Golden Age Quotes

“The water far below was black in the shadow of the ship. A plank creaked. She froze. No noisy jump. It would have to be a dive. Head down into darkness. She’d never dived at night.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“But  Phidias was better than most men since he made beautiful sculptures. He was even making one of her—well, he called it “Athena,” but anyone could see it looked like her.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn't ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.”
― Elizabeth Coatsworth, Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography

“Brilliant Muslim scholars applied Qur’anic insights to spark the medieval Islamic Golden Age filled with a mind-boggling outpouring of creativity in science, math, medicine, fashion, philosophy, economics, mental health therapy, architecture, art, and beyond.”
― Mohamad Jebara, The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy

“Do you know that high fever which invades us in our cold suffering, that aching for a land we do not know, that anguish of curiosity? There is a country which resembles you, where everything is beautiful, sumptuous, authentic, still, where fantasy has built and adorned a western China, where life is sweet to breathe, where happiness is wed to silence. That is where to live, that is where to die!"

- Invitation to a Voyage”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen and Wine and Hashish

“The rules of this house are written in water. I must either sink or swim.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“I feel separated and cut off from the world around me, but occasionally I've felt that it was really a part of me, and I hope I'll have that feeling again, and that next time it won't go away. That's a dim, misty outline of the story that's told so often, of how man once lived in a golden age or a garden of Eden or the Hesperides ... how that world was lost, and how we some day may be able to get it back again. ... This story of the loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.”
― Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

“The men and women of the Golden Age, Hesiod wrote, lived in an eternal spring, for hundreds of years, always youthful, fed on acorns from a great oak, on wild fruits, on honey. In the Silver Age, which is less written about, the people lived for 100 years as children, without growing up, and then quite suddenly aged and died. The Fabians and the social scientists, writers and teachers saw, in a way earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences. They saw that they were neither dolls, nor toys, nor miniature adults. They saw, many of them, that children needed freedom, needed not only to learn, and be good, but to play and be wild. But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for a perpetual childhood, a Silver Age.”
― A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book

“Old Bette Davis movies are all she watches now. There’s one where Bette Davis’s character goes blind, and as the credits rolled my mother said, ‘Must be what they mean when they talk about Bette Davis eyes.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“But when Aragorn arose all that beheld him gazed in silence, for it seemed to
them that he was revealed to them now for the first time. Tall as the sea-kings of old, he
stood above all that were near; ancient of days he seemed and yet in the flower of
manhood; and wisdom sat upon his brow, and strength and healing were in his hands,
and a light was about him. And then Faramir cried:
'Behold the King!'
And in that moment all the trumpets were blown, and the King Elessar went
forth and came to the barrier, and Húrin of the Keys thrust it back; and amid the music
of harp and of viol and of flute and the singing of clear voices the King passed through
the flower-laden streets, and came to the Citadel, and entered in; and the banner of the Tree and the Stars was unfurled upon the topmost tower, and the reign of King Elessar
began, of which many songs have told.
In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of
its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were
wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets were paved with white marble; and the Folk
of the Mountain laboured in it, and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there; and all
was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the
laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the
ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the
glory of the years that were gone.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“It's amazing how lonely a place where you were once happy can become.”
― Kathleen Tessaro, Rare Objects

“An intellectual golden age produces sages. An intellectual dark age produces fools. An intellectual dark age that fancies itself golden produces intellectuals.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“They really knew how to work this edge, the Dutch painters―ripeness sliding into rot. The fruit’s perfect but it won’t last, it’s about to go. And see here especially,” she said, reaching over my shoulder to trace the air with her finger, “this passage―the butterfly.” The underwing was so powdery an delicate it looked as if the color would smear if she touched it. “How beautiful he plays it. Stillness with a tremble of movement.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life―a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple―the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last―it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer―there it is.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Nature gave the same form to all
And warms each one with the same heat
Using reason, we follow her inclination
To give equal opportunity to our fellow humans
Who are our brothers.

None should seek felicity
To the detriment of his neighbor.
Depriving oneself of a pleasure to offer it to others
Is the sign of a noble heart
And the expression of wisdom.

Thus nature and reason go hand in hand
And ask us to help one another
For the good of all and by common agreement
We share
In the feast of life.”
― Roxanne Moreil, L'âge d'or. Volume 1

“I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must weep until the Eternal gates swing open.”
― W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old: Early Poems and Fairy Tales

“Take care, take care. This city thrives! It's money gives you wings to soar. But it is a yoke on your shoulders and you would do well to take note of the bruise around your neck.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“Believe it or don't believe it, Madame. But my feet are tired too. Bloody tired. Like a dead man's.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“The ink was secret nectar, for Marin isn't married.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“White Christian America had its golden age in the 1950s, after the hardships and victories of World War Ii and before the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. June Cleaver was its mother, Andy Griffith was its sheriff, Norman Rockwell was its artist. and Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale were its ministers.”
― Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America

“There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.”
― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

“I marry in the aged of the golden age. I adore taking such risks, it does not matter if any companion throws me on the street, but I do not stop, I will try next. It is the determination of my life.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“It was when a society became most distressed and antiquated that it would recreate an overwhelming fantasy of some Golden Age, a time when all was great and glorious, when people were more noble and causes more magnificent and honorable.”
― Greg Bear, Foundation and Chaos

“and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty;
and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“I married at the age of the golden age. I adore taking such risks, it does not matter if any companion throws me on the street, but I do not stop; I will try next. It is the determination of my life.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“What if I tell you that in our time, with only the help of three devices, an encyclopedia, a sheet of paper and a pencil, as in a game we can solve all the riddles of our History in a total perspective, down to the abyssal clarity? – from the "Ages of Man" to the last Golden Age of mankind, the great prophecies and the mystery of Evil. So that everything that was doubtful becomes irrefutable: the Apocalypse! – You think this impossible? – I tell you: you don’t know the Aleph. And you cannot discern the times. Yet the Aleph and the New Order of the Times are one and the same.”
― Florian Dreveskracht, Novus Ordo: Eine Einführung in die Apokalypse oder Geometrie der Endzeit

“There was never a golden age. Golden age for the rich and privileged is always hell for the poor and unprivileged.”
― Shon Mehta, Lair Of The Monster

“Prosperity as a Spiritual Journey:
At the heart of building prosperity through spiritual endeavors lies the recognition that abundance is not merely a material pursuit but a spiritual journey".”
― Thiago Zaupa, Ultimate Code: Building A Spirit Army

“As individuals delve into the shamanic art of teleportation, they unlock the profound potential to navigate the interconnected web of existence with the fluidity of spirit. The constraints that confine the physical body dissolve, and practitioners find themselves traversing landscapes with a freedom unbound by earthly limitations. The journey becomes an exploration of the boundless nature of consciousness, where the spirit moves effortlessly through the tapestry of reality.”
― Thiago Zaupa, The Ultimate Code - Shamanic Initiation: Unveiling the Path to Shamanic Mastery and the Golden Age

“Cleopatra earned a second back-handed tribute: In her wake, a golden age of women dawned in Rome. High-born wives and sisters suddenly enjoyed a role in public life. They interceded with ambassadors, counseled husbands, traveled abroad, commissioned temples and sculptures. They become more visible in art and in society. They joined Cleopatra in the Forum. No Roman would ever attain the exalted status or enjoy the unprecedented privileges granted Livia and Octavia, which they owed to a foreigner, to whom they served as counterweight. Livia compiled a fat portfolio of properties, one that would include lands in Egypt and palm groves in Judea. Octavia would go down in history as the un-Cleopatra, supremely modest, prudent, and pious.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life