Home > Topic > the country
1 " One day she marched around the side of the house and confronted me. " I've seen you out there every day for the past week, and everyone knows you stare at me all day in school, if you have something you want to say to me why don't you just say it to my face instead of sneaking around like a crook?" I considered my options. Either I could run away and never go back to school again, maybe even leave the country as a stowaway on a ship bound for Australia. Or I could risk everything and confess to her. The answer was obvious: I was going to Australia. I opened my mouth to say goodbye forever. And yet. What I said was: I want to know if you'll marry me. "
2 " Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in. "
― Lynsay Sands , A Quick Bite (Argeneau #1)
3 " Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past... The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power...Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.] "
4 " Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair. "
― George Burns
5 " There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads. "
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 " Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting "
― Erich Maria Remarque , All Quiet on the Western Front
7 " How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to remain with him; if she’d returned Richard's kiss on the corner of Bleeker and McDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with rose-shaped buttons. Couldn’t they have discovered something larger and stranger than what they've got. It is impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future, as taking place in Italy or France, among big sunny rooms and gardens; as being full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave and possibly even beyond. She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. That's who I was. This is who I am--a decent woman with a good apartment, with a stable and affectionate marriage, giving a party. Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at the pond's edge at dusk, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber sandals. Richard had called her Mrs. Dalloway, and they had kissed. His mouth had opened to hers; (exciting and utterly familiar, she'd never forget it) had worked its way shyly inside until she met its own. They'd kissed and walked around the pond together.It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other. "
― Michael Cunningham , The Hours
8 " How can one explain this trend towards a more colorless and shallow life? Well, the work was easier, if less healthy, and it brought in more money, more leisure, and perhaps more entertainment. A day in the country is long and hard. And yet the fruits of their present life were worthless compared to a single coin of their former life: a rest in the evening and a rural festivity. That they no longer knew the old kind of happiness was obvious from the discontentment which spread over their features. Soon dissatisfaction, prevailing over all their other moods, became their religion. "
― Ernst Jünger , The Glass Bees
9 " Dad thinks I'm ready to fly around the country as the Ambassador of Hope, but Mom thinks I'm a frail little bird with broken wings. "
― Clara Kensie , Aftermath
10 " The church is God’s elect that God wants to raise in the country to give hope to everyone "
―
11 " I thought about suicide all the time, but it seemed toomuch effort, swallowing all those pills or jumping off things. If I'd lived out in the country I would have found a quiet stretch of railway track, and lain on it, fallen asleep, so that I would never have known when my last moment came. In London, the minimum tube fare had gone up so much that even to get near the line cost a fortune. Suicide seemed an extravagance I couldn't afford. People never leave you alone, either; I knew that if I'd tried to lie down on the line, any number of commuters would have pulled me off again, so that I didn't delay their train. There must have been murderers out there who wanted to kill, with no way of finding those who wanted to be dead. If there had been some way of contacting them, a date-with-death line, I would have called them to set up a meeting. The current ways of death seemed too haphazard; it was all left up to chance. Had Chance come up, tapped me on the shoulder, said " Oi, you - long black tunnel, white light, off you go," I wouldn't have complained. It was like having frostbite all over - feeling numb and in pain at the same time. "
12 " Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. "
― Louise Penny , Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)
13 " I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love! "
― Théophile Gautier , La Morte Amoureuse
14 " Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death. "
― Thomas Bernhard , The Loser
15 " ...The typhoon of madness that swept through the country [of Rwanda] between April 7 and the third week of May accounted for 80 percent of the victims of the genocide.That means about eight hundred thousand people were murdered during those six weeks, making the daily killing rate at least five times that of the Nazi death camps. The simple peasants of Rwanda, with their machetes, clubs, and sticks with nails, had killed at a faster rate than the Nazi death machine with its gas chambers, mass ovens, and firing squads. In my opinion, the killing frenzy of the Rwandan genocide shared a vital common thread with the technological efficiency of the Nazi genocide--satanic hate in abundance was at the core of both. "
― John Rucyahana , The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones
16 " I just don’t understand why they’d think we were together, when I’m leaving the country to live on the other side of the planet in a month?”It was Ryder’s turn to snort. “Well gosh, I don’t know Juliet. Maybe your hand on my cock was a clue.”She sucked in a breath, her eyes glittering now. “They could not see that!”“They didn’t have to,” he bit out. “We were practically humping each other at the table. "
― Amy Andrews , Playing With Forever (Sydney Smoke Rugby, #4)
17 " During my tenure at Bradford College, located in Haverhill Massachusetts - Assemblies of God, and Northpoint Bible College had not yet taken over. The school was very prestigious and expensive, but was worth every penny spent, and left me with an experience of which I shall indeed never forget. I say this for a couple of reasons. First, my degree major was in creative arts (creative writing) and psychology as my minor. Later in life, I was able to use my degree to become an award-winning, and best-selling horror author, and producer. Something by the way for which I am very proud of today. I truly owe this all from what I learned at this remarkable school." " So indeed I have great things to speak of when harping back to my Bradford college days. In addition, I was also able to make wonderful connections with many famous people who's sons and daughters attended this school. One of my roommates was David Charles who is Bob Charle's son. Bob Charles was a famous professional golfer." " To date, pondering on my college days spent at Bradford College has given me an appreciation for which I am very grateful for. I wanted to say, " thank you" for being part of the reason why I have prospered." " I am a proud graduate of Bradford, and all others whom also attended should also be more than proud of their attendance there. Thank you again, and God Bless you. one of my other roommates was Japanese chap, and his father was some kind of high political ruler of the country at the time. Thinking back on all this makes me proud of having been affiliated with Bradford College. Thank you. "
18 " Mathematicians still don’t understandthe ball our hands made, or howyour electrocuted grandparents made it possiblefor you to light my cigarettes with your eyes.It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the windowto leave six ounces of orange juiceand a doughnut by the bed, or me becomingthe sand you dug your toes in,on the beach, when you wishedto hide them from the sun and the fixed eyesof strangers, and your breath broke in wavesover my earlobe, splashing through my head, spilling outover the opposite lobe, and my first poemsunder your door in the unshaven light of dawn:Your eyes remind me of a brick wallabout to be hammered by a drunkdriver. I’m that driver. All nightI’ve swallowed you in the bar.Once I kissed the scar, stretching its sealedeyelid along your inner arm, driedraining strands of hair, full of pheromones, discoveredall your idiosyncratic passageways, so I’d knowwhere to run when the cops came.Your body is the country I’ll never return to.The man in charge of what crosses my mindwill lose fingernails, for not turning youaway at the border. But at this momentwhen sweat tingles from me, andblame is as meaningless as shooting up a cow with milk,I realise my kisses filled the halls of your bodywith smoke, and the lies camelike a season. Most drunks don’t die in accidentsthey orchestrate, and I swalloweda hand grenade that never stops exploding. "
― Jeffrey McDaniel
19 " The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces. "
― Halldór Laxness , Independent People
20 " With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides,flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from oneend to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terroristattacks, " Are we sure this is a good time to take God out ofthe Pledge of Allegiance? "
