Ivory Quotes

• There is nothing but water in the holy pools. I know, I have been swimming there. All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a word. I know, I have been crying out to them. The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true.

  Kabir

  Book, Swimming, Water

  Kabir (1977). “The Kabir book: forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir”

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• I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

  John Zorn

  Jobs, Ivory Tower, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Pleasant Surprises, Ends, Be Good

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• It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ivory Tower, Games, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, Responsibility, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Elephants are living treasures. Nature's gardeners. Nature's great teachers. Tragically some people don't give a damn. They prefer the dead treasure to the living one. The ivory. We must challenge this so-called 'trade' with all our might and shame on those who would condone it.

  Virginia McKenna

  Teacher, Elephants, People

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• Our daily battles are to get traffickers behind bars, but the war for the fate of elephants is far away from the field and our sweat, it is a war of values vs greed, where more elephants can be killed by a vote than by any gun.

  Ofir Drori

  War, Fate, Gun

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• Seized ivory stocks around Africa are recycled back into illegal trade due to corruption. Ivory stocks should be burnt together with the hopes of traffickers for any "legal" way to allow them to slaughter our elephants.

  Ofir Drori

  Elephants, Together, Way

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• Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

  John Masefield

  Sweet, Home, Wine

  'Cargoes' (1903)

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• The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

  Oscar Wilde

  Fate, Curves, History

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.152, Wordsworth Editions

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• Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-

  Langston Hughes

  God, Faith, Christian

  Langston Hughes (2001). “The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The poems, 1921-1940”, p.156, University of Missouri Press

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• The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.

  Jane Austen

  Two, Littles, Inches

  Letter to J. Edward Austen, 16 Dec. 1816

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• I don't want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

  Ivory Tower, Towers, Inward

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• Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world.

  Gerard De Nerval

  Dream, World, Able

  20 Copy quote

• I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Writing, People, Littles

  "'For me, England is a mythical place'" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2005.

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• I always challenge myself. I get out in deep water and I always try to get back. But I get hung up. The audience never knows, but that's when I smile the most, when I show the most ivory.

  Earl Hines

  Smile, Deep Water, Challenges

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• Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Ivory Tower, Important, Towers

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

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• When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Ivory Tower, Towers, Gutters

  Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"

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• My price is five dollars for a miniature on ivory, and I have engaged three or four at that price. My price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is willing to engage me at that price

  Samuel Morse

  Science, Dollars, Three

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• James Ivory comes close to the actors for the first rehearsal. He more or less lets you direct yourself and then will only correct you if he finds it incorrect.

  Leslie Caron

  Firsts, Actors, Rehearsal

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• Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my keyboard piano, oh Lord, why don't we?

  Paul McCartney

  Rock And Roll, Piano, Perfect

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• I wash my face every night with Ivory soap, and I don't wear much makeup.

  Brandy Norwood

  Makeup, Night, Soap

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• I'm not on all the time. I like to have fun and be funny, but I'm much more of a thinker.

  Keenen Ivory Wayans

  Fun, Comedy, Thinker

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• I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience; what things are funny and not.

  Keenen Ivory Wayans

  Thinking, Funny Things, Psychology

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• It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.

  Jodi Picoult

  Writing, Ivory Tower, Three

  6 Copy quote