Dutch Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Also, he detested people who bought fast horses that they were unskilled to ride. Furthermore, he detested: recreational sailing vessels; surveyors; cheaply made shoes; French (the language, the food, the populace); nervous clerks; tiny porcelain plates which broke in a man's damned hand; poetry (but not songs!); the stooped backs of cowards; thieving sons of whores; a lying tongue; the sound of a violin; the army (any army); tulips ("onions with airs!"); blue jays; the drinking of coffee ("a damned, dirty Dutch habit!"); — Elizabeth Gilbert

In contrast to modern art, which causes displeasure-modern art, by definition, hurts. In this precise sense, modern art is sublime: it causes pleasure-in-pain, it produces its effect through its own failure, insofar as it refers to the impossible Things. — Slavoj Zizek

A grin spread across her face. He'd not only come for her, he loved her enough to start a galactic war. How cool was that? Nothing says I love you like bloodshed and violence. — Eve Langlais

It could be yesterday
when I was less in love
I think
For I didn't see you in the mirror
behind me
while getting dressed.
The way your hands couldn't stay away
and our bodies always found their ways back to each other
as if they were meant to be together
Close.

But then it was today and I saw you
again
in the mirror
behind me while getting dressed

So I go to sleep tonight
alone
without actually falling asleep because I'm scared of the moment I will wake up
and realise it was just a dream
You're actually gone.

Now all I can do is get through to another tomorrow
hoping that I will be less in love
again
Like yesterday

But not today.
I was never really well with things at all. — Charlotte Eriksson

What would happen is that every idiot in this town who owns a gun, which is basically every idiot in this town, would grab his gun, jump into his car, or somebody else's car, and lay rubber for I-95. Inside of ten minutes the city is gridlocked, and what happens next makes IwoJima look like a maypole dance. This whole town turns into the end of a Stephen King novel. — Dave Barry

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog. — Ralph Vaughan Williams

I was born into a world full of 'specialists'. I'm not sure whether it's the result of our education system or just natural entropy, but it's very uncommon to know a poet with even a mediocre knowledge about art, or an artist with a good taste in poetry, and so on and on. What this really is: lack of general education in a structural sense: god knows how many people I've met that are actually PROUD about proclaiming their ignorance about another field: it is as if it signifies their 'devotion to one path' while in reality they really only look like a buffoon if you ask me. New is that I am encountering 'Literary Critics' that proudly proclaim to 'never have read any foreign poetry' as if a 'movie critic' that only has watched Dutch films would be somehow capable of criticizing them in any true sense of the word. — Martijn Benders

There's no regimen. There's no personal trainer. I love to go hiking because it's an experience. If I need to gain stamina for a tour, I will run every single night on the treadmill, but I don't necessarily like being at the gym. — Taylor Swift

Not one man has ever sacrificed for his Lord without being richly repaid. If the cross is only contrasted with earthly pleasures lost, it may seem hard and threatening. But when the cross is weighed in the balances with the glorious treasures to be had through it, even the cross seems sweet. — Walter J Chantry

Not like this. He wanted it to be real. — Suzanne Collins

[On Dutch flat poetry]: It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like butter-milk gurgling from a jug. — Mark Twain