Popular quotes about Centuries! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Mark TwainWe're living in momentous times, Garion. The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days. The world, I'm told, is like that. Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again." I think that if I had my choice, I'd prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glumly. Oh, no," Silk said, his lips drawing back in a ferretlike grin. "Now's the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.
David EddingsI realize that my ministry would someday come to an end. I am only one in a glorious chain of men and women God has raised up through the centuries to build Christ's church and take the Gospel everywhere.
Billy GrahamIn the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.
Letty Cottin PogrebinWhy vampires? You write centuries-long family sagasโwhy not write historical epics without any hint of the supernatural?" "Well, that would be boring, wouldn't it?" "Yeah, God only knows what Tolstoy was thinking.
Carrie VaughnThe symbolic display seen by the abductees is identical to the type of initiation ritual or astral voyage that is imbedded in the [occult] traditions of every culture...the structure of abduction stories is identical to that of occult initiation rituals...the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the [occult] entities that were described in centuries past.
Jacques ValleeI found myself wondering, what would it be like to have a strange woman living in your home, nursing your child? My resulting research into the private lives of women in the 18th and 19th centuries inspired me and provided the backbone for [Lady of Milkweed Manor] novel.
Julie KlassenWhen the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.
Charles LyellThe Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself.
Joscelyn GodwinThe genius of the corporation as a business form, and the reason for its remarkable rise over the last three centuries , was - and is - its capacity to combine the capital, and thus the economic power, of unlimited numbers of people.
Joel BakanUniversity, as institutions, pre-date the information economy by many centuries and are not for-profit cultural entities, whose reason of existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization not just download data into student skulls.
Bruce SterlingArchitecture traditionally has been the slowest of art forms. It was not unusual for great cathedrals to take centuries to complete, with stylistic changes from Romanesque to Gothic or Renaissance to Baroque as common as the addition of chapels or spires. But because the function remained the same, the form could be flexible and its growth organic.
Martin FillerI look forward to the time when the churches come to celebrate and honour the work of animal protection as an imperative arising from their belief in the Creator and in the gospel of the crucified. After all, similarly remarkable things have happened, for example, the growing consensus among churches that the environment should be cared for and protected as a Christian duty--an astonishing turnaround when one considers the prevailing dualism in previous centuries, which expressly discouraged concern for "earthly" matters as distinct from "spiritual" ones.
Andrew LinzeyFor anarchy to succeed or simply to advance towards its success it must be conceived not only as a lighthouse which illuminates and attracts, but as something possible and attainable, not in centuries to come, but in a relatively short time and without relying on miracles.
Errico MalatestaPerhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.
Matthew Tobin AndersonWe have introduced a rule of law. That never existed for centuries in this country [South Africa], especially under the apartheid regime, when the law was reduced into disrepute.
Nelson MandelaReligion was made to order to "save the world," to use a phrase Christians use so much, but we really haven't been doing a good job of it for centuries. It's heartbreaking really.
Richard RohrCanadians were the first anti-Americans, and the best. Canadian anti-Americanism, just as the country's French-English duality, has for two centuries been the central buttress of our national identity.
Jack GranatsteinWhether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.
Calvin CoolidgeI held her wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred, centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted. there was no creature living as foul as I and all my poems were false.
Charles BukowskiThe hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world. I fear America is teetering towards tyranny.
Jim DeMintThe only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
C. S. LewisMake a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
Alan WattsThe fact that science led me to spiritual insight is appropriate because the latest discoveries in physics and cell research are forging new links between the worlds of Science and Spirit. These realms were split apart in the days of Descartes centuries ago. However, I truly believe that only when Spirit and Science are reunited will we be afforded the means to a better world.
Bruce H. LiptonHow much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?
Pablo NerudaA central feature of the ceremonial associated with Mithras was the taurobolium, the ritual slaughter of a bull which commemorated and repeated Mithras' primeval act. The initiate was baptized in its blood, partaking of its life-giving properties. It may be noted that this part of the ceremonial closely resembled the ritual of the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother of Asia Minor, which had been brought to Rome three centuries before Christ.
Ninian SmartAction and adventure on land and sea-you can't ask for more. But Robert Kurson raises the ante in Pirate Hunters with an array of mystery and a fleet of colorful characters spanning four centuries. This is a great summer read!
Michael ConnellyIf Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.
Frances Hodgson BurnettWe might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?
Paul DaviesPerhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising. The rules which we make up at the beginning seem ordinary and inevitable, but it is impossible to foresee their consequences. These have only been found out by long study, extending over many centuries. Much of our knowledge is due to a comparatively few great mathematicians such as Newton, Euler, Gauss, or Riemann; few careers can have been more satisfying than theirs. They have contributed something to human thought even more lasting than great literature, since it is independent of language.
Edward Charles TitchmarshThe Ripe FigNow that You live here in my chest,anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.And those other images,which have enchanted peoplelike porcelain dolls from China,which have made men and women weepfor centuries, even those have changed now.What used to be pain is a lovely benchwhere we can rest under the roses.A left hand has become a right.A dark wall, a window.A cushion in a shoe heel,the leader of the community!Now silence. What we sayis poison to someand nourishing to others.What we say is a ripe fig,but not every bird that flieseats figs.
RumiLiving becomes a glorious experience only when it is sweetened by tolerance and love. Willingness to compromise with others ways of living and cooperation in common tasks, these make living happy and fruitful. Certain modes of behaviour have been laid down and proved beneficial by centuries of practice.
Sathya Sai BabaThe workers and peasants must, as quickly as possible, seize everything that was created by them over many centuries and use it for their own interests.
Maria NikiforovaAt the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.
Jawaharlal NehruThe improvement of forest trees is the work of centuries. So much more the reason for beginning now.
George Perkins MarshOften the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.
Stefan ZweigCenturies from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.
Werner HerzogFor centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieWhen has the world seen a phenomenon like this? a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine.
Horace BushnellIf the Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalistical Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.
John AdamsPsychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds.
Thomas KeatingTurn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading good books. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also of our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body. We get some sense of perspective reading such books. Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live.
Dorothy Day