatures, how exceedingly beautiful and ravishing Thou must be in Thyself!… Praise and honor be to the unfathomable immensity that is in Thee!” Suso must have left a deep impression on his contemporaries, for the veneration of the “Blessed Henry Suso” began soon after his death, although officially the Church did not beatify him until 1831.
About Henry Suso
• Ursula King, in "Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages" (2001)
• Source: Wikiquote: "Henry Suso" (Quotes about Suso)
It was a bizarre experience visiting him in there. Not least because I, as was the custom at the time, went to the powwow armed with a yoga teacher. I was hanging out with her a lot. I took her along to the MTV Movie Awards, which I was hosting, where at one point—perhaps the summit of my own personal Everest of Hollywood kookiness—she vetoed a joke from my opening monologue. It wasn’t unspiritual or mean; I think it was about Jennifer Aniston. It was cut “for time,” like the monologue was saggy. I don’t know if that makes it less weird. Tej, her name was, and she was a bloody good kundalini yoga teacher, and the lessons and techniques definitely induced interesting states of mind. Most people would’ve left it at that, but with my tendency for extremism, I first became teacher’s pet and then, in a macabre switcheroo, made the teacher into my pet. I’ve already told you I’m a sucker for a mystic costume. I’m like a wartime gal with a thing for uniforms, swooning at a G.I., and Tej’s get-up was world-class. Kundalini practitioners dress entirely in white—why not? They also wear a turban as the yogic practice they follow is derived from the Sikh faith. Tej was a lovely woman and we became good friends; I learned a lot and had a good laugh. A fair amount of that fun may have been derived, I realize in retrospect, from the novel thrill of turning up at unexpected places with a yogi. Like the MTV Movie Awards or the Ecuadorian embassy. During the production of my let’s call it experimental—with the emphasis on the “mental”—TV show Brand X (surely the last punning derivation my surname can provide), the whole of Tej’s yoga class, which consisted of about one hundred people, was uprooted and placed each morning at the studio where the show was recorded. That’s pretty mad, isn’t it? We left the comfort, tranquillity, sweet smells, and fine foods of the purpose-built yoga center to practice yoga in the functioning canteen of a TV production facility. Sometimes when you’re famous you can get away with being a lunatic. Especially if you’re like me and think the system is corrupt and rules have to be broken and conformity challenged. Before too long, you have a scenario where the teamsters who do all the heavy lifting on a TV show are confronted with the daily spectacle of a hundred yoga devotees descending on their canteen.
Ladies and gentlemen, a man who needs no introduction …  Probably no other writer in this book could I get away with introducing in that way. But who in the civilized, book-reading world doesn't know the name Ray Bradbury? When the time came to write a few words to preface Ray, I suddenly was struck with the impossibility of the act. There have been whole treatises written on Bradbury, his poetic images, his humanity, his blue period, his chrome period … who the hell was I to write about him? Well, I'm a Bradbury fan, and that's not bad for openers. … Ray Bradbury is very probably better than we ever imagined him to be in our wildest promotion of him as the first sf writer to escape the ghetto and win approbation from such as Isherwood, Wilder, Fadiman, Algren, Gilbert Highet, Graham Greene, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffault and Bertrand Russell, for God's sake! Let's face it, fellow sf readers, we've been living off Ray Bradbury's success for twenty years. Every time we try to hype some non-believer into accepting sf and fantasy as legitimate literature, we refer him or her to the works of Ray Bradbury. Who the hell else have we produced who has approached the level of Bradbury for general acceptance? I mean, there's a Viking Portable Library edition of RAY BRADBURY. Sure, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov are well-known and much-beloved, but if you go out on the street and buttonhole the average shmendrik, and ask him to name a dozen famous American writers, if he isn't a dullard who'd name Erich Segal and Leon Uris and Jacqueline Whatshername, he'll rattle off Hemingway, Steinbeck, Mickey Spillane, maybe Faulkner, and very probably Bradbury. That's a load of ego-boost for all of us, and it's about time someone said it. When we do the conversion bit with scoffers, we whirl them over to the meager sf racks in most bookstores and we may find no Delany, no Lafferty, no Knight or Disch or Dickson, but by God we always find The Martian Chronicles. And we say, "Here try this. You'll love it." … I mean come on, all you smartass literary cynics who make points off other men's careers, can you ever really forget that thing that called to the foghorn from the sea? … I'll just tag out by saying Ray Bradbury is a man who has written some 300 stories …wrote the screenplay for John Huston's production of Moby Dick… wrote a "space age cantata" dealing with the possible images of Christ on other worlds, Christus Apollo, music by Jerry Goldsmith, and he is a very good, kind, committed man who was in no small part responsible for getting LBJ booted out of office. And he's the only man whose poetry I would have included in this, a book of stories. Well, maybe Robert Graves …
Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go. It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between most of the major characters all simultaneously singing Aimee Mann's "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, Magnolia seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where fate and destiny lie. They have been joined by their actions and their choices. And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension. Frogs have rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to Exodus 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to fears, shames, sins. Magnolia is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.
