Bards Quotes - Page 3

• Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

  Bernard Cornwell

  Love, Song, Regret

  Bernard Cornwell (1999). “Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur”, p.199, Macmillan

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne, Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  John Keats

  Eye, Men, Islands

  "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" l. 5 (1817)

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.

  Patti Smith

  Art, Children, Guitar

  "Just Kids". Book by Patti Smith, www.cbc.ca. January 4, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!

  Charles Dickens

  Teacher, Spring, Ignorance

  Charles Dickens (1844). “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, His Relatives, Friends and Enemies: Comprising All His Wills and His Ways, with an Historical Record of what He Did, and what He Didn't ...”, p.245

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Light, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.41, 谷月社

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

  PJ Harvey

  Growing Up, Communication, Thinking

  Interview with Sam Adams, music.avclub.com. February 15, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice.

  Kate Horsley

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  Kate Horsley (2002). “Confessions of a Pagan Nun: A Novel”, p.87, Shambhala Publications

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tell my graduate students [at Bard College], ‘There are two ways to change the world: through policy, or through sustainable business.’ With sustainable business, individuals build solutions within the current system… Sustainable business asks, ‘How would nature do this?’

  Eban Goodstein

  College, Two, World

  4 Copy quote

• With this blistering salvo of poetic gutshots Lawson has proven himself Bizarro’s true bard, its mad laureate. Switching from dark whimsy to retina-blast shock to political outrage without missing a beat, The Troublesome Amputee is a powerful collection of pitch-black verse.

  Jeremy Robert Johnson

  Powerful, Dark, Mad

  9 Copy quote

• The Weird Sisters is a chronicle of real women, because it tells the truths of sisters. Eleanor Brown has written a compelling novel about love, despair and birth order—the themes the Bard himself had claimed and burnished.

  Min Jin Lee

  Real, Order, Despair

  4 Copy quote

• The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.

  Lynn Culbreath Noel

  Journey, Sea, Rivers

  6 Copy quote

• THE POET A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Stars, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.112, Graphic Arts Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency.

  Marvin Mudrick

  Civilization, Common Decency, Consistency

  6 Copy quote

• Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield.

  Bill Bryson

  Father, Son, Done

  Bill Bryson (1990). “The Mother Tongue”, William Morrow Paperbacks

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The psychedelic experience is not a journey into the human unconscious, or into the ghost bards of our human civilization. It's a journey into the presence of the Gaian mind.

  Terence McKenna

  Journey, Civilization, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• Richard Curtis, the writer and director of Love Actually, is brilliant at many things, but his genius, I submit, is for thrusting characters into situations in which they feel driven to humiliate themselves. Which is why we love them, especially when it's all in the name of love. He is the Bard of Embarrassment.

  David Edelstein

  Character, Names, Love Actually

  4 Copy quote

• By all means," cried the bard, his eyes lighting up. "A Fflam to the rescue! Storm the castle! Carry it by assault! Batter down the gates!" "There's not much of it left to storm," said Eilonwy. "Oh?" said Fflewddur, with disappointment. "Very well, we shall do the best we can.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Disappointment, Mean, Eye

  Lloyd Alexander (2013). “The Chronicles of Prydain”, p.82, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great is the art,
  Great be the manners, of the bard.
  He shall not his brain encumber
  With the coil of rhythm and number;
  But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
  He shall aye climb
  For his rhyme.
  "Pass in, pass in," the angels say

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Angel, Numbers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4360, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• From Bard, to Bard, the frigid Caution crept,
  Till Declamation roar'd, while Passion slept.

  Samuel Johnson

  Drama, Passion, Frigid

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.551

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain.

  Robert Blair

  Men, Littles, Fame

  Robert Blair, Robert Anderson (1802). “The Poetical Works of Robert Blair: Containing The Grave, Etc., to which is Prefixed, A Life of the Author, by Robert Anderson, Accompanied by Prints, Designed and Engraved by W. Gardiner”, p.14

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

  Lord Byron

  Hero, Writing, Men

  Lord Byron (2013). “Don Juan”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For this present, hard
  Is the fortune of the bard,
  Born out of time;
  All his accomplishment,
  From Nature's utmost treasure spent,
  Booteth not him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Accomplishment, Poetry, Treasure

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.44, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a poet, bard, scop, minnesinger, trobairitz who is driven by sound and the possibilities for vocal expression, the mouthing of text as well as intentionality or dance on the page.

  Anne Waldman

  Expression, Sound, Pages

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.

  Herman Melville

  Country, War, Expectations

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.272

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Europe, Religion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.510

  4 Copy quote

  Show source