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Bards Quotes

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Bards Quotes

“...the trees are talking ravenese to each other. And the trees are no longer leaved but feathered, there is not bracken but fur underneath me. And everything is beating like Drake’s drum, bringing down the children of the Milky Way. The trees are bones now and thinking big thoughts like spasms through me. Some trees are covered in owl feathers some rook and sparrowhawk. Their roots are big, scaled claws. In the early morning I find I have something in me that wasn’t there before. Something is in me like a mineral, or splint of bison bone or a spirit light. It is these words: "Inhabit the time and genesis of your original home.”

MythologyBards
Book:Bardskull
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“It was what the gleeman had called Plain Chant, those nights beside the fire on the ride north. Stories, he said, were told in three voices, High Chant, Plain Chant, and Common, which meant simply telling it the way you might tell your neighbor about your crop. Thom told stories in Common, but he did not bother to hide his contempt for the voice.”

CommonContemptTelling StoriesWheel Of TimeVoicesWotBardsChantThom MerillinThomdril Merillin
Book:The Eye of the World
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“Maybe the Bards function, and the function of story in general, is to constantly recreate us by re-observing us. The storyteller holds up a mirror to us, and he or she has great power to show us in a flattering or insulting manner. As we re-observe ourselves (and the author believes we are frequently distorting the image we have of ourselves) through the nightly news, advertising media (magazines, billboards, advertisements, and so forth), television, and film, we are the consciousness that collapses the wave function and recreates ourselves.”

Self ImageBardsSelf ObservationWe Recreate Ourselves
Book:666: Connection with Crowley
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“These great Nordic incursions were to result in the marginalization of the once semi-autonomous Pictish, English and North British Princedoms that had preceded the arrival of the Norsemen on British soil. And, as they disappeared beneath the onslaught of the Viking Hosts, the ancient bardic traditions, which had once been succoured by these previously distinct ethnic groups, gradually became intertwined with one another as a result of widespread migration, inter-marriage and cross fertilization; the ultimate legacy of which was the perpetuation of the fragmentary remains of the ancient traditions which were to come to adorn the ballads that the Laird of Abbotsford himself collected, amongst the eighteenth century descendants of these ancient peoples.”

BritainVikingsBardsEthnic GroupsBritonsWalter ScottPictsAnglo Saxon EnglandBorder Ballads
Book:The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrel Tradition
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“Josh Bard is a catcher with excellent defensive tools and someone ... whose best days are ahead of him. He's not coming off his best [offensive] season, but we still think there is some ceiling on him. He has outstanding makeup and calls a good game. [He's] a solid receiver with a plus arm, and he's going to be coming to camp with a chance to open some eyes.”

ThinkingStillsEyeGamesChanceArmsToolsSeasonsExcellentMakeupPlusCampsOffensiveOutstandingCeilingsReceiverCatchersJoshBards
Author:Theo Epstein
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“And so they lived many happy years, and the promised tasks were accomplished. Yet long afterward, when all had passed away into distant memory, there were many who wondered whether King Taran, Queen Eilonwy, and their companions had indeed walked the earth, or whether they had been no more than dreams in a tale set down to beguile children. And, in time, only the bards knew the truth of it.”

YearsChildrenLongDreamEarthMemoriesKingsTasksTalesQueensAccomplishedCompanionPassed AwayBards
Book:The High King
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“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.”

WayGivingHas BeensReasonSeemsAgeSchoolArtistCultureInfluenceCenturyEvolutionPeriodsDemandMadPropertyTendenciesCuriousLoudLogicalDividedAbandonedPopeRhymeNoveltyAccuracyPolishedFactionsSensationalBardsGiving WayGeorgians
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Stories ought not to be just little bits of fantasy that are used to wile away an idle hour; from the beginning of the human race stories have been used - by priests, by bards, by medicine men - as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities.”

PeopleMenHumansMeanLittlesHas BeensFactsHelpingStoriesProblemRealityFacesUsedBitsTermHoursRaceHealingFantasyMagicTeachingOughtLittle BitInstrumentsMedicineHuman RacePriestsIdleHelping PeopleUnbearableBards
Author:Joan Aiken
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“What so pure, which envious tongues will spare? Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair, With matchless impudence they style a wife, The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life; A bosom serpent, a domestic evil, A night invasion, and a mid-day devil; Let not the wise these sland'rous words regard, But curse the bones of ev'ry living bard.”

NightEvilWiseWifeStylePureDevilFairsRegardDearBonesTongueWitCurseWickedSparesPlagueInvasionBosomsEnviousSerpentBardsImpudence
Book:The Poetical Works of A. Pope, Esq: With an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author
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“Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.”

MayHas BeensWarEndsCountryWholeHumanityProgressPrayingExpectationsTragedyTerrorPityFulfillmentBelovedOur TimeHistoricKindlesVerifyBardsBeloved Country
Book:Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].
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“All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency.”

WorldMatterCommonCivilizationWesternBoardsSanityRepresentativesVersesBlankConsistencyDecencyRelevanceWestern CivilizationProprietyFiringCoherenceBardsCommon DecencyPantyhose
Author:Marvin Mudrick
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“What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.”

MenWritingEndsCertainNamesLostSpeakHeroFamePaperOriginalsDustHillsClimbingPortionsUncertainMidnightWretchedSummitBardsClimbing UpVapour
Book:DON JUAN
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“The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain.”

MenLittlesDiesFameLaysAidsFasterVainSchemesSculptorsDeathlessBards
Book:The Poetical Works of Robert Blair: Containing The Grave, Etc., to which is Prefixed, A Life of the Author, by Robert Anderson, Accompanied by Prints, Designed and Engraved by W. Gardiner
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“This siren, this goat-footed bard, this half human visitor to our age the hag-ridden and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner responsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power.”

HumansAgeEvilExistenceHalfResponsibilityCompanyFinalsWoodsGood And EvilCunningGoatsVisitorsAntiquityEnchantedCelticSirensFlavourBardsPurposelessness
Author:John Maynard Keynes
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“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962”

NeedsHumansHas BeensLiteratureGamesChurchCitiesResponsibilityChangedDutyGrewNeededSpeechDespairSingingLowsEmptyFunctionSpeciesCriticalHallsPaleExclusiveNobelDecemberCaloriesPriesthoodHuman NeedsBanquetsBardsStockholmCity Hall
Book:A Life in Letters
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“the fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.”

StillsWholeFactsNationsFashionAlternativesUnemploymentCoalAngstWoodyMiningBardsCoal Mining
Book:The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies Hicks and White Trash Becames America's Scapegoats
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