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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| dc8b39c | The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public. | culture | Peter Ackroyd | |
| c2fa2e7 | The credulity of crowds is never-ending. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 177c627 | lord, decked with jewels, sitting at the head of a table. It is a poetry of assonance | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| d8ce8bf | from what Purse are we building these Churches, Walter? From the Imposicion on Coles. And are the Coles not the blackest Element, which with their Smoak hide the Sunne? Certainly they feed the Fires of this City, says he. And where is the Light and Easinesse there? Since we take our Revenues from the Under-world, what does it Signifie if we also Build upon the Dead? | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| c0c9f8a | But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated. | psychology | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 0263fb3 | It is the nature of humankind to idealize, to indulge in excessive praise as well as unjust condemnation. | stereotypes | Peter Ackroyd | |
| c3df437 | I can recall quite clearly the journey from Omaha to San Francisco which I made with the opera troupe; God had created the world in less time than it took us to travel across America. | humour | Peter Ackroyd | |
| b527c2a | the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| c914ae0 | the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| ad20eb0 | And we recall in Dickens' fiction how universal it is that a child looks after an adult, and how the adult remains so dependent upon the child that he becomes something worse than child-like. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| fe43c3f | what think you of that, Nick, since you allwaies have your Head stuck in old Books? And I said nothing, for who can speak of the Mazes of the Serpent to those who are not lost in them? | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 95edd9d | Never be curious. It is the path to perdition. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 63f6bfe | Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discover what I know. Under its benign influence all the stories and dramas which properly belong to the sphere of art are announced by me in conversation. | humour oscar-wilde | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 30efc9f | absinthe removes the bitter taste of failure and grants me strange visions which are charming principally because they cannot be written down. Only in absinthe do I become entirely free and, when I drink it, I understand the symbolic mysteries of odour and of colour. | humour oscar-wilde | Peter Ackroyd | |
| c64f803 | A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land. .. | imagination island water | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 68d1c30 | The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship." | europe grand-tour learning travelling | Peter Ackroyd | |
| bad9465 | dyer. (Looking at him scornfully) So that is why Wits swarm like Egypt's Frogs. If I were a Writer now, I would wish to thicken the water of my Discourse so that it was no longer easy or familiar. I would chuse a huge lushious Style! vannbrugghe. (Interrupting) Ah the music of Erudition, it is unimaginable to weaker Wits. dyer. (Ignoring him) I would imploy outlandish Phrases and fantasti-call Terms, thus to restore Terrour, Reverence and D.. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| ddf9289 | I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon | occult pit | Peter Ackroyd | |
| d1404fe | One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines. | oscar-wilde shakespeare writing | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 80f2282 | Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not pierced into the Horror of the World which others, who are adrift upon it, know. | horror nightmares | Peter Ackroyd | |
| d62ee4a | The names of the English have changed. Before the invasion of William I the common names were those such as Leofwine, Aelfwine, Siward and Morcar. After the Norman arrival these were slowly replaced by Robert, Walter, Henry and of course William. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 3fd686b | When the city was described as pagan, it was partly because no one living among such urban suffering could have much faith in a god who allowed cities such as London to flourish. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 4897266 | The most sacred truths of the faith are given full material reality, leading up to that moment when Christ himself becomes present at the altar. This was marked by the moment of elevation when the priest held up the host, become by a miracle the body of Jesus. At that instant candles and torches, made up of bundles of wood, were lit to illuminate the scene; the sacring bell was rung, and the church bells pealed so that those in the neighbou.. | eucharist faith holy-mass liturgy religion saints | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 963a336 | As the Great rise by degrees of Greatnesse to the Pitch of Glory, so the Miserable sink to the Depth of their Misery by a continued Series of Disasters. Yet it cannot be denied but most Men owe not only their Learning to their Plenty, but likewise their Vertue and their Honesty: for how many Thousands are there in the World, in great Reputation for their Sober and Just dealings with Mankind, who if they were put to their Shifts would soon l.. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| d00f8e6 | There is no real origin for anything. Everything just exists. Everything just exists in order to exist. | exist origin | Peter Ackroyd | |
| 0a8ba1f | The fall of Venice was just a change in its historical identity. We cannot say that it was a disgrace or triumph, because we do not know who in the end is triumphant and who is disgraced. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| 1ac1e40 | The less you see, the more you can imagine. | see | Peter Ackroyd | |
| f99752b | The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered. | postmodernism | Peter Ackroyd | |
| bf319a0 | VANNBRUGGHE. But the bounds of the Mind are yet unknown: we form our Judgments too much on what has been done without knowing what might be done. Originals must soar into the region of Liberty. DYER. And then fall down, since they have Wings made only of Wax. Why prostrate your Reason to meer Nature? We live off the Past: it is in our Words and our Syllables. It is reverberant in our Streets and Courts, so that we can scarce walk across t.. | Peter Ackroyd | ||
| f08221b | Be the person you would like to be | Jason King Godwise | ||
| 7d0c0b3 | Prospero is man-the-artist, or man-the-scholar: Ariel and Caliban represent his ethereal and material selves--the one airy, imaginative, and swift; the second earthy, gross, and appetitive. | Marjorie Garber | ||
| c9a4609 | But if we create our own Shakespeare, it is at least as true that the Shakespeare we create is a Shakespeare that has, to a certain extent, created us. | Marjorie Garber | ||
| 84e19ae | Jaques' vision in the same comedy of "the whining schoolboy with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school" | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 1428865 | the discourse of travel in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is rarely if ever interesting at the level of sustained narrative and teleological design, but gripping at the level of the anecdote. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| a232f67 | The mob then dragged her corpse outside the city walls and burned it. Their hero Cyril was eventually made a saint. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| ace45c6 | I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 2ed2303 | The group shared a combination of extreme marginality and arrogant snobbishness. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 79086fb | Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know. And so far will I trust thee, | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| fe166f3 | The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 2df045e | With his contrasting vision of anxious, work-obsessed, overly disciplined Italians and happy-go-lucky, carefree Germans, | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 1a4399c | Can honour set-to a leg?" Falstaff asks, at the brink of battle." | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| c4fec89 | No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| b358aed | What is honour? A word. What is in that word "honour"?" | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| ff8e845 | What is that "honour"? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?" | Stephen Greenblatt |