Ferdinand I Quotes & Sayings

The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In the art of squeezing the last ounce of labor out of a two-legged animal, those primitive ancients were pretentious incompetents! Did they ever think of calling their slave "Monsieur" or letting him vote now and then, or giving him his newspaper? And especially had they thought of sending him to war to work off his passions? After twenty centuries of Christianity (as I personally can bear witness) your modern man simply can't control himself when a regiment passes before his eyes. It puts too many ideas into his head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I've never been able to forget the infinite little smile of pure affection that danced across his livid face. Enough gaiety to fill the universe.
Few people past twenty preserve any of the affection, the affection of animals. This world isn't what we expected. So our looks change! They change plenty! We made a mistake! And turned into a thorough stinker in next to no time! Past twenty it shows in our face! A mistake! Our face is just a mistake! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Love, Arthur, is a poodle's chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I didn't know how many people knew who Ferdinand was. — Elliott Smith

I hate churches, all of them. But they used to know something about the importance of silence. — Ferdinand Mount

If I saw an ugly bird but she was a celebrity, she wouldn't attract me at all. — Rio Ferdinand

I will be gutted if Roy does go because I would far rather he stayed at Old Trafford.
(on Roy Keane leaving Manchester United) — Rio Ferdinand

"Okay! ... my three dots! have people ever reproached me for them! they've slobbered on about my three dots! ... 'Ah! his three dots! ... Ah, his three dots! ... He can't finish his sentences!' Every stupidity in the book! every one, Colonel!"
"So?"
"Go!pss!pss! ... piss off, Colonel! and what's your opinion, Colonel?"
"Instead of those three dots, you might just as well put in a few words, that's what I feel!" — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Dreams rise in the darkness and catch fire from the mirage of moving light. What happens on the screen isn't quite real; it leaves open a vague cloudy space for the poor, for dreams and the dead. Hurry hurry, cream yourself full of dreams to carry you through the life that's waiting for you outside, when you leave here, to help you last a few days more in that nightmare of things and people. Among the dreams, choose the ones most likely to warm your soul. I have to confess that I picked the sexy ones. No point in being proud; when it comes to miracles, take the ones that will stay with you. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I have never voted in my life ... I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it's certain they will win. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. — Lemony Snicket

The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan

Who were the best players I had ever played against? Raul, Messi, Zidane. — Rio Ferdinand

I claim the right not to incriminate myself. — Ferdinand Marcos

In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?
It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.
It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.
What's good for reform is bad for the reformers — Loren D. Estleman

In the beginning I looked around and, not finding the automobile of my dreams, decided to build it myself. — Ferdinand Porsche

I can understand the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-tung. — Ferdinand Marcos

Sometimes I'm kind of spacey. I'm like Ferdinand the bull, sniffing the daisy, not aware of time, of what's going on in the real world. — Richard Gere

Welbeck will be the main man and I have no doubt he will flourish. Imagine the pace Arsenal will have when everyone is fit. — Rio Ferdinand

Best player? For me, it's Paul Scholes. He'll do ridiculous things in training like say, "You see that tree over there?" - it'll be 40 yards away - "I'm going to hit it". And he'll do it. Everyone at the club considers him the best. — Rio Ferdinand

I feel the longer he stays at United the better it is for the club. He's done so much for United you can't imagine him not being here.
(on Sir Alex Ferguson) — Rio Ferdinand

But I felt all the more bound to make this proposal, because it at once turns to a reproach. — Ferdinand Lassalle

Only to he avoid misunderstandings, I must say that even last year, when I wrote my pamphlet, I heartily wished that Prussia should declare war against Napoleon. — Ferdinand Lassalle

Only in a popular war against France ... do I see a misfortune. — Ferdinand Lassalle

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Apparently "London" gave out my address! that's what they're saying ... not just London, though! Brazzaville, too! ... and said that I'm a dirty pornographer ... a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century! ... I'd make a urinal blush! that what we need is to cleanse France and the French language of this smut-writing, demoralizing, grammaclast who's sullying our sacred homeland and its literary heritage! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

An Immense hatred keeps me alive ... i would live for a thousand years if i were certain of seeing the whole world croak. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Sooner or later people are bound to classify you as something. I — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

