Eird Quotes & Sayings

The Empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler, having gone to the expense and trouble of venturing where most civilized people were too sensible to go, was going to come home and admit that it had been a waste of time. Instead, he had to pronounce his destination to be full of strange wonders, like the elk with no knees that could be caught by sabotaging the tree against which it leaned when it slept (Julius Caesar) or the men from India who could wrap themselves in their own ears (reported by the elder Pliny, who seemed to have written down everything he was ever told), or the blue-skinned Britons (Julius Caesar again).
Strangely, no traveler had ever brought one of these creatures home for inspection. Doubtless they were impossible to capture, or died on the journey, or the blue came off in the wash. — Ruth Downie

The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements ... all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad. — Vasily Chuikov

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust ... — Patricia Hampl

Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them. — Edward Hirsch

Dissonance is the truth about harmony. — Theodor W. Adorno

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
Their mistress mounted through the empty skies
In her light chariot quickly is convey'd;
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure herself and not be seen. — William Shakespeare

Best thing in eird,I say for me, Is merry hart with small possessioun. — Robert Henryson

I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to support my industry. I think they smell great, too. — Gary Shteyngart

American and British forces reached none of the bloodlands and saw none of the major killing sites. It is not just that American and British forces saw none of the places where the Soviets killed, leaving the crimes of Stalinism to be documented after the end of the Cold War and the opening of the archives. It is that they never saw the places where the Germans killed, meaning that understanding of Hitler's crimes has taken just as long. The photographs and films of German concentration camps were the closest that most westerners ever came to perceiving the mass killing. Horrible though these images were, they were only hints at the history of the bloodlands. They are not the whole story; sadly, they are not even an introduction. — Timothy Snyder

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty. — Joseph Stalin