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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2e68c43 | There had never been such roses as those that bloomed that summer. They clambered everywhere and dripped as if perspiring the heaviest most intoxicating perfume, which seemed to make the very masonry drunk. The senses fused; sometimes these roses emitted low but intolerably piercing pentatonic melodies which were the sound of their deep crimson colour and yet we heard them inside our nostrils. | smell | Angela Carter | |
| 71fe4e6 | Even if it is the dream made flesh, the real, once it becomes real, can be no more than real. | Angela Carter | ||
| 0e3c17e | The world, that is, of earthquake and cataclysm, cyclone and devastation; the violent matrix, the real world of unmastered, unmasterable physical stress that is entirely inimical to man because of its indifference. Ocean, forest, mountain, weather - these are the inflexible institutions of that world of unquestionable reality which is so far removed from the social institutions which make up our own world that we men must always, whatever o.. | Angela Carter | ||
| 9ed1a61 | The introduction of cinematography enabled us to corral time past and thus retain it not merely in the memory - at best, a falsifying receptacle - but in the objective preservative of a roll of film. But, if past, present and future are the dimensions of time, they are notoriously fluid. There is no tension in the tenses and yet they are always tremulously about to coagulate. The present is a liquid jelly which settles into a quivering, pas.. | Angela Carter | ||
| ef69214 | The enchantment of that bright, sad, pretty place enveloped her and she found that, against all her expectations, she was happy there. | Angela Carter | ||
| 2f119e8 | Vengeful as nature herself, she loves her children only in order to devour them better and if she herself rips her own veils of self-deceit, Mother perceives in herself untold abysses of cruelty as subtle as it is refined. | Angela Carter | ||
| af83fcc | Oh, the pain of it, thought Lee, thinking about his children, oh! the exquisite pain of unrequited love. The only authentic wound, the sweet curse they inflict on you, the revenge of heterosexuality. | heterosexuality revenge wound | Angela Carter | |
| dffc8f1 | He is a carnival figure made of papier mache and crepe hair; and yet he has the Devil's knack at cards. | Angela Carter | ||
| 5697c6c | Her face. And she smiling. For a moment, just that moment, you would have thought it was May morning. | Angela Carter | ||
| db12214 | Sometimes he lays his head on my lap and lets me comb his lovely hair for him; his combings are leaves of every tree in the wood and dryly susurrate around my feet. | Angela Carter | ||
| 9a5e7c7 | The real value of a sexually attractive woman in a world which regards good looks as a commodity depends on the degree to which she puts her looks to work for her. | Angela Carter | ||
| fb9acbe | Swahili storytellers believe that women are incorrigibly wicked, diabolically cunning and sexually insatiable; I hope this is true, for the sake of the women. | Angela Carter | ||
| 48e03b8 | It was the fault of the wedding-dress night, when she married the shadows and the world ended. | Angela Carter | ||
| d814f34 | She walked in technicolor. | Angela Carter | ||
| d8513af | My father lost me to the Beast at cards | feminist gothic | Angela Carter | |
| 1c7b953 | I fancy I only got a rap on the head, which knocked me stupid. | H. Rider Haggard | ||
| 5b16cf8 | Nowadays a long Romantic tradition has caused us to think of poets as private dreamers, ill-adapted to social intercourse and the horrors of a materialist world but thereby guardians of value and the messengers of our common soul. In 1711 Francois senior would have viewed a young poet as a modern parent might view an aspirant television celebrity. | Roger Pearson | ||
| 21546ca | When Belloc said that the Protestant Reformation was the shipwreck of Christendom, he was simply stating a historical fact, but it was controversial because history is political. | Joseph Pearce | ||
| 4098edb | An enormous force bends all lines into circles. | circle-circus fourth-dimension la-la-la reality-plane | Joseph Chilton Pearce | |
| 808635f | Painted into a corner, caught in a cul-de-sac, out on that final last-chance limb, life scrabbles around, searching for a new way out. | la-la-la life-philosophy | Joseph Chilton Pearce | |
| 21c0b6b | Who said you had to fill his shoes?" said Karen. "Wear your own shoes. They're bound to fit better. Walk your own path your own way and you'll be more likely to get to where you need to be"." | Jennifer Chiaverini | ||
| 2e0af66 | When Christianity was introduced among the rich and the polite, the observation of these singular laws was left, as it would be at present, to the few who were ambitious of superior sanctity. But it is always easy, as well as agreeable, for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim a merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure, which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Rom.. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 1031116 | He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers." ^15" | Edward Gibbon | ||
| d472984 | and it was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 85d10f6 | lqd Hkmt lbld lmd@ 'rb`yn `m ... mrhwb mn '`dy'y ... mHbwb mn 'Sdqy'y ... mHtrm mn khSwmy ... lm y`wzny shy mn ln`ym l'rDy ... w lkn lqd qmt bHS `dd l'ym lty knt s`yd fyh s`d@ Hqyqy@ bdq@ blG@ ... lqd 'rbt `ly l'rb`@ `shr ywm ... 'yh lnsn l tD` thqtk fy hdh l`lm l'rDy" `bd lrHmn (lnSr) nql `n jybwn" | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 2febf70 | In the eighteenth century, with the growth of publishing and with the intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, there was a great demand for new historical writing. The greatest product of this was The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a massive six-volume work published between 1776 and 1788, precisely between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The context is important, as the author Edward Gibbon was examining not onl.. | Ronald Carter | ||
| a8ff29e | unchecked power corrupts. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 64423ee | During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 3a712a4 | In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, accordi.. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 75b9fb8 | loving one's children does not guarantee that one will never fail them, | Jennifer Chiaverini | ||
| d797ae2 | The gates were thrown open by their companions upon guard, and by the domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy against the life of the too virtuous emperor. On the news of their approach, Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to meet his assassins; and recalled to their minds his own innocence, and the sanctity of their recent oath. For a few moments they stood in silent suspense, ashamed .. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| d8bae65 | the fundamental maxim of Artistotle, that true virtue is placed at an equal distance between the opposite vices. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 8973242 | A regard for the public tranquillity, which would so frequently have been interrupted by annual or by occasional elections, induced the primitive Christians to constitute an honourable and perpetual magistracy, and to choose one of the wisest and most holy among their presbyters to execute, during his life, the duties of their ecclesiastical governor. It was under these circumstances that the lofty title of Bishop began to raise itself abov.. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 04e9a60 | The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 20cbdc6 | The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| cfa08fd | Once the monarchy was abolished, a decree was passed that there would be no more kings in Rome. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 524d2b7 | The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 9b55a16 | But as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose; we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. It | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 55402d9 | The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 0c35394 | Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a vile habit, and loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat to the Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes of his abominable reign. "Wilt thou govern better?" were the last words of the despair of Phocas." | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 55c1f9b | A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim. | Edward Gibbon | ||
| 10eaeef | On solemn festivals, Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus; and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher, who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public or the improvement of his own mind. | leasure philosophy | Edward Gibbon | |
| 7517e11 | Hope is never false. One's hopes may not be fulfilled, but that doesn't not mean it was wrong to hope | Jennifer Chiaverini | ||
| 08f13b2 | She would almost prefer to fold her arms and sink into an eternal slumber, so that the great longing of her soul for peaceful rest would at last be gratified. | Jennifer Chiaverini |