Palaces Quotes - Page 13

• A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.

  Honore de Balzac

  Block, Believe, Men

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• When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

  Honore de Balzac

  Uncles, Niece, Bishops

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• It's harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Leader, Cabins, Born

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1978). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• [On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie.

  Dorothy Parker

  Book, Character, Ice

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

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• Fear is concealed in smiles and flashing teeth. 'Please say you still love me,' the kings and queens are really saying. And, when they fare badly, they return to their palaces and sleep fitfully.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Kings, Queens, Fear

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• one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Beauty, Art, Voice

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1915). “The Bent Twig”

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• Rome's riches are in too immediate juxtaposition. Under the lid of awful August heat, one moves dizzily from church to palace to fountain to ruin, a single fly at a banquet, not knowing where to light.

  Shana Alexander

  Moving, Light, Rome

  Shana Alexander (1970). “The feminine eye”, McCall Pub. Co

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• We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although as poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.

  William Booth

  Beer, Men, Light

  William Booth (2014). “In Darkest England and the Way Out”, p.48, Cambridge University Press

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• Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Summer, Wall, Firefly

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2009). “The Palace of Illusions: A Novel”, p.360, Anchor

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• Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Past, Years, Class

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.154, Vintage

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• I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.

  Janet Fitch

  Mother, Queens, Eye

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

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• To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

  Barack Obama

  Leadership, Destiny, Hands

  President-Elect Victory Speech, delivered 4 November 2008, Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois

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• Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.

  Moderata Fonte

  Flower, Men, Order

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• Love is influenced by no consideration, recognizes no restraints of reason, and is of the same nature as death, that assails alike the lofty palaces of kings and the humble cabins of shepherds; and when it takes entire possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to banish fear and shame from it.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Kings, Heart, Humble

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1982). “The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha”

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• I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Lonely, Memories, Men

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• Tess had said that the river was liable to wash the palace and the city and the whole kingdom off the rocks, and then there would finally be peace in the world. "Peace in the world," Brigan repeated musingly when Fire told him. "I suppose she's right. That would bring peace to the world. But it's not likely to happen, so I suppose we'll have to keep blundering on and making a mess of it." "Oh," Fire said, "well put. We'll have to pass that on to the governor so he can use it in his speech when they dedicate the new bridge.

  Kristin Cashore

  Rocks, Bridges, Cities

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• Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Love, Father, Doors

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• He's earned a lifetime of peace and happiness, but some people never get what they deserve. That's why there are saints in gutters and sadists in palaces.

  Ann Aguirre

  People, Saint, Gutters

  Ann Aguirre (2009). “Doubleblind”, p.177, Penguin

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• Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand. Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Rocks, House, Shining

  A Few Figs From Thistles (1920) "Second Fig"

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• They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men.

  Terry Pratchett

  Book, Hero, Men

  "Guards! Guards!". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1989.

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• Don't ever ask me again if I hate living anywhere with you and Jasmina. This Rock reminds me of the boy I was and being with you in the palace reminds me of the man I want to be.' 'Not just any man,' she whispered. 'A King. Mine.

  Melina Marchetta

  Kings, Hate, Boys

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• ... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Book, Wind, Desert

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.261, Vintage

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• Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there.

  E. M. Forster

  Horse, Rocks, Views

  E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.322, RosettaBooks

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• My Lolita remarked: "You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Twilight, Garden, Adorable

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.377, Vintage

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• Jack believed in something—he believed in white witches and sleighs pulled by wolves, and in the world the trees obscured. He believed that there were better things in the woods. He believed in palaces of ice and hearts to match. Hazel had, too. Hazel had believed in woodsmen and magic shoes and swanskins and the easy magic of a compass. She had believed that because someone needing saving they were savable. She had believed in these things, but not anymore. And this is why she had to rescue Jack, even though he might not hear what she had to tell him.

  Anne Ursu

  Heart, Ice, Shoes

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