Fifty

Famous quotes containing the word fifty:

    War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.
    Milan Kundera (b. 1929)

    I asked my mother for fifty cents
    To see the elephant jump the fence.
    He jumped so high he reached the sky,
    And didn’t get back till the Fourth of July.
    —Unknown. I Asked My Mother (l. 1–4)

    Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.
    Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)