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Orkney Quotes

Browse 8 quotes about Orkney.

Orkney Quotes

“Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the deep places of the earth, in the lap of wavelets on the shore, in the breath of the wind. He had learned that there were other kinds of courage. He knew, with deep certainty, that the islands held a new path for him. He need only move forward and find it.”

“I set a line and looked back at the valley. It was like a green open hand among the hills. The cliffs stood near and far, red, gray, black. In the valley chimneys began to smoke, one of them mine. Ingi was up. A green offering hand, our valley, corn-giver, fire-giver, water-giver, keeper of men and beasts. The other hand that fed us was this blue hand of the sea, which was treacherous, which had claws to it, which took more than ever it gave. Today it was peaceable enough. Blue hand and green hand lay together, like praying, in the summer dawn.”

“What astonishes us about Earl Patrick's castle works is the extraordinary beauty and refinement of their architecture. At all of them it is obvious that he employed the same architect. And it is equally obvious that this architect was an artist of the first rank, with a scholarly ans sensitive acquaintance and understanding contemporary design, particularly in France. Yet this group of buildings, so beautiful and so refined, were erected to serve the tyrannical purposes of the worst scoundrel of his time in Scotland.”