Clouds

Famous quotes containing the word clouds:

    Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt
    The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breath,
    Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,
    And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.
    Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)