Continents Quotes - Page 14

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Trying, Twenties, World

Jacqueline Novogratz (2012). “The Blue Sweater : Bridging The Gap Between Rich And Poor In An Intercnnected World”, p.4, HarperCollins Publishers

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Here at this far lost end of the continent, where the trail wagons had stopped and the people with them.

Ray Bradbury

Venice, People, Wagons

Ray Bradbury (2013). “Death is a Lonely Business”, p.7, HarperCollins UK

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FAUSTUS. Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. By him I'll be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge thorough the moving air, To pass the ocean with a band of men; I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore, And make that country continent to Spain, And both contributory to my crown: The Emperor shall not live but by my leave, Nor any potentate of Germany. Now that I have obtain'd what I desir'd, I'll live in speculation of this art, Till Mephistophilis return again.

Christopher Marlowe

Country, Art, Stars

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christopher Marlowe (2010). “Faust, Part I, Egmont and Hermann, Dorothea, Dr Faustus: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. XIX (in 51 Volumes)”, p.209, Cosimo, Inc.

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Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view the empty cradle of the ocean.

Matthew Fontaine Maury

Ocean, Views, Should Have

Matthew Fontaine Maury, United States Naval Observatory (1858). “Explanations and sailing directions to accompany the Wind and current charts: approved by Captain D. N. Ingraham, chief of the Bureau of ordnance and hydrography, and pub. by authority of Hon. Isaac Toucey, secretary of the Navy”, p.167

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It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents.

Charles Lyell

Ocean, Men, Numbers

Sir Charles Lyell (1837). “Principles of Geology: Being an Inquiry how Far the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface are Referable to Causes Now in Operation”, p.244

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Moreover it is becoming the Britons, whether scientific or unscientific, who boast at all fitting occasions of their aptitude to rule the waves, should know something of the population of their saline empire, especially of those parts of it immediately in contact with their terrestrial domain, and the coasts of the Continent to which our United Kingdom appertains.

Edward Forbes

Ocean, Kingdoms, Empires

Edward Forbes (1859). “The Natural History of the European Seas...”, p.3

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But unless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may safely be maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent.

Louis Agassiz

Ocean, Sea, Land

Louis Agassiz (1882). “Report on the Florida Reefs”

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He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

Josephine Tey

Heart, Games, Rivers

Josephine Tey (2013). “The Daughter of Time”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver's soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver's mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.

Stephen King

Mother, Sex, Cutting

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Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided
with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.

P. J. O'Rourke

Wind, Oil, Sound

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty”, p.338, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause.

Abraham Lincoln

Heart, School, Fate

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Throughout history, men have tried to play God by moving rabbits, goats, sparrows, mongooses, and a hundred other species to oceanic islands and island continents, and later have wished to God they hadn't.

Victor Blanchard Scheffer

Moving, Men, Islands

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It is not a problem. I had been nominated by my country Uganda and the African continent had endorsed me... No matter how much noise the frogs make, they cannot stop a cow from drinking water.

Sam Kutesa

Country, Drinking, Uganda

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I think deep down, this planet yearns for the days of the British Empire again. They long once more to be treated that badly, that politely. We did far worse things than you can possibly dream of, but we did it with that certainly gentlemanly swagger... Dreadfully sorry, but we seem to have crushed your entire continent's infrastructure. Allow me to make it up to you by offering you a job 4,000 miles away. No, no, I insist.

John Oliver

Dream, Jobs, Sorry

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We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

Ronald Reagan

War, Years, Europe

Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day, delivered 6 June 1984 in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

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[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

George Will

Top Down, Tissues, Coercion

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It is well to fetter the wings of our fancy and restrain its flights. It is quite possible we may have formed entirely erroneous ideas of what we actually see. The greenish gray patches may not be seas at all, nor the ruddy continents, solid land. Neither may the obscuring patches be clouds of vapor. Man is too quick at forming conclusions. Let him but indistinctly see a thing, or even be undecided as to whether he does actually see it and he will then and there set himself to theorizing, and build immense castles of conjecture on a foundation, of whose existence he is by no means certain.

Edward E. Barnard

Mean, Men, Clouds

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The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

James A. Baldwin

Past, Men, Black

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From time to time the continent shifts, and everything that isn't fastened down slides into Southern California.

Frank Lloyd Wright

California, Southern, Slides

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I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.

John Steinbeck

Children, Wall, Reading

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.93, Penguin

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On the Continent stray cats are judged individually on their merit-some are loved, some are only respected; in England they are universally worshipped as in ancient Egypt.

George Mikes

Cat, Egypt, England

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People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.

George Mikes

Funny, Dream, Lying

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If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark, "You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that." In England you just say "Oh, is that so?" Or "That's rather an unusual story, isn't it?

George Mikes

Liars, Dirty, Stories

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On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided-the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase "Lovely day, isn't it?" at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull.

George Mikes

Weather, Two, Lovely

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Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.

Phyllis McGinley

Stars, Men, Gaza Strip

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