But maybe it's wrong of me to complain ... I'm alive after all ... and I lose an enemy or two every day ... cancer, apoplexy, gluttony ... it's a pleasure the number that pass on! ... I'm not hard to please ... a name! ... another! ... there are good things in life ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I hadn't found out yet that mankind consists of two very different races, the rich and the poor. It took me ... and plenty of other people ... twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In 1559, Duke Frederick III was summoned before the Emperor Ferdinand I at Breslau to answer the accusations of extravagance and oppression brought against him by the Silesian Estates and was deposed, imprisoned, and his son Henry XI given the Ducal crown instead. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Some people say the president is incapable of enforcing the law. Let them say that once more and I will set the tanks on them. — Ferdinand Marcos

A little inventor, that's it! ... of a little gimmick! ... just a little gimmick that's all! ... I don't fling out messages to the world! ... not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth! ... I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas! ... I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I have committed many sins in my life. But stealing money from the government, from the people, is not one of them. — Ferdinand Marcos

I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself. — Ferdinand Porsche

I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well ... I wasn't entirely alone ... It's not possible to sleep alone ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I don't believe in courtship, it's a waste of time. If I love the person, I'll tell her right away. But for you, I'll make an exemption: Just love me now, and I will court you forever. — Ferdinand E. Marcos

I came into the world at the same time as the auto, if you will. — Ferdinand Porsche

The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I'd take cyanide no problem if it was that or throwing a cat out in the street, even a moth-eaten, mangy, caterwauling pain in the ass! I'd rather have the thing in bed with me than see it suffer on my account ... though when it comes to human beings, I'm only interested in the sick ... the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite ... I don't get mixed up in their schemes ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In the summer of 1902, I was able to erect two experimental stations on two forts at Strasbourg for the purpose of closer study. — Karl Ferdinand Braun

That was the end of the dialogue, because, I remember distinctly, he barely had time to say "What about the bread?" That was all. After that there was nothing but flame and noise. The kind of noise you wouldn't have thought possible. Our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were so full of that noise I thought it was all over and I'd turned into noise and flame myself.

After a while the flame went away, the noise stayed in my head, and my arms and legs trembled as if somebody were shaking me from behind. My limbs seemed to be leaving me, but then in the end they stayed on. The smoke stung my eyes for a long time, and the prickly smell of powder and sulphur hung on, strong enough to kill all the fleas and bedbugs in the whole world. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I do not like war, because war happens in the countryside, and the countryside bores me. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I learned what research was all about as a research student [with] Stoppani ... Max Perutz, and ... Fred Sanger ... From them, I always received an unspoken message which in my imagination I translated as 'Do good experiments, and don't worry about the rest. — Cesar Milstein

It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone. — Ferdinand De Saussure

I used to read every, well, most nights. I think reading helps me in terms of relaxing ... It helps me to get my mind off the game a little bit more and it helps me to be a little bit more focused. — Rio Ferdinand

I wish the storm would make even more of a clatter, I wish the roofs would cave in, that spring would never come again, and that the house would blow down. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Chin up, Ferdinand," I kept saying to myself, to keep up my courage. "What with being chucked out of everywhere, you're sure to find whatever it is that scares all those bastards so. It must be at the end of the night, and that's why they're so dead set against going to the end of the night. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I'd seen too many troubling things to be easy in my mind. I knew too much and not enough. I'd better go out, I said to myself, I'd better go out again. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood. — Mark Strong

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence. — Ferdinand Mount

I'm sure the mantelpiece of captaincy will suit Wayne — Rio Ferdinand

We're pupils of the religions - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish ... Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short - here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, "He knits a nice sentence!" Me, I say, "It's unreadable." They say, "What magnificent theatrical language!" I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Over our heads, two millimetres, maybe one millimetre from our temples, those long tempting lines of steel that bullets make when they're out to kill you were whistling through the hot summer air.
I'd never felt so useless as I did amid all those bullets in the sunlight. A vast and universal mockery. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I was rather fond of her, but I was even fonder of my vices, my mania for running away from everywhere in search of God knows what, driven, I suppose, by stupid pride, by a sense of some sort of superiority — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I could never get bored talking about him, he was my favourite player. I loved watching him because he did everything you'd want to see in a footballer. He could dictate the pace of a game; he could take it by the scruff of the neck and control it; he could score decisive goals; he could make the killer pass; he could switch the play, open teams up, slow the game down, quicken it up; whatever was needed. He would take the ball anywhere on the pitch He was such a selfless footballer, too Scholesy was the man, all right. — Rio Ferdinand

