Immemorial Quotes & Sayings

Like buried treasures, the outposts of the universe have beckoned to the adventurous from immemorial times ... — George Ellery Hale

Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moans of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

She was thinking - for, since she had been formed by literature, she could think in no other way - that all this had been described in Dickens, Tolstoy, Hugo, Dostoevsky, and a dozen others. All that noble and terrific indignation had done nothing, achieved nothing, the shout of anger from the nineteenth century might as well have been silent - for here came the file of prisoners, handcuffed two by two, and on their faces was that same immemorial look of patient, sardonic understanding. — Doris Lessing

The term 'black' was given a rebirth by the black youth revolt. As reborn, it does not refer to the particular color of any particular person, but to the attitude of pride and devotion to the race whose homeland from times immemorial was called 'The Land of the Blacks.' Almost overnight our youngsters made 'black' coequal with 'white' in respectability, and challenged the anti-black Negroes to decide on which side they stood. This was no problem for many who are light or even near-white in complexion, for they themselves were among the first to proclaim with pride, 'call me black!' Those who hate the term but hold the majority of leadership positions feel compelled to use it to protect their leadership roles. — Chancellor Williams

Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong. — Vita Sackville-West

As a journalist, you know you are doing your job properly when you manage to upset rich, powerful and entitled people who are used to getting their own way,and you know you've really got under their skin when they pursue censorship, the avenue of last resort since time immemorial. — Guy Adams

Of course we have a Tomorrow on the map ... located east of Today and west of Yesterday ... and we have no end of "times" in fairyland. Spring-time, long time, short time, new-moon time, good-night time, next time ... but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland; old time, young time ... because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time, too; mountain time ... because that has such a fascinating sound; night-time and day-time ... but no bed-time or school-time; Christmas-time; no only time, because that also is too sad ... but lost time, because it is so nice to find it; some time, good time, fast time, slow time, half-past kissing-time, going-home time, and time immemorial ... which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. — L.M. Montgomery

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

History has been witness to heart wrenching barbaric violations from time immemorial throughout the world where battles and wars have been fought, not just among States but even the Big Powers, megalomania, 'folie de grandeur' .All this lead us only to understand of the meager contribution to the subject of International Humanitarian Laws, and all these failures have built and would continue to lay precedents and build the laws. — Henrietta Newton Martin

The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims; so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost. — H.L. Mencken

It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction. — Richard Le Gallienne

Our sages developed music from time immemorial to take shelter in one's true self. Real music is not for wealth, not for honors, or not even for the joys of the mind - it is a path for realization and salvation. — Ali Akbar Khan

Pardon if all the cleanness and the beauty
Brave rhythym and the immemorial sea
Ensare us sometimes with their siren song,
Forgetful of our murderous intentions.
Through our uneasy peacetime carnival
Cold sweat of death holds us like a dew;
Even this grey machinery of murder
Holds beauty and the promise of a future. — Norman Hampson

I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes.
Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Weeding the peony hedge I hear the windfalls in the orchard; hear them strike the ground, hear them strike against branches as they fall to the ground. The immemorial smell of apples, old as the sea. Mary makes jelly. Up from the kitchen, up the stairs and into all the rooms comes the smell of apples. — John Cheever

On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries. — Frederick Soddy

The key to success in any area of life is to first know and master the area of focus. Cures to disease have been found, since time immemorial, by studying how the body functions as well as how the disease affects the sick. Seek depth in knowledge and research. — Archibald Marwizi

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types
the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. — G.K. Chesterton

The greatest thing ever in the history of the world and of all of human endeavor from time immemorial is stories. — Rainn Wilson

India has an unbroken tradition of nonviolence from times immemorial. — Mahatma Gandhi

This world has been changing from time immemorial. But because it is "round" (subject to cycle of cause-effect), one cannot find an end to it. — Dada Bhagwan

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial. — Martin Filler

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives. — Henry David Thoreau

The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time ... — William S. Burroughs

Ours. By then I'd read Chancellor Williams, J. A. Rogers, and John Jackson - writers central to the canon of our new noble history. From them I knew that Mansa Musa of Mali was black, and Shabaka of Egypt was black, and Yaa Asantewaa of Ashanti was black - and "the black race" was a thing I supposed existed from time immemorial, a thing that was real and mattered. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

