Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ishmael Quotes

Ishmael Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Ishmael.

Ishmael Quotes

“In the morning, Junior would remember. With the first gray light of dawn, the verses would come to him with the searing sharpness of his headache, emblazoned on his eyes in needlepoints. He would remember exactly. And think to himself, It wasn't so simple as Paul made it in Galatians. In the morning, Junior would remember Ishmael, and the mercies God showed him, like an apology for making him in the first place.”

BibleIshmael
Book:Children of Promise
Create image

“Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will America say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia confess, or Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonoured, have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a thread. Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour, your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours, the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs. Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthem full of blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp.”

ChurchMercyChaosPalestineNationRevoltLawlessIshmaelIsraël
Book:Book of Mercy
Create image

“. . . they forgot about him, which of course doesn't mean he was absent from reality, because he remained there as well, as he went indefatigably between America and Asia, Africa and Europe, it's just that the connection between him and the world was broken, and he became, in this manner, forgotten, invisible, and with this he remained once and for all completely solitary . . .”

SolitudeAloneSolitaryTravelerAlienationWandererIshmaelPeripatetic
Book:The World Goes On
Create image

“I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.”

FriendshipFamilyConnectionIshmaelQueequegIt S Gay Lads
Book:Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Create image

“Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry.”

IdeasFatherJesusCenturySonHolySixWorshipIslamEastGhostIslamicTranquilityMosesDisturbedMuhammadAbrahamHoly GhostIdolatryArabiaSectsTrinityIshmael
Author:Napoleon Bonaparte
Create image