Quotes & Sayings About Pompeii

But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer. We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier
not a policeman
and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,
because the warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also
because he would have been asleep. — Mark Twain

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man. — Oswald Spengler

But if you close your eyes,does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? — Bastille Pompeii

Pompeii, especially, with its grand murals and its flourishing gardens haunted by the dark shadow of Vesuvius, has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with our contemporary world, especially here in Southern California, where the sunlit life also turns out to have dark shadows in which failure and death lurk at the edge of consciousness. Now in these times, we have even closer parallels with those ancient, beautiful, affluent people living the good life on the verge of annihilation. — Eleanor Antin

Isn't this history, and aren't we a couple of ruins?
Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun
What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight! — Kenneth Koch

Put a compass to paper and trace a circle. Then tell me which other country has such a concentration of places like Amalfi, Naples, Ischia, Procida, Sorrento, Positano, Pompeii, and Capri. — Diego Della Valle

Adrian Maben came to us with the idea. And we just thought, "Well, why not?" I don't think any of us thought it would be as well received and last in people's minds for as long as it did. All credit to him. It's his idea [Pink Floyd at Pompeii] and it was great. — David Gilmour

These trenches are like Pompeii, sir. — Ford Madox Ford

Straining to appear judicial, he turned toward the jury box. "The jurors shall disregard the last ... uh ... colloquy between the witness and defense counsel." Might as well ask the residents of Pompeii to ignore the volcano. — Paul Levine

We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius. — James R. Schlesinger

But then in middle school science, Mr. Martinez asked who among us had ever fantasized about living in the clouds, and everyone raised their hand. Then Mr. Martinez told us that up in the clouds the wind blew one hundred and fifty miles an hour and the temperature was thirty below zero and there was no oxygen and we'd all die within seconds."
"Sounds like a nice guy."
"He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace.let me tell you. You think volcanoes are awesome? Tell that to the ten thousand screaming corpses at Pompeii. You still secretly believe that there is an element of magic to this world? It's all just soulless molecules bouncing against each other randomly. Do you worry about who will take care of you if your parents die? As well you should, because they will be worm food in the fullness of time. — John Green

Goddammit! How does the world keep spinning with women on the planet?
Ian St. John in THE POMPEII SCROLL — Jacqueline LaTourrette

That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains. — Susan Vreeland

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

He'd unbuttoned his shirt so the night breeze would soothe him; his body always ran too hot. The blood. Too hot. The large, gold crucifix on his neck, dangling to his thick chest hairs, caught there, and winked in the candlelight. His childhood prayers. For food. Warmth. His beloved mother. That the cruelty of his father. Stop. No more. Beatings. He never. Stopped. Beating her. Mama. [...] Pompeii remembered - like tuning into a clear TV channel - his mother's gentle face. Her fingertips on his boy's face, calming him to sleep. The sound of his father's drunken entrance, when she would hold her breath, stop stroking his boy face. — Alma Luz Villanueva

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement. — Marcel Proust

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth
the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy. — William Makepeace Thackeray

What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found in the museum of Naples - in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(E)ach generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup
if any. — Robert A. Heinlein

Brazil is living the last hours of Pompeii. — Antonio Ermirio De Moraes

We mixed the sounds ourselves. If they were going to put the sound back onto our film [Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.], we wanted to mix it ourselves. — David Gilmour

We've lost our city. I fear it's potentially like Pompeii. — Marc Morial

Look at the walls of Pompeii. That's what got the internet started. — Robin Williams

For them, it was just an ordinary miracle. — Robert Harris

In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness. — Pliny The Younger

We were trying, as I irrelevantly analyzed it, to avoid what might be termed a historic mistake. We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a preapocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the thirties or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the Cold War inhabitants of New York, London, Washington — Joseph O'Neill

On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii ... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; — Charles Dickens

it was at Pompeii, nonetheless, that archaeology was born. It was to come of age in Egypt. Once — Elizabeth Payne

Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
we know crack of volcanic fissure,
slow flow of terrible lava,
pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
about to burst its brittle case
(what the skull can endure!) — H.D.

Unless companies change these rules, any superficial re-organizations they perform will be no more effective than dusting the furniture in Pompeii. — Michael Martin Hammer

POMPEII Note the ruts in roadway worn by chariot wheels. — H.G.Wells

People will perish, but books are immortal. (Pompeii) — Robert Harris

If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it. — Deborah Davis

People who go to Italy to look at ruins won't have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii in the future. — William Manchester

At times I see them as if I were walking through the streets of Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius. This is one of the historian's delights and, even more, his sorrow. If we see someone doing something for the last time, even just eating a piece of bread, this activity becomes wondrously profound. We participate in the transmutation of the ephemeral into the sacramental. We have inklings of eras during which such a sight was an everyday occurrence. — Ernst Junger

I never got my Pompeii," I said, low and even. "And you know I deserved every bit of it. But I'm not going to erupt all over you like I'm owed. Because I've already won. She's not fucking you tonight. — S. Walden