Home > Topic > a land

a land QUOTES

a land QUOTES

61 " America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. "

― Alexis de Tocqueville

62 " But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling “the Republic of Imagination.” I think of it as Nabokov’s “somehow, somewhere” or Alice’s backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane. "

― Azar Nafisi , The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

63 " So I'm over there in England, you know, trying to get news about the [L.A.] riots... and all these Brit people are trying to sympathize with me... 'Oh Bill, crime is horrible. Bill, if it's any consolation crime is horrible here, too.' ...Shutup. This is Hobbitown and I am Bilbo Hicks, Okay? This is a land of fairies and elves. You do not have crime like we have crime, but I appreciate you trying to be, you know, Diplomatic. You gotta see English crime. It's hilarious, you don't know if you're reading the front page or the comic section over there. I swear to God. I read an article - front page of the paper - one day, in England: 'Yesterday, some Hooligans knocked over a dustbin in Shafsbry.' Wooooo... 'The hooligans are loose! The hooligans are loose! What if they become roughians? I would hate to be a dustbin in Shafsbry tonight. "

― Bill Hicks

64 " And this is a Buddhist country?” said Matt, “This is a country of lovingkindness and compassion? Hah. I think the Americans would call this ‘tough love.’ ”
“That is the paradox of Buddhism,” said Ranjit, “As a young doctor I would see these violent things and wonder why they happened, knowing that it was not something that Buddhists should do. Then I realized we are not born Buddhist. All the focus on channeling anger and dealing with hardship did not emanate from these people…. It was a lesson to these people. We are a land of Buddhists because we need to hear the lessons of Buddha, not because we follow Buddha.”

-spoken by Ranjit, the surgeon, after an episode of violence.... "

― Joe Niemczura , The Sacrament of the Goddess

65 " Internal mental experience is not the product of a photographic process. Internal reality is in fact constructed by the brain as it interacts with the environment in the present, in the context of its past experiences and expectancies of the future. At the level of perceptual categorizations, we have reached a land of mental representations quite distant from the layers of the world just inches away from their place inside the skull. This is the reason why each of us experiences a unique way of minding the world. (pp. 166-167) "

― Daniel J. Siegel , The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

66 " If you are a kind person and love animals, you may be lucky enough to find the Magic Valley. There you will discover a land where snow leopards play and mountains smile. I should tell you, though, that it will be a very hard journey. But I should also tell you that it is well worth the effort. "

67 " The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flicker and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people - half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like " You reap what you sow" and " Victory is not the same as satisfaction." Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising that our stones reflect our history. "

68 " To be American is to be part of a dialogical and democratic operation that grapples with the challenge of being human in an open-ended and experimental manner. Although America is a romantic project in which a paradise, a land of dreams, is fanned and fueled with a religion of vast possibility, it is, more fundamentally, a fragile experiment-precious yet precarious-of dialogical and democratic human endeavor that yields forms of modern self-making and self-creating unprecedented in human history. From Thomas Jefferson to Elijah Muhammad, Geronimo to Dorothy Day, Jane Adams to Nathaniel West, it holds out the possibility of self-transformation and self-reliance to New World dwellers willing to start anew and recast themselves for the purpose of deliverance and betterment. This purpose requires only a restlessness, energy and boldness that galvanizes people to organize and mobilize themselves in a way that makes new opportunities and possibilities credible and worth the "

― Cornel West

69 " Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings:

'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan.

To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power.

Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist.

The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within.

But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water.

And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle.

Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled.

But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings.

Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection.

And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes.
Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not.

I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon. "

― Bailey Bristol , The Devil's Dime (The Samaritan Files #1)

70 " With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Always Coming Home

71 " The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about the planet of Golgafrincham: it is a planet with an ancient and mysterious history, rich in legend, red, and occasionally green with the blood of those who sought in times gone by to conquer her; a land of parched and barren landscapes, of sweet and sultry air heady with the scent of the perfumed springs that trickle over its hot and dusty rocks and nourish the dark and musky lichens beneath; a land of fevered brows and intoxicated imaginings, particularly among those who taste the lichens; a land also of cool and shaded thoughts among those who have learned to forswear the lichens and find a tree to sit beneath; a land also of steel and blood and heroism; a land of the body and of the spirit.
This was its history. And in all this ancient and mysterious history, the most mysterious figures of all were without doubt those of the Great Circling poets of Arium. These Circling Poets used to live in remote mountain passes where they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary travelers, circle around them, and throw rocks at them. And when the travelers cried out, saying why didn’t they go away and get on with writing some poems instead of pestering people with all this rock-throwing business, they would suddenly stop, and then break into one of the seven hundred and ninety-four great Song Cycles of Vassillian. These songs were all of extraordinary beauty, and even more extraordinary length, and all fell into exactly the same pattern. "

― Douglas Adams , The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

72 " Coarseness occurs in a land where platitude inflames this sense of entitlement to more of almost everything, but less of manners and taste, with their irritating intimations of authority and hierarchy. "

― George F. Will , The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

73 " What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught to do: to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land in which men were contented, uncontradicted, and safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live. So from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave the ladies everything in the world, except credit for having intelligence.

Scarlett exercised the same charms as Melanie but with a studied artistry and consummate skill. The difference between the two girls lay in the fact that Melanie spoke kind and flattering words from a desire to make people happy, if only temporarily, and Scarlett never did it except to further her own aims. "

― Margaret Mitchell , Gone with the Wind

74 " This is our sacred land, Bharat, a land whose glories are sung by theGods, a land visualized by Mahayogi Aurobindo as the living manifestationof the Divine Mother of the universe, the Jaganmaataa, the Aadishakti,the Mahaamaayaa, the Mahaadurgaa, Who has assumed concrete form toenable us to see Her and worship Her,...a land worshipped by all our seers andsages as Maatrubhoomi, Dharmabhoomi, Karmabhoomi and Punybhoomi, averitable Devabhoomi and Mokshabhoomi" - "

75 " England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. "

― George Orwell , Why I Write

76 " Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads. "

― Carl William Brown , L'Italia in breve.

77 " Ghana, a land full of Gold! Africa, a land full of resources! "

78 " When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer. "

― Aysha Taryam

79 " Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up---dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much. "

80 " Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door.
* * *
They opened the door and stepped in.
They stopped.
The library deeps lay waiting for them.
Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. "

― Ray Bradbury , Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)