Continents Quotes - Page 21

• AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Funny, Country, Lying

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.16, 谷月社

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those new regions [America] which we found and explored with the fleet . . . we may rightly call a New World . . . a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.

  Amerigo Vespucci

  Animal, Europe, America

  Mundus Novus (1503) (translation by G. T. Northup)

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• May this continent, the last explored by humankind, be the first one to be spared by humankind.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Funny, Animal, May

  13 Copy quote

• I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union.

  William S. Burroughs

  Circles, Design, Magic

  4 Copy quote

• Entire new continent can emerge from the ocean in the time it takes for a Web page to show up on your screen. Contrary to what you may have heard, the Internet does not operate at the speed of light; it operates at the speed of the DMV.

  Dave Barry

  Ocean, Light, Doe

  Dave Barry (1996). “Dave Barry in Cyberspace”, Crown Pub

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.

  George Mikes

  Funny, Humorous, Two

  George Mikes (1986). “How to be a Brit: The Classic Bestselling Guide”, p.50, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean their living standards are slashed through enforced austerity or their taxes are used to bail out governments on the other side of the continent.

  David Cameron

  Taken, Mean, Government

  "The speech that was the start of the end of David Cameron". Bloomberg speech, www.independent.co.uk. January 2013.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

  Jack Kerouac

  New York, Crazy, Clouds

  4 Copy quote

• Why is it that some Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, as missionaries? What on earth impels them? It is not in order to commend a civilization, an institution or an ideology, but rather a person, Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be unique.

  John Stott

  Christian, Jesus, Believe

  John Stott (2012). “The Incomparable Christ”, p.9, SPCK

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down ― the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried.

  Henry Miller

  Crazy, Men, Our World

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.

  Jon Stewart

  Rights, Long, Relief

  4 Copy quote

• Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where all is correct. But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion." Nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will be more perilous.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Crazy, Lying, Fall

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.95, A&C Black

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky,is where we run out of continent.

  Joan Didion

  Running, Loss, Sky

  Joan Didion (1968). “Slouching towards Bethlehem”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us.

  Diane Setterfield

  Mother, Father, Moving

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.

  Vera Nazarian

  Moving, Winter, Glasses

  9 Copy quote

• She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Prayer, Sea, Sky

  Carol Ann Duffy (2009). “Mrs. Scrooge: A Christmas Poem”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

  Kristin Hannah

  Past, Balance, Sometimes

  Kristin Hannah (2014). “The Kristin Hannah Collection: Volume 2: Winter Garden, Night Road, Home Front”, p.216, St. Martin's Griffin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Government, Self, Data

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.444, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Confused, Civilization, Progress

  Peter Matthiessen (2000). “The Peter Matthiessen Reader: Nonfiction, 1959-1991”, Vintage

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The earth does not need new continents, but new men.

  Jules Verne

  Men, Doe, Needs

  Jules Verne (2013). “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: (Annotated)(Unabridged)”, p.133, Baen Publishing Enterprises

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?

  Lauren DeStefano

  Ocean, Moving, Clouds

  10 Copy quote

• Kallor said: "I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?" "Yes," said Caladan Brood, "you never learn."

  Steven Erikson

  Strong, Children, Army

  Steven Erikson (2009). “Gardens Of The Moon: (Malazan Book Of The Fallen 1)”, p.323, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

  Jared Diamond

  Real, Animal, Axes

  5 Copy quote

• Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

  Thomas Paine

  Islands, Supposing That, Care

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.40

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What Churchill described as the twin marauders of war and tyranny have been almost entirely banished from our continent. Today, hundreds of millions dwell in freedom, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the Western Approaches to the Aegean.

  David Cameron

  War, Today, Twins

  David Cameron's Speech about his plans for a referendum on British membership of the European Union, www.theguardian.com. January 23, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source