While a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution - so one theory goes - this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us. As Zapffe concluded, we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see, which, as the Norwegian philosopher saw it, along with every other pessimist, is "the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. — Thomas Ligotti

Since time immemorial, youth has set the universal standard of physical beauty, and the reason is simply that a shapely firm young face and body are more attractive sexually and aesthetically than bulges, sags and wrinkles. — Hugh Hefner

It was war. You're better off winning a war than losing it. History teaches us that. And biology. You're better off beating someone to death, than being beaten to death. From time immemorial, the man has guarded the entrance to the cave. Intruders are sent packing. People. Animals. A persistent intruder can't say later that he hasn't been warned. — Herman Koch

The Collectorship of Madna is the seventh post that he has held in eight years. He is quite philosophic about the law that governs the transfer of civil servants; he sees it as a sort of corollary to the law of karma, namely, that the whole of life passes through innumerable and fundamentally mystifying changes, and these changes are sought to be determined by our conduct, our deeds (otherwise, we would quite simply lose our marbles); only thus can we even pretend to satisfactorily explain the mystery of suffering, which is a subject that has troubled thoughtful souls all over the world since time immemorial. It is also a hypothesis that justifies the manifest social inequalities of the Hindu community. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

Even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own special sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands. — Marcel Proust

Drug use is a primordial animal activity. Among humans , it is immemorial and nearly universal. VVhat then accounts for the 'war on drugs — Anonymous

If people would stop objectifying abstractions (which they probably never will), or if they would stop objectifying the abstractions they make consciously (which they might learn to do), at least half the pseudo-questions befuddling the world today - as they have befuddled it since time immemorial - would vanish. And that would be a very, very great gain. — Cassius Jackson Keyser

I think for the most part men have always been the aggressors sexually. Through time immemorial they've always been in control. So I think sex is equated with power in a way, and that's scary in a way. It's scary for men that women would have that power, and I think it's scary for women to have that power - or to have that power and be sexy at the same time. — Madonna Ciccone

Thus, since time immemorial, it has been customary to accept the criticism of art from a man who may or may not have been artist himself. Some believe that artist should create its art and leave it for critic to pass judgement over it. Whereas dramatists like Ben Jonson is of the view that to 'judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best'. Only the best of poets have the right to pass judgments on the merit or defects of poetry, for they alone have experienced the creative process form beginning to end, and they alone can rightly understand it. — Aristotle.

... if a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it's a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted. And if you're thinking how awful these sentiments are, you are perfectly correct, these are awful times, but you must remember as well that this has always been the chiefest characteristic of the Present, to everyone living through it; always, throughout history, and so far as I can see for all the days and years to come until the sun and the stars fall down and the clocks have all ground themselves to expiry and the future has long long shaded away into Time Immemorial: the Present is always an awful place to be. — Tony Kushner

You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done. — John Le Carre

From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them. — Paracelsus

The priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of interference. — Upton Sinclair

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace ... War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated-ever. — Elie Wiesel

The living being is in the state of forgetfulness of his relation with God due to his being overly attracted to material sense gratification from time immemorial. — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been. — H.L. Mencken

This morning the world by moonlight seemed to be an immemorial acquaintance I had always meant to befriend. If there was ever a chance, it had passed. Strange to say, I feel a little that way about myself. — Marilynne Robinson

The world is mediocre. About that there is no mistake. Well then, has the world been mediocre since time immemorial? No. In the beginning, the world was chaos, and chaos is not mediocre. The mediocratization began when people separated the means of production from daily life. For when Karl Marx posited the proletariat, he thereby cemented their mediocrity. And precisely because of this, Stalinism forms a direct link with Marxism. I affirm Marx. He was one of those rare geniuses whose memory extended back to primal chaos. And by the same token, I have high regard for Dostoyevsky. Nonetheless, I do not hold with Marxism. It is far too mediocre. — Haruki Murakami

From time immemorial we've been cleaning up after male messes. When a man does it for a woman, it's called being rescued. When a woman does it for a man, it's housework. — Kate Meader

Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement. — William James

Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that. — Wangari Maathai

Since time immemorial, the serpent has symbolized organic vitality. Serpents move in curves and so does energy. The serpent developed from the Light created on the first cosmic day. In the firmament it manifests as the life-breath that animates souls. In the physical universe it manifests electro-magnetism, the light in substance so to speak. — Stefan Emunds

