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Helen Quotes

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Helen Quotes

“I saw thee once - only once - years ago: I must not say how many - but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in the parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight - Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked - And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All - all expired save thee - save less than thou: Save only divine light in thine eyes - Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them - they were the world to me. I saw but them - saw only them for hours - Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep - How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go - they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me - they lead me through the years. They are my ministers - yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle - My duty, to be saved by their bright fire, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still - two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!”

PoetryHelenEdgar Allan PoeWhitman
Book:The Raven and Other Poems
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“Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.”

ImportanceCookbookHelenCirceCookeryMedea1918Arabian HospitalityBoston Cooking SchoolEnglish ThoroughnessFrench Art
Author:John Ruskin as quoted in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook 1918
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“Maybe she really fell in love with Paris.' 'Maybe she was bored. After ten years shut up in Sparta, I'd want to leave too.' 'Maybe Aphrodite made her.' 'Maybe they'll bring her back with them.' We considered this. 'I think Agamemnon would attack anyway.' 'I think so too. They never even mention her any more.' 'Except in speeches to the men.' We were silent a moment. 'So, which of the suitors would you have picked?' I shoved him, and he laughed.”

LoveRomanceHumourParisAchillesHelenPatroclusThe Song Of AchillesSuitorsAchilles And Patroclus
Book:The Song of Achilles
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“Lucas beobachtete, wie Helen aus dem Haus rannte und in Claires Wagen sprang. Sie sah erschöpft und ausgezehrt aus, aber das Lächeln, mit dem sie Claire begrüßte, was leuchtend und wunderschön und voller Liebe. So war Helen eben. Auch wenn sie selbst litt, hatte sie diese beinahe magische Fähigkeit, anderen ihr Herz zu öffnen. Nur in ihrer Nähe zu sein, reichte bereits aus, dass er sich geliebt fühlte, auch wenn er wusste, dass ihre Liebe nicht mehr ihm galt. An diesem Morgen hatte sie ihn wieder beinahe erwischt, und er hatte mittlerweile den Verdacht, dass er ihr Angst machte. Irgendwie konnte sie ihn immer noch spüren. Lucas musste herausfinden, woran das lag, denn er würde ganz sicher nicht aufhören, sie zu bewachen. Nicht, bis er sicher war, dass Automedon endgültig verschwunden war. Claire und Helen fingen beim Losfahren an, zu singen und verunstalteten einen seiner Lieblingssongs von Bob Marley. Helen sang wirklich grauenhaft. Das war eines der Dinge, die er besonders an ihr mochte. Jedes Mal, wenn sie losjaulte, wie eine getretene Katze, wollte er sie am liebsten in den Arm nehmen und küssen.”

LoveHelenYa RomanceLucasJosephine AngeliniDreamlessStarcrossed LoveGöttlich Verloren
Book:Dreamless
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“Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions: that everything's for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can't. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape's been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it's the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretense that I can't hear them. And I can't, because I'm after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slam of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meaning are lilting and oblique. I don't let on to everyone, but lean close, and I'll whisper: My mothers was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look - my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.”

HouseMorningDancingBurnedOfHelenTroyDoesCounterMargaretAtwood
Book:Morning in the Burned House: Poems
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“She leaned forward, her gaze so intense that Helen wanted to look away. “And I love him more for it. Do you hear me? He was a good man when he went away to the Colonies. He came back an extraordinary man. So many think that bravery is a single act of valor in a field of battle—no forethought, no contemplation of the consequences. An act over in a second or a minute or two at most. What my brother has done, is doing now, is to live with his burden for years. He knows that he will spend the rest of his life with it. And he soldiers on.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze still locked with Helen’s. “That to my mind is what real bravery is.” -Sophia to Helen about Alistair.”

HelenSophiaElizabeth HoytTo Beguile A BeastAlistair
Book:To Beguile a Beast
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“Helen All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.”

HelenIlliad
Book:Collected Poems, 1912-1944
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“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.”

LoveReasonEarthPoetryImaginationFantasyPoetWordsLoverEgyptComprehensionMadmenLunaticHelenDevils
Book:A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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“In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo.”

YearsTwoSelfStoriesAgeSportsSidesChallengesPlayerShareVoteTwentiesMalesGoldenFulfillmentTennisStatus QuoEngagingHeadlinesHeroinesRight To VoteGolden AgeRoaringCounterpartsAmerican WomanSwimmerHelenTennis PlayerGertrudeChallenging The Status QuoSelf FulfillmentRoaring Twenties
Author:Donna de Varona
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“The theater itself is so archaic and old fashioned, that it doesn't really matter to me whether it's on Avenue D or at the Helen Hayes Theater. What's the difference? It's still a very nostalgic form. Also, it means you're knowingly walking into a room where there's actors. I feel it's very embarrassing. Because, you know, they're right there. You always think like, they can see you, and I think it's mortifying, frankly, and I hate to sit near the front, where you feel they actually might see you. It's too ... it's too live.”

ThinkingKnowsFeelsMeanStillsMatterMightFormHateActorsDifferencesRoomsFrontsWalkingI HateTheaterEmbarrassingOld FashionedAvenuesNostalgicHelen
Author:Fran Lebowitz
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“The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain, The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord, Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred, Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored; Great nations blossom above, A slave bows down to a slave.”

NationsLordPrideDiedSlaveSoldierLoyaltyKneesThrownBowsCaptainsGreat NationsHelenDevoteeThoroughbredsMares
Book:The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
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“A decade ago, I really did believe that the average investor could do it himself. I was wrong. I've come to the sad conclusion that only a tiny minority, at most one percent, are capable of pulling it off. Heck, if Helen Young Hayes, Robert Sanborn, Julian Robertson, and the nation's largest pension funds can't get it right, what chance does John Q. Investor have?”

IfsBelieveDoeYoungNationsChanceCapablePercentInvestingAverageDecadesTinyConclusionMinoritiesFundInvestorsPullingPensionHelen
Author:William J. Bernstein
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“The generation now below me were born into a world where if you're a kid with raw talent now, you can roll in and land a lead in a Scorsese film. You don't have to have prove yourself by working up the ranks, doing the classics, and getting the canon under your belt in the way the great Sirs and Dames of mom and dad's generation - the [Ben] Kingsleys and [Helen] Mirrens and [Anthony] Hopkinses and people of that ilk.”

PeopleIfsWorldWayKidsFilmBornGenerationsLandTalentMomDadProveBeltsMom And DadLead InCanonHelenDamesScorseseProving YourselfRaw Talent
Author:Benedict Cumberbatch
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“Helen Rosevere was a British medical missionary in the Congo years ago during an uprising. Her faith was strong and her trust was confident, yet she was raped and assaulted and treated brutally. Commenting later, she said, "I must ask myself a question as if it came directly from the Lord, 'Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?'" What a profound thought. God has trusted each of us with our own set of unfair circumstances and unexplained experiences to deal with. Can we still trust in Him even if He never tells us why?”

IfsYearsSaidStillsAsksStrongDealsLordCircumstancesYears AgoProfoundBritishMedicalTreatedMissionaryTrustedUnfairCongoUprisingHelenUnexplainedTrusting YouProfound Thoughts
Author:Charles R. Swindoll
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