Pompeii Quotes

• Look at the walls of Pompeii. That's what got the internet started.

  Robin Williams

  Wall, Looks, Internet

  "Robin Williams: 'I was shameful, did stuff that caused disgust - that's hard to recover from'". Interview with Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2010.

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• Pompeii is an extraordinary place to be because it was preserved exactly as it was. There are many other sites. If you visit any other antiquity-type sites throughout the world, they're very damaged with what's gone on over the centuries since they were abandoned. But this one was just, like, sealed, so you're looking at rock surfaces and the carving of letters and names in the stones looks like it was done yesterday.

  David Gilmour

  Names, Yesterday, Rocks

  "David Gilmour Talks Pompeii Return: 'It’s a Place of Ghosts'". Interview with Kory Grow, www.rollingstone.com. July 7, 2016.

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• If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it.

  Deborah Davis

  Life, Volcanoes, Feet

  Deborah Davis (2004). “Strapless”, Penguin

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• We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.

  Oswald Spengler

  Taken, Mean, Greatness

  Oswald Spengler (2016). “Routledge Revivals: Man and Technics (1932): A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life”, p.56, Routledge

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• Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Sports, Lying, Passion

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• Put a compass to paper and trace a circle. Then tell me which other country has such a concentration of places like Amalfi, Naples, Ischia, Procida, Sorrento, Positano, Pompeii, and Capri.

  Diego Della Valle

  Country, Circles, Paper

  "Captain Italia" by Alessandra Ilary, www.townandcountrymag.com. August 7, 2014.

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• Pompeii, especially, with its grand murals and its flourishing gardens haunted by the dark shadow of Vesuvius, has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with our contemporary world, especially here in Southern California, where the sunlit life also turns out to have dark shadows in which failure and death lurk at the edge of consciousness. Now in these times, we have even closer parallels with those ancient, beautiful, affluent people living the good life on the verge of annihilation.

  Eleanor Antin

  Beautiful, Good Life, Dark

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• We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius.

  James R. Schlesinger

  Oil, People, Threat

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• People perish. Books are immortal.

  Robert Harris

  Book, People, Immortal

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• That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

  Susan Vreeland

  Heart, Humble, Hands

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• The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.

  Marcel Proust

  Nature, Nymphs, Tree

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.1194, Delphi Classics

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• Our men must win or die. Pompey's men have... other options.

  Julius Caesar

  Winning, Men, History

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• Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup - if any.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sex, Lying, Thinking

  Introduction to "Cliff and the Calories" in "Expanded Universe" by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 355), 1980.

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• On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Mean, Artist, Ivory

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• Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
  we know crack of volcanic fissure,
  slow flow of terrible lava,
  pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
  about to burst its brittle case
  (what the skull can endure!)

  Hilda Doolittle

  Heart, Skulls, Brain

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.510, New Directions Publishing

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• Unless companies change these rules, any superficial re-organizations they perform will be no more effective than dusting the furniture in Pompeii.

  Michael Martin Hammer

  Change, Organization, Furniture

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• A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS Dan made a face. "Get a load of the guy with the funny name." "I think that's Pliny the younger, the famous Roman writer," Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the tablet. "Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster." Dan yawned. "Doesn't this remind you of the clue hunt? You know–you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?

  Gordon Korman

  Thinking, Names, Guy

  Gordon Korman (2011). “The Medusa Plot”, p.123, Scholastic Inc.

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• My experiences of traveling abroad and going to Italy with my father, having to break down a gigantic electric chair to get on trains. You've got three minutes. You go to Pompeii and there are shockingly few accessible hotels in a city that was covered in volcanic ash.

  Zach Anner

  Father, Cities, Three

  Source: abilitymagazine.com

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• I haven't watched it [the film 'Pink Floyd at Pompeii'] in years. I find it excruciating.

  David Gilmour

  Years, Film, Havens

  "David Gilmour Talks Pompeii Return: 'It’s a Place of Ghosts'". Interview with Kory Grow, www.rollingstone.com. July 7, 2016.

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• What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples - in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Museums, Nymphs, Simplicity

  "Renoir - his life and work" by Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates/ Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, (p. 164), 1975.

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• Adrian Maben came to us with the idea. And we just thought, "Well, why not?" I don't think any of us thought it would be as well received and last in people's minds for as long as it did. All credit to him. It's his idea [Pink Floyd at Pompeii] and it was great.

  David Gilmour

  Thinking, Ideas, Long

  "David Gilmour Talks Pompeii Return: 'It's a Place of Ghosts'". Interview with Kory Grow, www.rollingstone.com. July 7, 2016.

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• We mixed the sounds ourselves. If they were going to put the sound back onto our film [Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.], we wanted to mix it ourselves.

  David Gilmour

  Sound, Film, Wanted

  "David Gilmour Talks Pompeii Return: 'It's a Place of Ghosts'". Interview with Kory Grow, www.rollingstone.com. July 7, 2016.

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