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Century Quotes

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Century Quotes

“The library was one more essential in the parade of rooms in a big 18th-century house - and part of the required kit ever afterwards. The important thing was to have the books, not actually read them.”

Important Book Bigs House Rooms Century Essentials Important Things Library Parades Ever After 18th Century

Author:Peter York

“Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.”

People Writing Has Beens Today Past House Memories Marriage Streets Century Fields Difficulty Lips Chiefs Association Echoes English Words

Author:Virginia Woolf

“Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries - or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me - in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate.”

Should Two Age Found House My Own Cases Century Silent Coffee Fancy Halls Outsiders Refuge Should I Unfortunate Heresy Thames Classicism Coffee Houses

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“India lives in several centuries at the same time. Every night outside my house I pass a road gang of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber optic cables to speed up digital revolution. They work by the light of a few candles.”

Light Night House Century Revolution India Lays Speed Digital Candle Every Night Gang Cables Digging Fiber Trenches Laborers Digital Revolution

Author:Arundhati Roy

“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?"”

“I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.”

Writing Children Littles Book Lasts House Fantasy Century Green Series West Favourite Pioneers 19th Century Runaway Laura Wilder Green Gables American West Favourite Book

Author:Tracy Chevalier

“I understand Jacqueline Kennedy has redone the White House in eighteenth-century style. Why, then, I'd fit in perfectly.”

House White Century Style Fit White House American Politics

Author:Barry Goldwater

“Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions - they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate.”

World Wells Looks May Whole Seems House Fantasy Conditions Century Universal Climate Ghost Fancy Nerves Providing Domain Habitat

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded.”

Source: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE - Complete 6 Volumes (Illustrated): Everything You Need to Know about the Biggest Victory of Women’s Rights and Equality in the United States – Written By the Greatest Social Activists, Abolitionists & Suffragists

“The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house. Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.”

Source: Keeping a Rendezvous

“Hereditary monarchy offers numerous advantages for America. It is the only form of government able to unify a heterogeneous people. Thanks to centuries of dynastic marriage, the family tree of every royal house is an ethnic grab bag with something for everybody. We need this badly; America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. We can't go on much longer depending upon disasters like Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage-taking to "bring us together.”

Source: Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye

“... while our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in regard to gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry--the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses,... but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world.”

Men World May Ideas Sometimes Helping Seems House Subjects Century Logic Regard Strikes Contemporary Help Me Dolls Brows Pedestal Chivalry Gallantry

Author:Anna Julia Cooper

“If you go to old houses on Long Island you will see painted Chinese wallpaper, which was big in the 18th century. Throughout history, notable, established families have always tried to link to the 18th century.”

Ifs Long Bigs House Century Chinese Islands Links Notable 18th Century Long Island Old Houses

Author:Catherine Martin

“It did not take Man long-probably not more than a hundred centuries-to discover that all the animals except the dog were impossible around the house. One has but to spend a few days with an aardvark or llama, command a water buffalo to sit up and beg or try to housebreak a moose, to perceive how wisely Man set about his process of elimination and selection.”

Source: James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)

“It was a different social structure. I'd go to [David] Bailey's for dinner at 10:30. There were always girls there and a house full of . . . I don't know, anybody. Cecil Beaton, Diana Cooper . . . And there I am sitting down with these creatures of the 20th century, and it was normal to us.”

Knows Different Girl House Social Century Creatures Normal Sitting Structure Dinner 20th Century Sitting Down Diana Social Structure

Author:Manolo Blahnik

“Until the late-nineteenth-century the House of Commons maintained a formal ban on the reporting of its debates.”

House Century Late Debate Formal Bans Nineteenth Century House Of Commons

Book:Secrecy in Britain

Source: Secrecy in Britain

“I like to take folks back to the turn of the century when people said 'gas cars can never replace horses because you can feed horses at your house, you get along with them, they're nice.'”

People Said Turns House Nice Century Car Horse Folks Gas

Author:Chris Paine

“I can think of few more worthy achievements than keeping a library alive and well for a century. As far as I am concerned, one of the absolute backbones of a free society and a democracy is the library offering access to a treasure house of information to all.”

Thinking Wells I Can House Democracy Alive Century Information Achievement Concerned Absolutes Library Worthy Access Treasure Offering Free Society Backbone

Author:Gillian Roberts

“Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old. Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.”

Way Want Children Long Pain Suffering House Grows Parent Voice Forget Century Adults Skins Embrace Curse Seconds Freeze Another Time Stop Time Hoarse Voice

Author:Alan Lightman

“I love storms and how the whole house shakes. When I was a kid, there would be lots of thunder and lightning storms, and they would knock the electricity out. We had this oil lantern that had been in my grandfather's homestead at the turn of the century, before there even was electricity. He'd bring it down off the top shelf, and we'd always play cards.”

Play Whole Would Be Kids Turns House Century Storm Oil Cards Shakes Grandfather Lightning Electricity Shelves Thunder My Grandfather Lanterns Thunder And Lightning

Author:Feist