Famous quotes containing the words hall, oates, years, sacred and/or songs:
“Her cabined, ample spirit,
It fluttered and failed for breath.
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“The worst cynicism: a belief in luck”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“For them it’s out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles; teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time; to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading; to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet; and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)