I have seen the shadow of the Earth on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the church — Ferdinand Magellan

If you come out with racist comments, then I believe you shouldn't be allowed to come to a football match. Don't be so narrow minded, you're bigger than that. — Rio Ferdinand

Here we are, alone again. It's all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . I'll be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. They've talked. They haven't said much. They've gone away. They've grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Lili, I think, saw so many human tragedies all around her ... people arranged it between them ... this was what they wanted ... none of her business ... animal miseries were different ... nobody paid any attention, but for her money only the animals counted ... time has passed, water under the bridge ... all in all I'd say she was right ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I'm recapitulating ... condensing ... it's the Readers Digest style ... people only have time to read thirty pages ... apparently! ... maximum! ... that's all they have time for! they horse around for sixteen hours out of twenty-four, they sleep, they copulate the rest, where would they find the time to read a hundred pages? oh, do caca, I forgot! as well! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written. — Ferdinand Mount

You can find something funny in anything! I'm sick as a dog and falling to bits, but I'll give up joking only after I give up the ghost! my last gasp! The proof, here, with only an eighth of a glimmer of light, things oozing out of my asshole, my armpits, and the elbows, too, blood coming out of the eyes, from the soupy mess of my grave, me whistling a tune, that's what you'll hear! A regular blackbird! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Ah, I understand", murmured the imperial scapegrace. Turning to the room: "When Franz Ferdinand drinks", he cried, "everybody drinks!"
Which helped restore a level of civility in the room, and soon even of cheer, as smart neckties were soaked in suds, the piano player came back from under the bar, and people in the room resumed dancing syncopated two-steps. After a while someone started singing "All Pimps Look Alike to Me", and half the room joined in. Lew, however, noticing the way the Archduke seemed to keep inching stealthily but unmistakably toward the street door, thought it wise to do the same. Sure enough, just before sliding out the door, Der F. F., with a demonic grin, screamed: "And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!" whereupon he disappeared, and it was a near thing that Lew got out with his keester intact. — Thomas Pynchon

Maybe I'd never see him again ... maybe he'd gone for good ... swallowed up, body and soul, in the kind of stories you hear about ... Ah, it's an awful thing ... and being young doesn't help any ... when you notice for the first time ... the way you lose people as you go along ... the buddies you'll never see again ... never again ... when you notice that they've disappeared like dreams ... that it's all over ... finished ... that you too will get lost someday ... a long way off but inevitably ... in the awful torrent of things and people ... of the days and shapes ... that pass ... that never stop ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The plain truth, I may as well admit it, is that I've never been really right in the head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I often wonder what I will be remembered in history for. Scholar? Military hero? Builder? — Ferdinand Marcos

"Fine! Fine! I'm listening ... but it's not very interesting! ...
"Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes!"
"What notes?"
"Just write! ... that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It happened, you see, after the war, when I saw people making money while the others were dying in the trenches. You saw it and you couldn't do anything about it. Then later I was at the League of Nations, and there I saw the light. I really saw the world was ruled by the Golden Calf, by Mammon! Oh, no kidding! Implacably. Social consciousness certainly came to me late. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe! ... the impotent are bloated with ideas! ... they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp! ... and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas! ... philosophies, if you prefer! ... yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Do you know who I am? Why, have you forgotten? — Rio Ferdinand

I want a new contract. I'm happy at United and I see my future here. — Rio Ferdinand

People think we don't give a toss about the game, but when I walked out of Windsor Park that night I felt lower than a snake's belly. The reality is still there. — Rio Ferdinand

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Our lives are quite boring. I spend a lot of time watching Coronation Street and Eastenders. — Rio Ferdinand

