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Velvet Quotes

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Velvet Quotes

“Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.”

“My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant--it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it.”

“All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing better to expect.”

“I got the breaks. Starting from nowhere in the corn belt, I helped edit a country weekly, then was jack-of-all-departments on an obscure daily, so that when I arrived in a big city everything I tackled in the line of column conducting and syndicate peddling and playwriting had to bring promotion, because I had no social standing which could be endangered, no reputation to toss away and no pride which might suffer a setback. Everything I acquired had to be velvet. You cannot lose your silver spoon if you are brought up on pewter.”

“I will tell you what this people need, with regard to preaching; you need, figuratively, to have it rain pitchforks, tines downwards, from this pulpit, Sunday after Sunday. Instead of the smooth, beautiful, sweet, still, silk-velvet-lipped preaching, you should have sermons like peals of thunder, and perhaps we then can get the scales from our eyes.”

“That's the words: "So I'm back to the velvet underground" - which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff - "back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."”

“It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

“When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights; and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.”

“The virtuous to those mansions go Where pleasures unembitter'd flow, Where, leading up a jocund band, Vigor and Youth dance hand in hand, Whilst Zephyr, with harmonious gales, Pipes softest music through the vales, And Spring and Flora, gaily crown'd, With velvet carpet spread the ground; With livelier blush where roses bloom, And every shrub expires perfume.”

“My family dumplings are sleek and seductive, yet stout and masculine. They taste of meat, yet of flour. They are wet, yet they are dry. They have weight, but they are light. Airy, yet substantial. Earth, air, fire, water; velvet and elastic! Meat, wheat and magic! They are our family glory!”

“Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb; while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes.”

“I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword.”

“In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.”

“It's just an old alley cat that has followed us all the way home. It hasn't a star on its forehead, or a silky satiny coat. No proud tiger stripes, no dainty tread, no elegant velvet throat. It's a splotchy, blotchy city cat, not a pretty cat, a rough little bag of old bones. 'Beauty,' we shall call you. 'Beauty' come in.”

“To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!”

“... the twin concepts of nihilism and the antihero have had it. What began with The Wild One and James "nobody understands me" Dean, ran with increasing vehement negativism up through the Stones and Velvets and Iggy ... [I]t may be time, in spite of all indications to the contrary from the exterior society, to begin thinking in terms of heroes again, of love instead of hate, of energy instead of violence, of strength instead of cruelty, of action instead of reaction.”

“In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, “Why aren't we killing people yet?” And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Call it a “forceful response,” “decisive action” ' whatever. Those are all nice euphemisms for killing people. And the world is a better place because America saw the necessity of putting steel beneath the velvet of those euphemisms.”