After the calamities which the state of literature sustained in consequence of the incursions of the northern nations, the first restorers of the antient philosophical sciences in Europe... were the Arabians. In the beginning of the eighth century, this wonderful people, equally famous for their conquests and their love of letters, in ravaging the Asiatic provinces found many Greek books, which they read with infinite avidity: and such was the gratification... that they requested their caliphs to procure from the emperor at Constantinople the best Greek writers. These they carefully translated into Arabic. ...The Greek poetry they rejected, because it inculcated polytheism and idolatry, which were inconsistent with their religion. ...Of the Greek history they made no use, because it recorded events which preceded their prophet Mahomet. Accustomed to a despotic empire, they neglected the political systems of the Greeks, which taught republican freedom. For the same reasons they despised the eloquence of the Athenian orators. The Greek ethics were superseded by their Alcoran, and on this account they did not study the works of Plato. Therefore no other Greek books engaged their attention but those which treated of mathematical, metaphysical, and physical knowledge. Mathematics coincided with their natural turn to astronomy and arithmetic. Metaphysics, or logic, suited their speculative genius, their love of tracing intricate and abstracted truths... Physics, in which I include medicine, assisted the chemical experiments to which they were so much addicted: and medicine, while it was connected with chemistry and botany, was a practical art of immediate utility. Hence they studied Aristotle Galen and Hippocrates with unremitted ardour and assiduity: they translated their writings into the Arabic tongue, and by degrees illustrated them with voluminous commentaries. These Arabic translations of the Greek philosophers produced new treatises of their own, particularly in medicine and metaphysics. They continued to extend their conquests, and their frequent incursions into Europe before and after the ninth century, and their absolute establishment in Spain, imported the rudiments of useful knowledge into nations involved in the grossest ignorance, and unpossessed of the means of instruction. They founded universities in many cities of Spain and Africa. They brought with them their books, which Charlemagne... commanded to be translated from Arabic into Latin: and which... being quickly disseminated over his extensive dominions, soon became familiar to the western world. Hence it is, that we find our early Latin authors of the dark ages chiefly employed in writing systems of the most abstruse sciences: and from these beginnings the Aristotelic philosophy acquired such establishment and authority, that from long prescription it remains to this day the sacred and uncontroverted doctrine of our schools. From this fountain the infatuations of astrology took possession of the middle ages, and were continued even to modern times. To the peculiar genius of this people it is owing, that chemistry became blended with so many extravagancies, obscured with unintelligible jargon, and filled with fantastic notions, mysterious pretensions, and superstitious operations. And it is easy to conceive, that among these visionary philosophers, so fertile in speculation, logic and metaphysics contracted much of that refinement and perplexity, which for so many centuries exercised the genius of profound reasoners and captious disputants, and so long obstructed the progress of true knowledge. It may perhaps be regretted, in the mean time, that this predilection of the Arabian scholars for philosophic enquiries, prevented them from importing into Europe a literature of another kind. But rude and barbarous nations would not have been polished by the history, poetry, and oratory of the Greeks. Although capable of comprehending the solid truths of many parts of science, they are unprepared to be impressed with ideas of elegance, and to relish works of taste. Men must be instructed before they can be refined; and in the gradations of knowledge, polite literature does not take place till some progress has first been made in philosophy. Yet it is at the same time probable, that the Arabians, among their literary stores, brought into Spain and Italy many Greek authors not of the scientific species: and that the migration of this people into the western world, while it proved the fortunate instrument of introducing into Europe some of the Greek classics at a very early period, was moreover a means of preserving those genuine models of composition, and of transmitting them to the present generation.
