Flanders Quotes

• The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!

  Michael Flanders

  Jobs, Comforting, Purpose

  84 Copy quote

• The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below

  John McCrae

  Gun, Singing, Poppies

  'In Flanders Fields' (1915)

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Flanders fields the poppies blow.

  John McCrae

  Blow, Fields, Poppies

  "In Flanders Fields" l. 1 (1915)

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below.

  John McCrae

  Blow, Gun, Sky

  Punch 8 Dec. 1915 "In Flanders Fields"

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

• We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
  In Flanders fields.

  John McCrae

  Lying, Sunset, Dawn

  John McCrae (2015). “In Flanders Fields and Other Poems”, p.20, Dundurn

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• If God had intended us to fly, he'd have never given us railways.

  Michael Flanders

  Given, Railway, Ifs

  13 Copy quote

• A Bradypus or Sloth am I, / I live a life of ease, / Contented not to do or die / But idle as I please.

  Michael Flanders

  Sloth, Ease, Indolence

  7 Copy quote

• January brings the snow / Makes your feet and fingers glow / February's ice and sleet / Freeze the toes right off your feet / Welcome March with wintry wind / Would thou wer't not so unkind / April brings the sweet spring showers / On and on for hours and hours.

  Michael Flanders

  Sweet, Spring, Ice

  8 Copy quote

• Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not.

  Michael Flanders

  Mean, Sincerity, Sincere

  "Song: "The Reluctant Cannibal"". 1991.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don't understand science; they can't talk to us because they don't understand anything else, poor dears.

  Michael Flanders

  World, Able, Today

  6 Copy quote

• I watched the video [ with my first commercial] when I was 20, and in the video, there are two families. The first family is this smiling blond Partridge family, a Californian/Aryan kind of thing, all playing guitars, all singing together and harmonizing. And then, there's my family - and in my family, it starts with my mom saying that she feels like a drill sergeant sometimes, and she's yelling at one of my brothers to stop hitting another one of my brothers. It's just like, "Great, we're that family." It felt a little Simpsons versus Flanders.

  Mara Wilson

  Mom, Brother, Yelling

  Source: www.avclub.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under the tropic is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke.

  Edmund Waller

  Art, Yoke, Language

  'Upon the Death of the Lord Protector' l. 21

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the war (WWI) finally ended it was necessary for both sides to maintain, indeed even to inflate, the myth of sacrifice so that the whole affair would not be seen for what it was: a meaningless waste of millions of lives. Logically, if the flower of youth had been cut down in Flanders, the survivors were not the flower: the dead were superior to the traumatized living. In this way, the virtual destruction of a generation further increased the distance between the old and the young, between the official and the unofficial.

  Robert Hughes

  Distance, War, Flower

  9 Copy quote

• Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings.

  Martin Filler

  New York, Writing, Islands

  8 Copy quote

• The nice thing about the queen of Flanders' daughter, had been that she did not laugh at him. A lot of people laughed at you when you went after the Questing Beast - and never caught it - but Piggy never laughed. She seemed to understand at once how interesting it was, and made several sensible suggestions about the way to trap it. Naturally, one did not pretend to be clever or anything, but it was nice not to be laughed at. One was doing one's best.

  T. H. White

  Daughter, Queens, Clever

  T. H. White (2011). “The Once and Future King”, p.248, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

  H. H. Asquith

  War, Army, Wire

  29 Copy quote

• Let me tell you, though - there’s a huge difference between Flanders and Paris–Roubaix. They’re not even close to the same. In one, the cobbles are used every day by the cars, and kept up, and stuff like that. The other one - it’s completely different … The best I could do would be to describe it like this - they plowed a dirt road, flew over it with a helicopter, and then just dropped a bunch of rocks out of the helicopter! That’s Paris–Roubaix. It’s that bad - it’s ridiculous.

  Chris Horner

  Paris, Differences, Rocks

  7 Copy quote

• By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

  Friedrich Engels

  Agreement, Civilization, Historical

  "Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire.

  James Connolly

  Eye, Men, Hands

  James Connolly (1988). “Collected Works: Labour and Easter Week”

  102 Copy quote

  Show source

• You have sent me a Flanders mare.

  Henry VIII of England

  Mares, Women Bashing

  201 Copy quote

• In later years, it was common, and I was guilty in this respect, to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the Great War, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland.

  Sean Lemass

  Memories, War, Believe

  13 Copy quote