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N Quotes

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All N Quotes

“Nineteen years since that day. Nineteen whole years! And I’m still looking for you. I will never stop looking for you. Often you appear when I expect it least. Earlier today I was trapped in some pointless dark thought or other, my body clenched like a metal fist. Then suddenly you were there: a bright autumn leaf cartwheeling over a dull pewter lawn. I uncurled and smelled life, felt dew on my feet, saw shades of green. I tried to grab hold of you, that vivid leaf, cavorting and wriggling and giggling. I tried to take your hand, look straight at you, but like an optical black spot you slid silently sideways, just out of reach. I will never stop looking for you.”

“Nineteenth-century Aberdeenshire was seething with land hunger and social strife. The interests of the landowners and muckle farmers were at odds with the democratic ideal enshrined in the concept of 'The Poor Man's County', which proclaimed the value of a finely graded rural economy with the emphasis on smaller farms and crofts as the continuing guarantee of economic opportunity and ultimately, therefore, of social justice. But the cottar class was disappearing as landlords evaded Poor Law assessment by demolishing cottages for married workers. Traditional farm touns and hamlets were being destroyed. As leases expired, holdings were thrown together into bigger units yielding high returns on the kind of investment only great capitalists could contemplate. As entry levels into farming climbed, the land was monopolised in fewer and fewer hands.”

“Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dying. Alaska's favorite was playwright Eugene O'Neill: "Born in a hotel room, and--God damn it--died in a hotel room." Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, "Oh God. What's happened?" Movie star James Dean said, "They've got to see us," just before slamming his Porsche into another car. I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.”

“Nineteenth-century print culture shared with the Protestantism that sparked it a democratizing impulse rooted in the ideology of the priesthood of all believers. In the vastly expanded world of print this impulse led to what one might call a priesthood of all readers, a situation ripe for religious turmoil rooted in interpretive chaos.”

“Nineteenth-century Russian literature, swooning with compassion for the suffering brother, had created for Nerzhin, and for everyone reading it for the first time, the image of a haloed, silvery-haired People, embodying all wisdom, moral purity, and spiritual grandeur. But that was far away, on bookshelves; it was somewhere else, in the villages and fields at the crossroads of the nineteenth century. The heavens unfolded, the twentieth century came, and those places had long since ceased to exist under Russian skies.”

“Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century exponents of prefabrication were certain it would supplant age-old traditions of individualized design and handcrafted construction. The building art would be revolutionized by freeing designers and construction workers from repetitive tasks, and democratized by making high-style architecture more affordable.”