The population of these Pueblos will average nearly five hundred souls each (though some hardly exceed one hundred), making an aggregate of nine or ten thousand. At the time of the original conquest, at the close of the sixteenth century, they were, as has been mentioned, much, perhaps ten- fold, more numerous. Ancient ruins are now to be seen scattered in every quarter of the territory: of some, entire stone walls are yet standing, while others are nearly or quite obliterated, many of them being now only known by their names which history or tradition has preserved to us. Numbers were no doubt destroyed during the insurrection of 1680, and the petty internal strifes which followed. Several of these Pueblos have been converted into Mexican villages, of which that of Pecos is perhaps the most remarkable instance. What with the massacres of the second conquest, and the inroads of the Comanches, they gradually dwindled away, till they found themselves reduced to about a dozen, comprising all ages and sexes; and it was only a few years ago that they abandoned the home of their fathers and joined the Pueblo of Jemez. Many curious tales are told of the singular habits of this ill fated tribe, which must no doubt have tended to hasten its utter annihilation. A tradition was prevalent among them that Montezuma had kindled a holy fire, and enjoined their ancestors not to suffer it to be extinguished until he should return to deliver his people from the yoke of the Spaniards. In pursuance of these commands, a constant watch had been maintained for ages to prevent the fire from going out; and as tradition further informed them, that Montezuma would appear with the sun, the... Indians were to be seen every clear morning upon the terraced roofs of their houses, attentively watching for the appearance of the 'king of light,' in hopes of seeing him 'cheek by jowl' with their immortal sovereign. I have myself descended into the famous estufas, or subterranean vaults, of which there were several in the village, and have beheld this consecrated fire, silently smouldering under a covering of ashes, in the basin of a small altar. Some say that they never lost hope in the final coming of Montezuma until, by some accident or other, or a lack of a sufficiency of warriors to watch it, the fire became extinguished; and that it was this catastrophe that induced them to abandon their villages, as I have before observed. The task of tending the sacred fire was, it is said, allotted to the warriors. It is further related, that they took the watch by turns for two successive days and nights, without partaking of either food, water, or sleep; while some assert, that instead of being restricted to two days, each guard continued with the same unbending severity of purpose until exhaustion, and very frequently death, left their places to be filled by others. A large portion of those who came out alive were generally so completely prostrated by the want of repose and the inhalation of carbonic gas that they very soon died; when, as the vulgar story asseverates, their remains were carried to the den of a monstrous serpent, which kept itself in excellent condition by feeding upon these delicacies. This huge snake (invented no doubt by the lovers of the marvellous to account for the constant disappearance of the Indians) was represented as the idol which they worshipped, and as subsisting entirely upon the flesh of his devotees: live infants, however, seemed to suit his palate best. The story of this wonderful serpent was so firmly believed in by many ignorant people, that on one occasion I heard an honest ranchero assert, that upon entering the village very early on a winter's morning, he saw the huge trail of the reptile in the snow, as large as that of a dragging ox. This village, anciently so renowned, lies twenty-five miles eastward of Santa Fé, and near the Rio Pecos, to which it gave name. Even so late as ten years ago, when it contained a population of fifty to a hundred souls, the traveller would oftentimes perceive but a solitary Indian, a woman, or a child, standing here and there like so many statues upon the roofs of their houses, with their eyes fixed on the eastern horizon, or leaning against a wall or a fence, listlessly gazing at the passing stranger; while at other times not a soul was to be seen in any direction, and the sepulchral silence of the place was only disturbed by the occasional barking of a dog, or the cackling of hens. No other Pueblo appears to have adopted this extraordinary superstition: like Pecos, however, they have all held Montezuma to be their perpetual sovereign. It would likewise appear that they all worship the sun; for it is asserted to be their regular practice to turn the face towards the east at sunrise. They profess the Catholic faith, however, of which, nevertheless, they cannot be expected to understand anything beyond the formalities; as but very few of their Mexican neighbors and teachers can boast of more.
