Shrouds Quotes - Page 4

• Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

  Arundhati Roy

  Government, People, Mind

  Arundhati Roy (2003). “War Talk”, p.47, South End Press

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• Criticism and pessimism destroy families, undermine institutions of all kinds, defeat nearly everyone, and spread a shroud of gloom over entire nations.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Criticism, Kind, Defeat

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• Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can't be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Truth, Rip, Responsibility

  Paula Gunn Allen (1998). “Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-busting Border-crossing Loose Canons”, Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press

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• Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.

  Mark Lawrence

  Memories, Wind, Cocoons

  Mark Lawrence (2011). “Prince of Thorns”, p.154, Penguin

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• Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign you must not touch, For 'tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control, And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

  John Donne

  Hair, Heaven, Soul

  'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Funeral'

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• Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadside—are the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accurséd Ghost!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Children, Night, Light

  Thomas Bailey ALDRICH (1859). “The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems”, p.113

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• A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.

  Honore de Balzac

  Girl, Women, Thinking

  Honore de Balzac (1897). “A Woman of Thirty”, p.172, Library of Alexandria

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• Death and pain dominate this world, for though many are cured, they leave still weak, still tremulous, still knowing mortality has whispered to them; have seen in the folding of white bedspreads according to rule the starched pleats of a shroud.

  Denise Levertov

  Pain, White, Knowing

  1972 Footprints,'The Malice of Innocence'.

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• I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule -- and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.)

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Simple, People, Soul

  Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1968). “Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”

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• Lustful Desire (although 'twere rather fit To some brute creature to attribute it) Shall be presented in the second place, Because it shrouds a vile deformed face Beneath love's vizard, and assumes that name, Hiding its own fault with the other's blame.

  George Wither

  Names, Lust, Desire

  George Wither (1839). “Poems ...”, p.21

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• No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.

  Victor Hugo

  Sight, Two, Suffering

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Oh, could we lift the future's sable shroud.

  Philip James Bailey

  Future, Lifts

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.57

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• Still and pale
  Thou movest in thy silver veil,
  Queen of the night! the filmy shroud
  Of many a mild, transparent cloud
  Hides, yet adorns thee.

  Winthrop Mackworth Praed

  Queens, Moon, Night

  Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1859). “The poetical works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed”, p.10

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• People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead.

  Arundhati Roy

  War, Winning, Government

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”, p.242, Penguin Books India

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• Suffer not thy wrongs to shroud thy fate, But turn, my soul, to blessings which remain.

  Anna Seward

  Fate, Blessing, Soul

  Anna SEWARD (1799). “Original Sonnets, on various subjects; and Odes paraphrased from Horace, by Anna Seward. Second edition”, p.14

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• There is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing.

  Jesse Browner

  Crush, Dream, Fear

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• The great loneliness- like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over- when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Life, Change, Loneliness

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• God shrouds himself in mystery so He can be found by true seekers.

  Karen Wheaton

  Mystery, Found, Seekers

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• When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.

  Matthew Scully

  Heart, Sight, Gone

  Matthew Scully (2011). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.320, Souvenir Press

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