Premodern Times Quotes & Sayings

Goodness knows she is too fierce for you
Goodness knows she has eyes for a lord
Goodness knows she yet will prove untrue
Her cheek's blush is as false as her word — Shannon Hale

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active. — Anthony Hopkins

It's a huge disservice to classify all minds as either closed or open. I find the best minds are closed by openable windows. — Criss Jami

Since the rise of Islam, Jews had lived as a tolerated minority, or dhimmi, a status granted to Jews and Christians because they were monotheists. Despite a growing tendency in our own times to paint the premodern Islamic world as an Eden of religious tolerance in which Jews flourished, they always lived by the whims of fickle rulers and the mood of a hostile majority. In the eyes of that majority they were effete, lacking in honor, and powerless by definition, but as long as they accepted the supremacy of Muslims they were usually allowed to live and observe their faith and occasionally to prosper. — Matti Friedman

In one family, every little plan or question is discussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, without the least effort, every discussion goes on amid perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more agreeable: only, in many homes it does not happen to be the family habit. — Charles Buxton

I didn't have a strong male figure in my life on a day-to-day basis. So I think that whole [marriage] situation, a lot of it stems from a place where I was out there alone as a really and I always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under me. — Mariah Carey

To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad? — Edward Abbey

Then you think there is no God?"
"No, I think there quite probably is one."
"Then why? ... "
Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now ... "
"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.
"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all. — Aldous Huxley

Our country must morally re-arm. We cannot run a country where virtue is vice and vice is virtue. We cannot live in a country where the looters of yester-years assume they have undergone a Pauline conversion because they are in opposition and oppose the Government of the day. Some of our richest men and women are to be found in politics and their creed is, thou shall reap what thou hath not sown. — Patrick L.O. Lumumba

Part of knowing who we are is knowing we are not someone else. And Jew is only the name we give to that stranger, the agony we cannot feel, the death we look at like a cold abstraction. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. — Arthur Miller

I always believed in God, but felt that God wanted to punish me more than He wanted to bless me. I did not necessarily blame God, I just figured that is how this Christian thing worked; sins are punished, and every so often, God would throw a blessing in. Eventually, like all children do, I became an adult and realized that my Father is not vindictive, but loves and actually wants to bless me. He wants to delight in my business and see me succeed. Most importantly, He knows that I will. — V.L. Thompson

In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness ... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself ... This is what I think about Russian suicides. — Anton Chekhov

Fiction can do more than entertain you; it can change you — Alisa Hope Wagner

In a way, the goal of all writing projects should be to "get the hell out." You don't simply want to finish; you want to finish as quickly and easily as possible (without undue stress or pressure, of course) so that you can move on to the next project - or, the rest of your life. — Hillary Rettig

Deuteronomy's notion of tithes - that for two out of three years surplus is shared broadly with the disadvantaged, and in the third year is given to them outright - is sound economics when seen in light of conceptions of redistributive economics in primitive societies. In modern capitalist societies, surplus earnings are placed into savings, and insurance policies are taken out to hedge against various forms of adversity. The laws of tithing may be construed as another element in a program of primitive insurance. In a premodern society, A will give some of his surplus in a good year to B, who may have fallen on hard times in exchange for B's commitment to reciprocate should their roles one day be reversed. — Joshua A. Berman