Pecos Pueblo Land Grant
• Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies: or, The journal of a Santa Fé trader, 1831–1839 (1845) Vol. 1, pp. 270-273
• Source: Wikiquote: "Pecos Pueblo Land Grant" (Quotes: sorted chronologically, 19th Century)
[s.n.], (1833) 'The Shepherds of the Abruzzi', in The Penny Magazine We lately gave an account of the wandering Italians who are so frequently found in our streets; and we now propose to attempt a short description of a pastoral people in the South of Italy, who, though they do not quit their own country, make annual migrations with their flocks on an extensive scale and to considerable distances. These are the Abruzzesi, or peasants of the Abruzzi, two mountainous provinces in the kingdom of Naples, which, comparing things with our own, may be called the Highlands of that country. The plains about Sulmona and Chieti, two of the most important cities in these parts, indeed the whole of the valley of the Pescara; the flats and the declivities of the hills that surround the beautiful lake of Celano; some strips of land along the coast of the Adriatic, and a few other places, are susceptible of profitable cultivation, and are well cultivated; but, generally speaking, the country is mountainous and rugged in the extreme, offering little to rural economy, save almost boundless sheep-walks and browsing grounds for goats. Nature has therefore made the inhabitants of this country a pastoral people, and they are so to a degree which can hardly be imagined but by those who have visited these much neglected but interesting provinces. Entering fairly into the Abruzzi, above the romantic town of Castel di Sangro (as you do, coming from Naples), the traveller finds himself in a new world, the simple. primitive manners of which are most striking. He no longer sees the vines hung in festoons from the elm-trees. nor the broad-bladed vividly green Indian corn, nor the exuberant soil bearing two crops, nor the flowering orchards and shady Italian pines, nor the thronging, noisy population he has left behind him in the agricultural and most fertile province of the Terra di Lavoro or Campagna Felice, but he sees immense flocks of sheep spread over the mountain pastures, he hears the continual tinkling of goat-bells from the mountain summits, he observes that the cottages and hamlets, instead of being surrounded by gardens and cultivated fields, are flanked and backed by sheep-cotes and stables; and that almost the only quality of person he meets on his way is a shepherd clad in his sheep-skin jacket, with sheep-skin buskins to his legs, and followed by his white, long-haired sheep-dog. Instead of the water being carried along in stone or brick aqueducts for the purposes of agriculture and horticulture, as in the lowlands, he sees it, here and there, caught and conducted in hollowed trees, cut from the mountain's sides, which are fashioned not like our pipes but like open troughs, so that the flocks may drink out of them at any part of their course. Besides these simple ducts, he occasionally passes little stone fountains equally rustic in their structure, before which are placed a number of hollowed trees for the convenience of the sheep. In short, the aspect of the country is essentially pastoral. Manufacturing and (though in a much less degree) even agricultural populations are found gradually to adapt themselves to the changes which are introduced into society and manners, and to keep somewhat near to the march of the age in which they live; but it is far different with a pastoral race inhabiting a wild and secluded country, and passing the greater part of their time in almost absolute solitude on the mountain's side: consequently the primitiveness of manners which we have mentioned as existing here is indeed most striking, and carries back the imagination to the early ages of the world. The Abruzzesi peasantry have the same taste for romantic traditions that distinguishes our highlanders and the inhabitants of mountainous countries generally; they are as superstitious – they have the same love of music, and their instrument is the some as that of our northern brethren, for their zampogna scarcely differs in any thing from the highland bag-pipe, which instrument. be it said, is also found in nearly all the mountainous countries of the world. Some of their superstitions are evident remnants of classical paganism; others are a compound of monkish legends and paganism, and the mass is, of course, what has arisen from the Romish church. They have a traditionary reverence for the name of their countrymen Ovid, but, like the poor Neapolitans who believe that Virgil was a great magician, they make their poet's fame depend upon his having been a mighty adept in necromancy. In the town of Sulmona, the place of the poet's birth, they keep a rude stone statue which people have