1347 Quotes & Sayings

Peruzzi, secured on expected revenue from the wool tax. When this brought in too little and Edward could not repay, the drain on the Italian companies bankrupted them. The Peruzzi failed in 1343, the Bardi suspended a year later, and their crash brought down a third firm, the Acciaiuioli. Capital vanished, stores and workshops closed, wages and purchases stopped. When, by the malignant chance that seemed to hound the 14th century, economic devastation in Florence and Siena was followed first by famine in 1347 and then by plague, it could not but seem to — Barbara W. Tuchman

Algebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together. — Mal Peet

When we stop to count our blessings rather than focusing on our predicament, our attitude will be able to help us cope with our situation more productively. — Kevin Eikenberry

A doll is among the most pressing needs as well as the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for it, adorn it, dress and undress it, give it lessons, scold it a little, put it to bed and sing it to sleep, pretend that the object is a living person - all the future of the woman resides in this. Dreaming and murmuring, tending, cossetting, sewing small garments, the child grows into girlhood, from girlhood into womanhood, from womanhood into wifehood, and the first baby is the successor of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as deprived and quite as unnatural as a woman without a child. — Victor Hugo

For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? — James Madison

Who are you? he asked.
I am the future queen of this world, at the very least. You may refer to me as Mistress Koboi for the next five minutes. After that you may refer to me as Aaaaarrrrgh, hold your throat, die screaming, and so on. — Eoin Colfer

I'm a humanist. I'm an observer. I have a very scientific mind. I believe metaphysics and science absolutely blended are more the truth for me. It doesn't work just believing in what somebody says. — Meredith Brooks

At one level, an award is an endorsement, a confirmation, but I always find myself looking askance at awards and good reviews, as though another Garry Disher had earned them. — Garry Disher

I always think that if I'm with somebody, they're better than me. That's why I love them. They're amazing. — Alice Eve

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man's instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live. — Ayn Rand

I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock ... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time. — Ian McEwan