Spectacles Quotes - Page 4

• A woman's hair net tangled in a man's spectacles on top of the bedroom dresser.

  Don Herold

  Marriage, Men, Hair

  Don Herold (1930). “Strange Bedfellows: My Crazy-quilt Memoirs, Life-maxims and What-not”

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• We have rejected such spectacles as the Coliseum. How then, when we do not even look on killing lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death?

  Athenagoras of Athens

  People, Guilt, Looks

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• What is nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations, to exorcise evil spirits, to perform cures, to seek divine revelations, and to live to God? These are the pleasures - these are the spectacles - that befit Christian men.

  Tertullian

  Christian, Men, Feet

  Tertullian “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian, Volume 1”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Fall, Rivers, Age

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward (1997). “Избранные Стихи”, p.129, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Las Vegas suggests that the thirst for places, for cities and gardens and wilderness, is unslaked, that people will still seek out the experience of wandering about in the open air to examine the architecture, the spectacles, and the stuff for sale, will still hanker after surprises and strangers. That the city as a whole is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the world suggests something of the problems to be faced, but that its attraction is a pedestrian oasis suggests the possibility of recovering the spaces in which walking is viable.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Garden, Vegas, Oasis

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• Emma was a shocking driver, simultaneously sloppy and petrified, and for the first fifty miles had been absent-mindedly driving with her spectacles on top of her contact lenses so that other traffic loomed menacingly out of nowhere like alien space cruisers.

  David Nicholls

  Space, Lenses, Fifty

  David Nicholls (2009). “One Day”, p.236, Hachette UK

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• One of the stories I love is how Gutenberg’s printing press set off this interesting chain reaction, where all of a sudden people across Europe noticed for the first time that they were farsighted, and needed spectacles to read books (which they hadn’t really noticed before books became part of everyday life); which THEN created a market for lens makers, which then created pools of expertise in crafting lenses, which then led people to tinker with those lenses and invent the telescope and microscope, which then revolutionized science in countless ways.

  Steven Johnson

  Book, Love Is, Europe

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• He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he would purchase a pair of green-tinged spectacles which would correct his regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense, blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Air, Magic

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• Myrnin turned away to pick up his Ben Franklin spectacles, balanced them on his nose, and looked over them to say, "Don't do drugs. I feel I ought to say that.

  Rachel Caine

  Drug, Noses, Franklin

  Rachel Caine (2010). “Ghost Town”, p.113, Allison & Busby

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• You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Kings, Children, Years

  "We will shock you: why musicals need to take bigger risks on a smaller scale" by Boff Whalley, www.theguardian.com. November 29, 2010.

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• He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man's name was Albus Dumbledore.

  J. K. Rowling

  Eye, Moon, Men

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• It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Dark, Support, Democracy

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• For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight—and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles?

  Isaac Babel

  Dream, Heart, Play

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• Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Daughter, Eye, Hands

  Michael Ondaatje (1996). “The English Patient: A Novel”, Random House Inglaterra

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• A man who is seeking for realization is not only going around searching for his spectacles without realizing that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!

  Wei Wu Wei

  Men, Noses, Realization

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• All papas and mammas have exactly that sort of sight which distinguishes objects at a distance clearly, while they need spectacles to see those under their very noses.

  Giovanni Ruffini

  Distance, Sight, Perception

  Giovanni Ruffini (1858). “Doctor Antonio. A tale. By the author of Lorenzo Benoni [i.e. Giovanni Domenico Ruffini].”, p.159

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• The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species

  David Attenborough

  Real, Future, Responsibility

  "State of the Planet". Documentary, www.imdb.com. (2000 - ).

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• I do fear that global capitalism is making us more like each other in regrettable ways, e.g., more people are increasingly captivated by spectacles of violence and aggression or of conspicuous consumption that are the subjects of the most commercially viable films across countries precisely because they don't depend for their appeal on cultural fine points; and more people are prone to deal with others on a purely instrumental and impersonal basis.

  David Wong

  Country, People, Violence

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Agony, Feelings, Crowds

  Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Short Stories”, p.336, Bottletree Books LLC

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• Estate agents. You can't live with them, you can't live with them. The first sign of these nasty purulent sores appeared round about 1894. With their jangling keys, nasty suits, revolting beards, moustaches and tinted spectacles, estate agents roam the land causing perturbation and despair. If you try and kill them, you're put in prison: if you try and talk to them, you vomit. There's only one thing worse than an estate agent but at least that can be safely lanced, drained and surgically dressed. Estate agents. Love them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.

  Stephen Fry

  Home, Keys, Land

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• Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.

  Voltaire

  Years, Pigs, Should Have

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.154, Penguin

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• Big sporting events and spectacles might give the national morale a shot in the arm, but they are too transient and taste-specific to stand as robust symbols of nationhood.

  Julian Baggini

  Giving, Events, Arms

  "Why the white cliffs of Dover are so special" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2012.

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• How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked. Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.

  Libba Bray

  People, Waiting, Following

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• Ira [Gershwin] was the shyest, most diffident boy we had ever known. In a class of lower east side rapscallions, his soft-spoken gentleness and low-keyed personality made him a lovable incongruity. He spoke in murmurs, hiding behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses..Ira had a kid brother who wore high stiff collars, shirts with cuffs and went out with girls.

  Yip Harburg

  Girl, Brother, Kids

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

  James Madison

  Passion, Government, Democracies Have

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Barton Dawson (1864). “The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes”, p.60, New York : C. Scribner ; London : Sampson Low

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