Gilded Quotes - Page 3

• A gilded No is more satisfactory than a dry Yes.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Dry

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.40, Shambhala Publications

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• The clothes that fire up my emotions are colorful and "different" pieces. My eye still picks out gilded-cloque glamour from among Burberry's streamlined trench coats or a hand-printed coat from Dries Van Noten.

  Suzy Menkes

  Eye, Fire, Hands

  "Suzy Menkes: If Clothes Could Talk". Interview with Suzy Menkes, www.harpersbazaar.com. May 28, 2013.

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• That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far reaching ruin

  John Ruskin

  May, Ruins, Wealth

  John Ruskin (2015). “Unto This Last”, p.253, John Ruskin

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• A good deal of philanthropy arises in general from mere vanity and love of distinction gilded over to others and to themselves with some show of benevolent sentiment.

  Walter Scott

  Vanity, And Love, Philanthropy

  Sir Walter Scott (1833). “The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott: With a Biography, and His Last Additions and Illustrations”

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• Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd,
  Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave;
  For though we like it, as a forward child,
  'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.

  William Davenant

  Wise, Children, Ambition

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• The vicissitudes of life resemble one of those gilded balls seen in a fountain. Thrown up by the force of the water, it flies up and down - now at the top, catching the rays of the sun, now cast into the depths, then again shooting up, sometimes so high that it escapes altogether, and falls to the ground.

  Lady Randolph Churchill

  Life, Fall, Water

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• Like his admirer Samuel Beckett, Johnson locates his voices among conditions of such deprivation that even the most miserable memories are gilded by comparison: this paradox fuels equal parts of comedy and pathos. Never sentimental, at once corrosive and elegiac, House Mother Normal is a remarkable achievement.

  James Marcus

  Mother, Memories, Voice

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• No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace.

  Edward Everett Hale

  Country, Gratitude, Peace

  "A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time Vol. V". Book by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, 1888.

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• And the sun had on a crown
  Wrought of gilded thistledown,
  And a scarf of velvet vapor
  And a raveled rainbow gown;
  And his tinsel-tangled hair
  Tossed and lost upon the air
  Was glossier and flossier
  Than any anywhere.

  James Whitcomb Riley

  Hair, Rainbow, Tangled

  James Whitcomb Riley (2010). “Riley Child-Rhymes with Hoosier Pictures”, p.106, Indiana University Press

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• Yea, Paris is a festive ton -- a festive Ton for all! Skate o'er on joy -- Thin crust of gilded, polished joy! What matters it if Hell's beneath?

  D. H. Lawrence

  What Matters, Paris, Joy

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• Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.

  Bill Moyers

  Father, Mean, Responsibility

  "For America's Sake". Speech on December 12, 2006. "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers, p. 17, 2008.

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• A market economy cannot thrive absent the well-being of average people, even in a gilded age.

  Jaron Lanier

  Average, People, Economy

  Jaron Lanier (2014). “Who Owns the Future?”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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• It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes and roofs of villages, on woodland crests and their aerial neighborhoods of nests deserted, on the curtained window-panes of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes and harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Country, Children, Sleep

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.1002, Delphi Classics

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• I could not but smile to think in what out-of-the-way corners genius produces her bantlings! And the Muses, those capricious dames, who, forsooth, so often refuse to visit palaces, and deny a single smile to votaries in splendid studies, and gilded drawing-rooms--what holes and burrows will they frequent to lavish their favors on some ragged disciple!

  Washington Irving

  Thinking, Drawing, Dames

  Washington Irving, Charles Neider (1998). “The Complete Tales of Washington Irving”, p.275, Da Capo Press

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• In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water.

  Brendan Gill

  Water, Gods And Goddesses, Shapes

  1982 Quoted in Laura Rosen Top of the City: NewYork's hidden rooftop world (1990), foreword.

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• Happy those early days when I Shined in my Angel-infancy. Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back (at that short space) Could see a glimpse of His bright face. When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity.

  Henry Vaughan

  Flower, Angel, First Love

  Silex Scintillans "The Retreat" l. 1 (1650 - 1655)

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• Die for adultery! No: The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight

  William Shakespeare

  Sight, Doe, Wrens

  'King Lear' (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [110]

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• Swift flies our time on pinions fleet, Like vapours on the breeze; The transient bliss we now call sweet, The passing moments seize. The gilded joy, the present hour, Soon wing themselves away; Departing like the fading flower That pleas'd us Yesterday.

  William Muir

  Sweet, Flower, Wings

  William Muir (1818). “Poems on Various Subjects”, p.91

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• Let us prefer the lonely cottage, while blest with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery.

  Joseph Warren

  Lonely, Liberty, Cottages

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• Ah! fraudful malice! how shall wisdom's care Escape the poison of thy gilded snare!

  William Julius Mickle

  Poison, Care, Snares

  Luís de Camões, William Julius Mickle (1778). “The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: An Epic Poem”, p.53

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• The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict.

  Charles Dickens

  Class, Ordinary, Citizens

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• It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated.

  J. Maarten Troost

  Appreciated, Deprivation, American Life

  J. Maarten Troost (2006). “Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu”, p.8, Broadway Books

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• My dear, dear Lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away Men are but gilded loan or painted clay... Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Dear Lord, Honor

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• Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Sunset, Night

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

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• Cages come in lots of different colors and shapes. Some are gilded, while others have a slamming door. But golden handcuffs are still handcuffs.

  Amy Harmon

  Doors, Color, Different

  FaceBook post by Amy Harmon from Sep 22, 2014

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