chosen to call Ovidio Nasone, though it is more probably the effigy of some portly abbot of the fourteenth century. As the writer of this article was standing before it one day, at shepherd boy, who was returning from the market in the town, took off his hat to it, as though it had been the image of a saint. The traveller did not then know Ovid's fame as a magician, and was much delighted at what he thought a mark of popular reverence to genius, and asked himself the question whether on English peasant would doff his cap to the statue of Shakspeare or of Milton. The Abruzzesi shepherds are a fine race of men, and make excellent soldiers, particularly cavalry; though they are naturally averse to the military service. The best disciplined and steadiest troops in Murat's army were raised in this part of his kingdom. In former times the country was much infested by banditti, and one of the most famous robber chiefs mentioned in modern history – Marco Sciarra – was an Abruzzese. Except in times of execrable misgovernment, as under some of the Spanish viceroys, these depredations were almost confined to the frontiers and to the mountain passes that lead into the Roman states, and the troops of brigands were rather composed of Roman and Neapolitan outlaws, invited there by the facilities for plundering, and the security offered in those mountainous wilds, than of the native peasantry. Of late years scarcely an instance of brigandage has been heard of – except in the case of a band that come from a different part of the kingdom, and was soon suppressed, mainly by the peasants themselves. In 1823 the writer of this short account travelled through the greater part of the country – in the wildest places alone on horseback, or only with such a guide as he could pick up among the peasantry, and instead of robbers and cut-throats he found every where honest people, who were civil, and even hospitable. Winter is felt in these mountains in great, and in some places in its utmost rigour. The lofty summits of the Gran Sasso d'ltalia (the Great Rock of Italy, the highest peak in the Peninsula) are nearly always covered with deep snow – so are the mountains above Aquila, the capital of the provinces, and many others of the ridges; while the crevasses (rifts) in the superior parts of Monte Majello that towers above Sulmona offer enduring and increasing fields of ice and glaciers that may astonish even the traveller who has seen those of the Alps. Among the wild beasts the bear and the wolf are still found in considerable numbers. The "Piano di cinque miglie", or the Plain of five miles, which is a narrow flat valley almost at the top of the Apennines, but flanked by the summits of these mountains, and which is the principal communication with Naples, is subject to drifts, and those hurricanes called tourmens. Accumulations of snow frequently render the road impassable, and sometimes endanger and destroy life. The winds that blow from these mountains even so early as the end of summer, are often bleak and piercing. The numerous flocks that feed on, and beautify their pastures in summer, would droop and perish if exposed there in the winter. Consequently, at the approach of that season, the Abruzzesi peasants emigrate with them into the lowlands of Puglia. The plain of Puglia is an immense amphitheatre, whose front is open to the Adriatic Sea, and the rest of it enclosed by Mount Garganus and a semicircular sweep of the Apennines, prominent among which is the lofty cone of Mount Vultur (an extinct volcano, the craters of which are now romantic lakes). The mountains, however, generally defend the plain from the worst winds of winter, and the climate is as mild and genial throughout the year as might be expected from the favourable latitude of the place, and its trifling elevation above the sea. The want of water, and the entire absence of trees which would attract humidity to the thirsty soil, have been reasons why this immense flat has been left almost untouched by the plough or spade. The great expanse presents the appearance of an eastern desert, over which, when not sparingly enlivened by the presence of the Abruzzesi and their flocks, you may travel in all directions for miles and miles without meeting a human being, or any signs of human industry — without seeing a tree or a bush, or any elevation in the dead flat, to mask the view of the Adriatic and the surrounding mountains. It is said by the Neapolitan historians, that their king, Alfonso of Aragon, seeing this immense plain destitute of men, determined to people it with beasts; but it is probable, from the advantages it offers, and the difficulties of their own mountain climate, that the shepherds of the Abruui have in all ages resorted to it in winter as they now do, and that Alfonso merely regulated some laws and duties, whose principal tendency was to