Blue National

Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or national:

    “At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon
    Began, the return to phantomerei, if not
    To phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way:
    One imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green,
    At twelve, as green as ever they would be.
    The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)