His temperament is always there to be questioned because he plays on the edge. That is just the way he plays.It is a cliche but if you took that edge away from Wayne he wouldn't be the same player and I would rather have the Wayne Rooney we have now. — Rio Ferdinand

If only I had met Molly sooner, when it was still possible to choose one road rather than another! Before that bitch Musyne and that little turd Lola crimped my enthusiasm! But it was too late to start being young again. I didn't believe in it any more! We grow old so quickly and, what's more, irremediably. You can tell by the way you start loving your misery in spite of yourself. Nature is stronger than we are, no two ways about it. She tries us in one particular mould, and we're never able to throw it off. I had started out as the restless type. Little by little, without realizing it, you begin to take your role and fate seriously, and, before you know it, it's too late to change. You're a hundred per cent restless, and it's set that way for good. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I was a hundred-percent sick, I felt as if I had no further use for my legs, they just hung over the edge of my bed like unimportant and rather ridiculous objects. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Then you're not coming? You'd rather go to the pen? Okay! . . . You don't care if I turn you in? ... You don't
care if I love you or not? . . . You don't care about my future? You don't care about anything, do you? . . ."
"No," he says. "In a way you're right . . . But it's not just you ... I don't care about anyone else either . . . Christ, don't take it as an insult! ... I know you're a sweet kid . . . But I don't want to be loved anymore ... It disgusts me! . . . — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Suddenly he fell asleep in the candlelight. After a while I got up to look at his face. He slept like everybody else. He looked quite ordinary. There ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good from the bad. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

That's the way it goes. You can't deny it, men have a hard time doing all that's demanded of them: butterflies in their youth, maggots at the end. I — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

We went there to grope for our happiness, which all the world was threatening with the utmost ferocity. We were ashamed of wanting what we wanted, but something had to be done about it all the same. Love is harder to give up than life. In this world we spend our time killing or adoring, or both together. "I hate you! I adore you!" We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, at any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I've got quite a memory. Engraved in my mind, things are. I can't forget anything ... It's not a sign of intelligence ... Nothing to boast about, memory ... that's just how it is ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

When I think now of all the lunatics I knew at Baryton's, I can't help suspecting that the only two manifestations of our innermost being are war and insanity, those two absolute nightmares. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I set myself high standards on the pitch and I know I have not always lived up to them this season. — Rio Ferdinand

Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

He went on talking to me in the darkness, while I retraced the steps of my past with the sound of his voice as a charm with which to open the doors of the years and months and finally of my days, wondering where I could have run into this man. But I found nothing. No answer. You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all. As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It is, I believe, one of the few dangerous forms of eccentricity, a highly contagious mania, to be precise, of the rampant social variety! In your friend's case, we may not yet be dealing with out-and-out insanity ... No ... Maybe his trouble is only exaggerated conviction ... But the contagious manias are well known to me! ... I've known a good many sufferers from conviction mania ... Of many different types ... And in the last analysis, those who talk about justice seem to be the maddest of the lot! ... At first, I must confess, I took a certain interest in justice fanatics ... Today those particular maniacs annoy and exasperate me more than I can tell ... Don't you feel the same way? ... Human beings show a strange aptitude for transmitting this mania. It terrifies me, and we find it, mind you, in all human beings! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It is not a choice of life, it is a choice of death. If this is life, I'd rather die. — Ferdinand Marcos

Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing! ... what a joke! petrified ratlets! but they'll still come out to refute me! make claims! ... that nothing got bombed! ... squished! powdered! that the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in ... and dancing purple fireflies ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I'm almost never serious, and I'm always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I'm like a collection of paradoxes. — Ferdinand De Saussure

Me, fer instance," said Rio. "I've learned from me own pa not to belch in front of a lady." He turned to Ferdinand. Then he let out the most tremendous burp Ferdinand had ever heard in his life. "Technically, that was not in front of her, but behind her. — E.W. Clarke

In some ways, I was a little bit surprised [by how dominant we were] but then I look at the players in our changing room and it doesn't surprise me because we've got quality in there. If we click and play well like we did in the first half, we can open up any team. — Rio Ferdinand

I do not care how brave a president is; I do not care how many medals he may wear. I do not care how well trained his guards may be. If he violates the will of the people, he shall be eliminated. — Ferdinand Marcos