Sumptuous Quotes

• I have sat at the sumptuous tables of power, but I have not run away with the silverware.

  Diosdado Macapagal

  Running, Tables, Sat

  "World: Common Man's President". During campaign stops in 1961, Time, content.time.com. November 24, 1961.

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• The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Stars, Taken, Sunset

  Jean Baudrillard, Francesco Proto, Keith Broadfoot (2006). “Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard”, Academy Press

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• I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

  Albert Camus

  Sea, Luxury, Poverty

  Albert Camus (1968). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”

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• It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.

  Bill Bryson

  Autumn, Green Fields, Sight

  FaceBook post by Bill Bryson from Sep 27, 2015

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• Films about the English monarchy, they tend to have a lavishness, sumptuous imagery, it's all very posh and rich.

  Tom Hooper

  Film, Rich, Posh

  "Oscar Watch Q &A: Tom Hooper Talks Long Road to King’s Speech". Interview with Anne Thompson, www.indiewire.com. November 22, 2010.

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• After sleeping through a hundred million centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.

  Richard Dawkins

  Sleep, Eye, Color

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.21, Penguin UK

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• A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.

  Nixon Waterman

  Rose, Wreaths

  Nixon Waterman (1919). “The Girl Wanted: A Book of Friendly Thoughts”

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• Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Use, Dessert, Reason

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• O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,
  That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;
  Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,
  Their names without a record are forgot,
  Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th' dust
  Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust;
  But he whose name is graved in the white stone
  Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.

  Anne Bradstreet

  Kings, Men, Dust

  Anne Bradstreet (1867). “The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse”, p.381

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• Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Moving, Intellectual, Comfort

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1994). “Aphorisms”, Ariadne Press (CA)

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• I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality. What was it? I knew -- the moon's picture of a town. These streets with their houses did not exist, they were but a ludicrous projection of the moon's sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by the hypnotism of moonnight. -- Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo of color. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently with a neat soundless crash. I must not, or lose all.

  e. e. cummings

  Tired, Unique, Moon

  E.E. Cummings (2015). “The Enormous Room”, p.46, Xist Publishing

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• If you follow the suburban fashion in building a sumptuous- looking house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap, dear house.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Money, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.403

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• Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
  My presence, like a robe pontifical,
  Ne'er seen but wondered at, and so my state,
  Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast.

  William Shakespeare

  Wonder, States, Richness

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition: The Complete Works”, p.1323, Oxford University Press

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• Consider paint a film of light reflecting/absorbing material, and a colored paint a material which gives a particular, characteristic transmission of light via differential absorption and reflection. Call this reflected quality 'luminance' and measure it in millilamberts. This measure is as real and present as height, breadth, depth; and I find the phenomenon equally sumptuous and convincing. . . . Painted light, not color, not form, not perspective, or line, not image, or words, or equations, is painting. I make paintings which do not represent light, they are light.

  Jo Baer

  Real, Reflection, Light

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• If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali--a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

  Shashi Tharoor

  America, Together, Different

  Shashi Tharoor (2007). “The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India, the Emerging 21st-century Power”, p.62, Penguin Books India

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• It is very grand and sumptuous and awesome to look at but it was really about the characters for me.

  Emmy Rossum

  Character, Looks

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• Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.

  Plutarch

  Wisdom, Ambition, Mean

  Plutarch, John Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough (2005). “Greek and Roman Lives”, p.376, Courier Corporation

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• Many an American jazz musician has been beguiled by the lush melodies and sumptuous rhythms of Brazilian music, but Peter Sprague has taken the romance a good deal further than most.

  Andrew S. Gilbert

  Taken, Romance, Musician

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• His sumptuous tents, and those of his satraps, afforded an immense booty to the conqueror; and an incident is mentioned which proves the rustic but martial ignorance of the legions in the elegant superfluities of life. A bag of shining leather, filled with pearls, fell into the hands of a private soldier; he carefully preserved the bag, but he threw away its contents, judging that whatever was of no use could not possibly be of any value.

  Edward Gibbon

  Ignorance, Hands, History

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1”, p.333

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• People who want to live like Olympian gods must have slaves whom they throw into their fishponds and gladiators who fight during their masters sumptuous banquets-and the pleasure-seekers never care if some blood splatters on them.

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Fighting, Blood, People

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• The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.

  Lionel Shriver

  Lasts, Next, Looking Forward

  "Big Brother: A Novel". Book by Lionel Shriver, 2013.

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• There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather... In the spring I have counted one hundred and twenty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.

  Mark Twain

  Spring, Weather, Twenties

  Address at New England Society's Seventy-First Annual Dinner, New York, N.Y., 22 Dec. 1876

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• If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.

  John W. Gardner

  Promise, Our Society, Misery

  "No Easy Victories". Book by John William Gardner, ed. Helen Rowan, Harper & Row, p. 57, 1968.

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• The mask means to me: freshness of color, sumptuous decoration, wild unexpected gestures, very shrill expressions, exquisite turbulence.

  James Ensor

  Mean, Expression, Color

  Anna Swinbourne, James Ensor, Susan Marie Canning, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (2009). “James Ensor”, p.22, The Museum of Modern Art

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• Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert.

  Giovanni Boccaccio

  Climbing, Mountain, Desert

  Giovanni Boccaccio, Charles Balguy (1822). “The decameron, or, Ten days' entertainment, of Boccaccio:”, p.148

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