Defining Empty Sums

Famous quotes containing the words defining, empty and/or sums:

    Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.
    Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)

    Hast ever ben in Omaha
    Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
    Where four strong horses scarce can draw
    An empty wagon through the town?
    Where sand is blown from every mound
    To fill your eyes and ears and throat;
    Where all the steamboats are aground,
    And all the houses are afloat?...
    If not, take heed to what I say,
    You’ll find it just as I have found it;
    And if it lies upon your way
    For God’s sake, reader, go around it!
    —For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
    Jewish proverb, quoted in Claud Cockburn, Cockburn Sums Up, epigraph (1981)