11th Century Quotes

“It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.

This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Ah, my Belovéd, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past Regret and future Fears.”
― Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“All Romani dialects – about 60 in all - contain Armenian words, proof if you will that the Lom Bosha passed through Armenia in the early 11th century, trading spices along the Great Silk Road, that network of ancient trade routes connecting China with the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The Romani traded Armenian carpets, silk, dyes, lapis lazuli and tin, and it’s no surprise that five capitals of Armenia are on The Great Silk Road.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“I'll be damned if I know anything of civil law! I'm at ease in this life: I nibble fruitlessly on pastries, I nod off all the time, I drink, I indulge my belly – I am totally into this. Constantly, before all else, I am terrified of hell.”
― Egbert of Liège, The Well-Laden Ship

“No powerful nation can truly last forever, no matter how inpersanistic”
― Eiríka Krogsæter

“A nation built from the flames of another mustn't last long”
― Eiríka Krogsæter

“Better to have loved and lost than to never loved at all”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“Sometimes the right thing to do is the last thing you want to do”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“To be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“The individuality of man is defined only by how hard he will try”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“Even in my dreams I can scheme a way to lose her mind”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“Time is always in limited supply”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“Time and time again we will find ourselves standing at the gate if our thoughts deciding not to act”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“Time and time again we will find ourselves standing at the gate of our thoughts deciding not to act”
― Amber May Lin Kay

“I told you I love you, not so you say it back, but so you know it's true”
― Amber May Lin Kay