T Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“The Peacock & The Eagle: Cleopatra's Entry Into Tarsus by Stewart Stafford
Cleopatra arrives, regal and mighty,
From ocean spray as Aphrodite,
Wealthy and waif, yearning for her,
Dared all to defy her possessive aura.
Mark Antony, struck by her sultry gaze,
Lepidus, prisoner in a bureaucrat's maze,
Sees power slipping from a friend’s hand,
Ensnared by a siren from a scorched land.
Lepidus was Caesar's trusted right hand;
A granule falling through hourglass sand,
Antony, headstrong military provocateur;
Funeral orator from bloody crown auteur.
Bargain's scorpion pincers; no longer twain:
Cleopatra was Ceres, promising Rome grain,
Antony was Mars' armed emissary,
Business and pleasure's flood tributary.
Antony: "Barge of emerald, Elysium's onyx!
Beyond counsel words of sage sardonic,
Gliding the Cydnus's silken seam,
This Nile Helen shall be my queen."
Lepidus: "Pleasure vessel of a floating whore,
Yours for a sesterce on the Tiber's shore,
Honour your oath, noble Roman creed,
Lest passion’s shipwreck sets out to sea.”
"This Venus virago on her mirage barge;
Serpent prow, silver oars, rhythmic charge!
What hubris to think she can equal,
The bloody talons of our Roman eagle!"
Antony: "Feast your eyes past peacock's bower,
She speaks Rome's tongue of naked power.
Mark it, that obsidian Sphinx stings -
Human head, lion's body, eagle wings!
"That is the form she takes to the public:
I smell a perfumed alliance for the Republic!
With Plebeians as her tickled cats, they hum,
I crave her beauty and company. Come!"
© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
“The peak efficiency of knowledge and strategy is to make conflict unnecessary.”
Source: The Art of War
“The peak is the exact moment when it takes courage to change. Forgetting that nothing is permanent is like throwing yourself into the sea of failure.”
“The peak of a career can only last so long. You go up and you try to maintain it. But, it can only last so long and then you're going to go down.”
“The peak of a man's happiness is to win a victory; winning a victory, in other words, defeating someone or seeing someone else being defeated”
Source: Red-White Love: The Love of Liverpool FC
“The peak of being a fan is a hotdog and a beer and a seat at the game. There's nothing above that. Nothing above it.”
“The peak of empathogens can be characterised as earthly paradise in comparison to the heavenly paradise of LSD and hallucinogens of that category.”
“The peak of happiness is attained when a person has accepted to be what he is.”
Source: Happiness Recipe: Eat and Stay Happy
“The peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself.”
“The peaks of the highest mountains are very frightening, but in the spirit of a mountaineer there is something that constantly feeds his courage: An endless desire to succeed!”
“The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.”
“The pear trees were bare, their limbs spread open like the viscera of a parasol. Stretching into the darkness beyond, the single houses, double houses, and villas were lined up in cramped, neat rows which ran toward the tip of the peninsula. p94”
Source: The Invention of Wings
“The pearl is the queen of gems and the gem of queens.”
“The pearl of patience is to wait for God's perfect time.”
“The pearl of patience is to wait for God's perfect timing.”
“The pearl on my beloved's neck, Afflicted sore the oyster!”
“The Pearl Principle - no inner irritation, no pearl.”
“The pearl whose possession separates man from beast, the pearl which is the rarest find - the best among virtues - is forgiveness.”
“The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart.”
Source: White Oleander
“The Pearly Gates. Am I the only one who finds it odd that Heaven has gates? What kind of neighborhood is Heaven in?”
“The peasant finds no "natural" urgency within himself that will drive him toward Picasso in spite of all difficulties. In the end the peasant will go back to kitsch when he feels like looking at pictures, for he can enjoy kitsch without effort”
Source: Art and Culture: Critical Essays
“The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.”
“The peasant of early modern France inhabited a world of step-mothers and orphans, of inexorable, unending toil, and of brutal emotions, both raw and repressed.The human condition has changed so much since then that we can hardly imagine the way it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty, brutish, and short. This is why we need to reread Mother Goose.”
“The peasant rebellion against collectivization was the most serious episode in popular resistance experienced by the Soviet state after the Russian Civil War. In 1930, more than two million peasants took part in 13,754 mass disturbances. In 1929 and 1930, the OGPU recorded 22,887 "terrorists acts" aimed at local officials and peasant activists, more than 1,100 murders.”
Source: Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance
“The peasant wants only to be left alone to prosper in peace.”
“The peasants are not concerned about ideology: no one can frighten them with stories of the evils of communism. With their property already destroyed, they do not fear that the Communists will take their property. And if one speaks to them of freedom and democracy, they say, "Of what use is freedom and democracy if one is not alive to enjoy them?" So it is clear that the first problem of the Vietnamese peasant is a problem of life itself: how to survive in the midst of all the forces that threaten them; how to cling to life itself.”
Source: Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire
“The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown.”
“The peasants of all lands recognize power and they salute it, whether it's good or evil.”
Source: The Posthuman Dada Guide: tzara and lenin play chess
“The peasants of love pillage the town of my prideful heart until I burn with compassion.”
“The peasants of Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems, so perfumed, as home-made bread used all to be before the war.”
“The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.”
Source: Les Misérables
“The pebbles of knowledge must be bonded together by the cement of experience.”
“The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.”
“The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.”
Source: The Papers of John Marshall: Correspondence, papers, and selected judicial opinions, March 1814-December 1819
“The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.”
Source: Democracy for the Few
“The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays”
Source: Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers
“The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.”
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson
“The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.”
Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Source: The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill
“The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little.”
Source: Logic of the living brain
“The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.”
Source: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
“The peculiar fascination which the speeding train has for us comes from the evident progress it is making toward its definite goal ahead.”
“The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.”
“The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.”
“The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized.”
“The peculiar interest of magic squares and all lusus numerorum in general lies in the fact that they possess the charm of mystery. They appear to betray some hidden intelligence which by a preconceived plan produces the impression of intentional design, a phenomenon which finds its close analogue in nature.”
“The peculiar need to write is increased, it seems, rather than allayed with practice.”
“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.
As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.
Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.
Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.
School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.
Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.
The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.
Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.
But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.
Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.”
Source: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
“The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.”
“The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world.”