Peking Quotes & Sayings

I have done the journey between Tientsin and Peking so many times that I recognize even the stray dogs (known locally as wonks) that frequent the platforms in the hopes of picking up something thrown out from the carriage windows. — Daniele Vare

GRASS, LIKE NEARLY EVERYTHING else in China, is subject to political interpretation. Historically, the Chinese have taken a dim view of grass. In Peking's parks, the dirt is swept daily, since cleanliness is prized, but gardeners relentlessly uproot any tuft of grass. Grass breeds disease, generations of Chinese have been taught. Additionally, Communist doctrine teaches that grass is decadent, since it is usually associated with leisured classes and generates exploitation - one man hiring another to cut it. — Carl Hiaasen

Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output ... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect - the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York. — James Gleick

Try stuff. I also used to believe that it's better to be smart than lucky because if you're smart you can out-think the competition. I don't believe that anymore-this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don't get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, "One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth." — Guy Kawasaki

A certain number of Americans are already in Peking and most of us here feel that it would be very useful for the United States and especially for the Left-wing progressive movement in the United States if groups of students such as you mention could make a tour of China. — Anna Louise Strong

I am afraid if the present trend in Vietnam continues that direct confrontation, first of all between Washington and Peking, is inevitable. — U Thant

A fascinating account sourced from many previously unpublished letters and archives. Boyd's characters flit on the surface of the city like water beetles, unaware of the depths below.

(Review of Julia Boyd's non-fiction "A Dance with the Dragon; The Vanished World of Peking's Foreign Colony — Frances Wood

Life has a strange way of working itself out — David Cook

But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Winter in Peking is insurpassable, unless indeed it is surpassed by the other seasons in that blessed city. For Peking is a city clearly marked by the seasons, each perfect in its own way and each different from the others. — Lin Yutang

Bernardo looked at me, shaking his head. "I've never heard Edward talk about any woman the way he talks about you."
I raised eyebrows at him. "Meaning?"
"Dangerous. He talks about you like you're dangerous. — Laurell K. Hamilton

God doesn't come to sit on the porch and sip lemonade. He comes to take over. — Ayana Mathis

The most influential people you will ever meet were once held together by the encouragement of others. — Shannon L. Alder

The Communist leaders in Moscow, Peking and Hanoi must fully understand that the United States considers the freedom of South Viet Nam vital to our interests. And they must know that we are not bluffing in our determination to defend those interests. — Gerald R. Ford

It seems to me that the Russian prestige is declining and that America holds in its hands the immediate future of the world: as long as America knows how to develop the sense of the earth at the same time as her sense of liberty. [Written from Peking, October 1945, on the eve of departure, after having been stuck there since the war began.] — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The popular visual imagery of China, as The Times correspondent suggested, came from pantomime and music hall in pre-cinema days; together with comics, press and book illustrations. Reminiscences by visitors to China sometimes noted that this was how they actually saw Peking when first they arrived. Then they discovered that the pantomimes were really about England in fancy dress. — Christopher Frayling

In a small Polish farm community, during the fall planting season of 1981, events occurred which electrified the world, sending reverberations of magnitude to capitals as diverse as Washington, Peking and especially Moscow. — James A. Michener

The company-as-a-machine model fits how people think about and operate conventional companies. And, of course, it fits how people think about changing conventional companies: You have a broken company, and you need to change it, to fix it. — Peter Senge

Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men? ... Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act. — David Henry Hwang

Four sits down on the edge of the carousel, leaning against a plastic horse's foot. His eyes lift to the sky, where there are no stars, only a round moon peking through a thin layer of clouds. The muscles in his arms are relaxed; his hand rests on the back of his neck. He looks almost comfortable, holding that gun to his shoulder. I close my eyes briefly. Why does he distract me so easily? I need to focus. — Veronica Roth

If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! — Leo Tolstoy

Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country. — Uta Hagen

Peking welcomed me with tremendous parades and gun salutes. The people with me are proud of me, proud that our downtrodden country has taken its place among the great nations. And now, people of America, I ask you, why didn't Eisenhower accord me the same respect? — Sukarno

Choose your tempo," he whispered in her ear. "What?" "Fast and hard or slow and easy. Your tempo, your choice. You get to direct this symphony. — Mari Carr

This was the last party Mrs. Radford would attend in San Francisco. One month later she left on a boat filled with missionaries going to Hawaii. One year later she was one of only seven white women in Edo, Japan. From there she sailed to Russia; from there she made her way to Peking. She died somewhere near Chunking at the age of seventy-four. — Karen Joy Fowler

I took the LSAT. My score was decent. I had a plan that if my score was really well, then I might of just went to Yale or Harvard ... But it was just mediocre. I can get into law school. — Vinny Guadagnino

I don't like to quote myself but unfortunately everybody I know who should be quoting me is dead. — Irving Brecher

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul. — E. M. Forster

Ritzonia" was the epithet coined by Bernard Bernson, who sold Italian pictures to American millionaires, to describe the unreal, mortifying sameness of their luxury. "Ritzonia," he wrote in 1909, "carries its inmates like a wishing carpet from place to place, the same people, the same meals, the same music. Within its walls you might be at Peking or Prague or Paris or London and you would never know where. — Richard Davenport-Hines

Regarding The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: The Music Man (for which Willson also wrote the lyrics) is an astonishing creation. It came in a spurt of brilliance. It is shot through with originality, verve, and-why not go all the way?-genius. People love it, can't get enough of it, can't stop performing it-and they are not wrong. For closing in on a half- century now, The Music Man has been performed continually, in every American city, town, and village, and in other parts of the world as well, not excluding Peking. — Meredith Willson

If Peking wasn't stopped in the peninsular war, he argued, China would be recognized as "the military colossus of the East." U.S. prestige would plummet, and the world's new nations would gravitate toward neutralism. — William Manchester

The pre-frontal region of the Peking man resembles that found in some parts of the Middle West. — Will Cuppy

Poem for Liu Ya-tzu I cannot forget how in Canton we drank tea and in Chungking went over our poems when leaves were yellowing. Thirty-one years ago and now we come back at last to the ancient capital Peking. In this season of falling flowers I read your beautiful poems. Be careful not to be torn inside. Open your vision to the world. Don't say that waters of Kumming Lake are too shallow. We can watch fish better here than in the Fuchun River in the south. — Mao Zedong

The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet. — Andy Warhol

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. — George Bernard Shaw

Scott: I don't think I'm ready to be a grown-up.
Kim: I don't think you are either, buddy. But hey, you'll get it. It just takes practice. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. — Julian Huxley

[Davidson] Black procured cadavers for research, obtained from the Peking police department. These cadavers were mostly of people who had been executed for various crimes; the police regularly sent Black truckloads of the bodies of the executed convicts. Execution in China was by beheading, and thus the cadavers Black received lacked heads and had mutilated necks. After some time, he asked the police whether there was any possibility of getting better dead bodies for research - corpses that were intact. The next day, he received a shipment of convicts, all chained together, with a note from the police asking him to kill them in any way he chose. — Amir D. Aczel

Mao had decided to make the city his new capital, and he had its name changed from Peking to Beijing. — Anchee Min

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. — David Mitchell

I was a student at Peking University for close to a decade, while a so-called 'knowledge explosion' was rapidly expanding. I was searching for not just knowledge, but also to mold a temperament, to cultivate a scholarly outlook. — Li Keqiang

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one's breath before the next disaster. — Robin Hobb