The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial. — Karl Marx

From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls. — Sadhu Sundar Singh

Gormenghast.
Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs ...
And darkness winds between the characters.
- Gormenghast — Mervyn Peake

Trees have from time immemorial been closely associated with magic. These stout members of the vegetable kingdom may stand for as long as a thousand years, and tower far above our mortal heads. As such they are symbols and keepers of unlimited power, longevity, and timelessness. An untouched forest, studded with trees of all ages, sizes and types, is more than a mysterious, magical place - it is one of the energy reservoirs of nature. Within its boundaries stand ancient and new sentinels, guardians of the universal force which has manifested on the the Earth ... — Scott Cunningham

Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as in the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring middle-sized physical objects. — Willard Van Orman Quine

It is indeed immensely picturesque. I can fancy sitting all a summer's day watching its shadows shorten and lengthen again, and drawing a delicious contrast between the world's duration and the feeble span of individual experience. There is something in Stonehenge almost reassuring; and if you are disposed to feel that life is rather a superficial matter, and that we soon get to the bottom of things, the immemorial gray pillars may serve to remind you of the enormous background of time. — Henry James

I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it's not its fault. That's obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage.
If the old imbeciles hadn't discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn't have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors! — Arthur Rimbaud

Their humble dwellings were of their own rearing; it was they themselves who had broken in their little fields; from time immemorial, far beyond the reach of history, had they possessed their mountain holdings. — Hugh Miller

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page - rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words - just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are - accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When the tendencies (vruti) that were wandering around since time immemorial come within & enter into the Self's (Soul's) abode; it is known as freedom from all wanderings (nivruti). — Dada Bhagwan

The opposition between the men who have and the men who are is immemorial. — William James

Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old. — Joseph Conrad

That glittering hope is immemorial and beckons many men to their undoing. — Euripides

The immemorial ingratitude of rulers and commonwealths is proverbial. Especially common is ingratitude to Israel - the People that has achieved so much of eternal worth, but has rarely succeeded in winning gratitude. — Joseph Hertz

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year ... — Edgar Allan Poe

Since time immemorial wise people have been saying that all comparisons are odious. When we compare, we set up a winner-loser dynamic. If my crisis is greater than yours, then yours is belittled and insignificant. I say that's nonsense. Each crisis has its own power, its own unique reality. — Tavis Smiley

From time immemorial History has decreed that territory on this Planet Earth belongs to those powerful enough to take it and determined enough to keep it. — Ben Klassen

Dreams of flying have haunted the collective imagination since time immemorial. — Umberto Eco

Heaven and Hell. White and black. Good and evil. This was a face-off between light and dark, as stark and true as any war since time immemorial. The — Mark Cassell

The land and the ocean are living, breathing entities that supported us, clothed us, fed us, and nurtured our culture from time immemorial. — Eden Robinson

She breathes a soft sigh, and in the tried and true ways of time immemorial, she welcomes me home. — Magda Alexander

From time immemorial, man has desired to comprehend the complexity of nature in terms of as few elementary concepts as possible. — Abdus Salam

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial. — Emma Goldman

There is no one who has cooked but has discovered that each particular dish depends for its rightness upon some little point which he is never told. It is not only so of cooking: it is so of splicing a rope; of painting a surface of wood; of mixing mortar; of almost anything you like to name among the immemorial human arts. — Hilaire Belloc

No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The United Nations research states that men with the longest life expectancy are from Japan, followed by Switzerland. I am rather surprised at this result as since time immemorial we have been doing the Karva Chauth fast to make sure our men have long lives, and the results should have definitely shown by now. I scan the list, confident that in this chart of life expectancy, the Indian man must definitely be in the top 5. Nope! There are 146 countries above us where the men have longer lifespans, and the biggest blow is that even with four wives who don't fast for them, the Arab men outlive our good old Indian dudes. — Twinkle Khanna

The here, the now and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet and
from time immemorial
the woman. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

'Never change' is the thing that probably high school students have written in each other's yearbooks for time immemorial. They think that command is possible! — Jane Hamilton

We humans have known since time immemorial something that science is only now discovering: our gut feeling is responsible in no small measure for how we feel. We are "scared shitless" or we can be "shitting ourselves" with fear. If we don't manage to complete a job, we can't get our "ass in gear." We "swallow" our disappointment and need time to "digest" a defeat. A nasty comment leaves a "bad taste in our mouth." When we fall in love, we get "butterflies in our stomach." Our self is created in our head and our gut - no longer just in language, but increasingly also in the lab. — Giulia Enders

Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it. — Ayn Rand

One o' clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.
Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter ... — F Scott Fitzgerald

Wilier races had interbred with human race during immemorial.
Therefore no need to look for them on anywhere but in ourselves. — Toba Beta

Returning to writing fiction after years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The work satisfied something deeper in him than his own desire. It was as if he went to his fields in the spring, not just because he wanted to, but because his father and grandfather before him had gone because they wanted to - because, since the first seeds were planted by hand in the ground, his kinsmen had gone each spring to the fields. When he stepped into the first opening furrow of a new season he was not merely fulfilling an economic necessity; he was answering the summons of an immemorial kinship; he was shaping a passage by which an ancient vision might pass once again into the ground. — Wendell Berry

The True One was there from time immemorial.
He is there today and ever there you will find.
He never died nor will he ever die ...
Look within, you will see Him there enshrined. — Guru Nanak

The closeness of the India-Afghanistan relationship is not a new phenomenon. It has existed since time immemorial. And as a close friend, ever since India's Independence, we have done and will continue to do whatever is required to be done to see Afghanistan grow and progress as a close friend. — Narendra Modi

I always wanted to know what it is right. Maybe we know each other from time immemorial, if you know that in you is the eternal energy of goodness, which is most important for you. — Gregor Golob

Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. — Paul Valery

From time immemorial, soups and broths have been the worldwide medium for utilizing what we call the kitchen byproducts or as the French call them, the 'dessertes de la table' (leftovers), or 'les parties interieures de la bete', such as head, tail, lights, liver, knuckles and feet. — Louis Pullig De Gouy

Thirst, hunger, heat, cold, discomfort, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, fear, and often pain and suffering as well all remain exactly what they have been since time immemorial. Any commander worth his salt will make sure his troops will get habituated to them, as far as possible, before he leads them on campaign. However, to speak with Epaminondas, the place to achieve this is the field and not the gym or the playing court. The members of football teams do not enter the field hungry; should they suffer a serious injury, they expect to be evacuated and taken care of immediately. — Martin Van Creveld

Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future. — Lewis Mumford

Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature. — Paul Gauguin

If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. — Theodor Adorno

I conceived from the outset a strong objection to Zionism. I considered it immoral that immigrants should come from abroad with the avowed intention of attaining to majority in the country and thus to dispossess the people whose country it had been since time immemorial. — Muhammad Asad

Pageantry is a visionary art which has been used, from time immemorial, as a political instrument. — Aldous Huxley

the cross, from time immemorial, was universally symbolic of the intersection between earth and heaven, matter and spirit, the one and the many, human and divine. — Kenneth Atchity

That universal prayer which has been nervously whispered, spoken, chanted, shouted and even screamed towards the air in every known language and now misplaced dialect since time immemorial, Deliver us from evil, has never, and will never be answered. One cannot, after all, be 'delivered' from one's source. — John Zande

It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing half the race from its immemorial subordination
and in the process bring us all a great deal closer to humanity. It may be that we shall even be able to retire sex from the harsh realities of politics, but not until we have created a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit. — Kate Millett

From time immemorial, some men supposed to deal in one-valued 'eternal verities'. We called such men 'philosophers' or 'meta-physicians'. But they seldom realized that all their 'eternal verities' consisted only of words, and words which, for the most part, belonged to a primitive language, refleting in its structure the assumed structure of the world of remote antiquity. Besides, they did not realize that these 'eternal verities' last only so long as the human nervous system is not altered. Under the influence of these 'philosophers', two-valued 'logic', and the confusion of orders of abstractions, nearly all of us contracted a firmly rooted predilection for 'general' statements - 'universals', as they were called - which in most cases inherently involved the semantic one-valued conviction of validity for all 'time' to come. — Alfred Korzybski

The power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone. The broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech. — William L. Shirer

To be wild as the waves;
enshrined
by the vastness -
our cosmic immemorial.
Unsettled as the forest.
An indomitable flicker
amidst worldviews,
of jaded crowns
and romantic ash. — Steven Storm

Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer ... She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true ... She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture ... All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. — Willa Cather

Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse. — George Eliot