enrich the exchequer of the state by deriving some revenue from waste lands. In modem times a department of government has been appointed exclusively to the charge of the “Tavogliere di Puglia", as it is called in Neapolitan statistics; and the head of this department, who was generally at person of rank, was obliged to reside occasionally at Foggia. Of late years some changes have been introduced in this branch of the administration. Every flock of sheep as it arrives is counted, and has to pay a certain sum, proportionate to its number, for the right of pasture; and small as are these rates, from the immense droves that come, they form an aggregate which, after the expenses of collecting, &c. are paid, annually gives to the Neapolitan government many thousand ducats. Large sheds, and low houses built of mud and stone, that look like stabling, exist here and there on the plain, and have either been erected by the great sheep proprietors, or are let out to them at an easy rent by the factors of the tavogliere. Other temporary homesteads are constructed by the shepherds themselves as they arrive; and a few pass the winter in tents covered with very thick and coarse dark cloth, woven with wool and hair. The permanent houses are generally large enough to accommodate a whole society of shepherds; the temporary huts and tents are always erected in groups, that the shepherds of the same flocks may be near to each other. The sheep-folds are in the rear of the large houses, but generally placed in the midst of the huts and tents. On account of the wolves, that frequently descend from the mountains and commit severe ravages, they are obliged to keep a great number of dogs, which are of a remarkably fine breed, being rather larger than our Newfoundland dog, very strongly made, snowy white in colour, and bold and faithful. You cannot approach these pastoral hamlets, either by night or day, without being beset by these vigilant guardians, that look sufficiently formidable when they charge the intruder (as often happens) in troops of a dozen or fifteen. They have frequent encounters with the wolves, evident signs of which some of the old campaigners show in their persons, being now and then found sadly tom and maimed. The shepherds say that two of them, "of the right sort” are a match for an ordinary wolf. The writer of this notice has several times seen a good deal of these Abruzzesi shepherds in their winter establishments. The first time he came in contact with them was in the month of February, 1817, in the course of a journey through the southern provinces of the kingdom of Naples. He had no companion except the Calabrian pony that carried him, and a rough-haired Scotch terrier (a creature of a very different disposition), when he arrived at the almost undistinguishable site of the town of Cannae, near which the fatal battle was fought, which is in the midst of the wild plain, about six miles from the town of Canosa (anciently Canusium), and not quite so far from the shores of the Adriatic. The most perfect solitude and stillness reigned there; but when he ascended the slightly elevated mound in which Cannae had stood, he saw in at little hollow at a short distance a very long, low tenement, at the door of which were some men with sheep-dogs, and he perceived large flocks of white sheep nibbling the short grass on all the little hillocks around him, and over the plain on both sides [of] the river Ofanto, on the identical field of the Roman and Carthaginian conflict, to a great distance. The only objects that remained on the site of Cannae were some traces of walls that once girded the mound; on the summit of the mound some excavations, or subterranean chambers, with well or cistern-like mouths, which were open; and at a little distance two large slabs of stone, placed on end in the ground, and leaning against each other, — a simple monument, by which the peasantry of the country point out the held of Cannae, or, as they call it, "the field of blood". Attracted by his appearance, for the sight of a stranger is a rarity, two of the men came up from the house to the traveller while he was measuring and examining the ground. Though uncouth in their appearance they were very courteous and not only gave him several little pieces of local information, which showed that popular tradition had faithfully preserved the memory of the great events that once occurred in that solitude, but they assisted him to descend into one of the subterranean chambers, which they called (as the chambers in all probability had been) "granaries", or "corn magazines". By the time the stranger had finished his examination and queries on the spot the sun was setting, and, at the invitation of the shepherds, he went down to the house. As he reached the rude but hospitable door, a tall venerable man with a snow-white sheep-skin pelisse, who had just dismounted from a shaggy little mare came up, and bade him welcome. This was the chief shepherd. He expressed his regret that the tugurio (hut) offered so little that a gentleman could eat, but all that he had the stranger (who was too hungry to be delicate) was welcome to. A youth, the old man's grandson, was immediately set to work to fry an omelette and some lardo or fat bacon. While this was doing, several other shepherds arrived, driving their flocks before them to the spacious cotes in the rear of the house — and later, there came others in a similar way, until all of the company were collected. Besides his omelette and bacon, the traveller's repast was enriched with some good Indian corn bread, some ricotta, which is a delicious preparation of goat's milk, and some generous wine bought at the neighbouring town of Canosa. The sun meanwhile had set — there is scarcely any twilight in these southern regions, and before his meal was finished it was almost dark night. The kind old man did not like the idea of his travelling at such an hour: he, however, offered him two shepherds as an escort to Canosa if he would go; but if he would stay where he was, and content himself with a shepherd's lodging for the night, he was welcome. The traveller did not hesitate in accepting the invitation, and when his pony was put up in a sort of barn attached to the house, he made himself very comfortable on a low wooden bench which the men covered with sheep-skins for him, near the fire. When all the pastoral society was assembled, the patriarchal chief shepherd taking the lead, they repeated aloud, and with well modulated responses, the evening prayers, or the Catholic service of "Ave Maria". A boy then lit a massy old brass lamp, that looked as if it had been dug out of Pompeii, and on producing it said "Santa notte a tutta la compagnia" — (a holy night to all the company). The shepherds then took their supper which was very frugal, consisting principally of Indian corn bread and raw onions with a very little wine. Some of them, after their meal, sat round the fire conversing with their visitor and others went to rest. The whole of the interior of the room was occupied by one long apartment, in the middle of which was the fire-place, unprovided with a chimney, the smoke finding its way through the crannies in the roof and other apertures; on the sides of the apartment were spread the dried broad blades of the Indian com and sheep-skins which formed the shepherds' beds, but there were two or three little constructions (not unlike the berths on board ship) made against the wall, which were warm and comfortable, and occupied by the old man and other privileged members of the society, one of whom kindly vacated his dormitory for the stranger. Besides these rustic beds and the wooden benches, the lamps and some cooking utensils, there was scarcely any other furniture in the room. The scene that presented itself in that singular interior, as the traveller peeped out of his snug berth, was such as cannot easily be forgotten. The light of the lamp — and, when that was extinguished, the flickering flames of the fire in the centre of the room, disclosed in singular chiaroscuro the figures of the shepherds sleeping in their sheep-skins, along the sides of the room near to the fire; the rugged roof of the apartment, by smoke and time, was an black as jet, and the two extremities of the habitation were lost in gloom. Some old fire-arms hung by the berth of the principal shepherd; the strong knotty sticks and the long crooks of the men were placed against the wall. Several of the huge dogs lay dreaming with their noses to the fire, and round the fire-place still remained the rude wooden benches, on some of which the shepherds had thrown their cloaks and other parts of their attire in most picturesque confusion. Soon, however, the flames died on the hearth, the embers merely smouldered, and all was darkness, but not all silence, for the men snored most sonorously; the wind that swept across the wide, open plain, howled round the house, and occasionally the dogs joined in its chorus. These things, however, did not prevent the traveller from passing a comfortable night, and with a sense of as great security, inasmuch as the poor shepherds were concerned, as he would have enjoyed had he been among friends in England. The next morning, when he was about to continue his journey to Canosa, he offered money for the accomodations he had received. This the old shepherd refused, and seemed hurt by his pressing it upon him. Nothing then remained but thanks and a kind leave-taking. These shepherds were to remain where they then were until the middle of spring, when they would slowly retrace their steps to the Abruzzi, whence they would again depart for the Pianura di Puglia at the approach of winter.

End Famous Love Quotes