State Tower Quotes & Sayings

Owning great landmarks such as the Empire State Building or Trump Tower or the General Motors Building or the Plaza Hotel - there are certain just spectacular landmarks - it's an honor; it's really an honor. — Donald Trump

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath. — Franz Kafka

Now the work of art also represents a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy, and there are those who resent it. But art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all. — Rudolf Arnheim

There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. — Joseph Heller

Two reefs tower in front of the anarchist. The first, the state, must be overcome, especially in a hurricane, when the waves soar. He ineluctably runs aground on the second one, society, the very image that flickered before him. There is a brief intermezzo between the fall of the legitimate powers and the new legality. Two weeks after Kropotkin's funeral cortege, in which his corpse had followed the Black Banners, the sailors of Kronstadt were liquidated. This is not to say that nothing had happened in between - Merlino, one of the disillusioned, hit the nail on the head: 'Anarchism is an experiment. — Ernst Junger

Clearly, here is a man who adheres to a widely held theory of attacking the branches of evil. 1. Speak from an ivory tower but rarely take a cutting tool in hand, unless when advising others. 2. Lecture at length, inspire others to unselfish acts of civil disobedience or quiet resistance, but rarely perform such acts yourself. 3. Become a widely-heralded critic of the state from within a respected state institution. — Douglas Herman

I was not scared at all. — Nik Wallenda

The cold logic of mid-twentieth-century atheism has now given way to an era of renewed 'spirituality,' but it is an awakening more thrapeutic than pious, more attuned to self-expression than self-denial. It is now fashionable to talk about God, though it is still deeply unfashionable to believe in him. — J. Mark Bertrand

Through the window I looked across the oil-black Tigris at the Green Zone, lit up like Disneyland in Dystopia. I thought about J.G. Ballard's novel High Rise, where a state-of-the-art London tower block is the vertical stage for civilization to unpeel itself until nothing but primal violence remains. — David Mitchell

The Hand roused. It lumbered to its feet, reeking of ionized air and dry metallic bones, revealing a level of functionality Alif had not detected. He reeled backward, recalibrating. Breaching the confines of the State intranet, the Hand began to attack the base of Alif's tower, slicing away layers of code through a mirroring protocol of a kind Alif had never seen before. — G. Willow Wilson

There are so many third-rate people now who are more famous than people who should be famous, but sometimes people who could or should be famous are very boring, too. — Karl Lagerfeld

The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to. The multitude of men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer.
(Thus) I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao). — Lao-Tzu

ALBA from "Langue d'Oc" When the nightingale to his mate Sings day-long and night late My love and I keep state In bower, In flower, 'Till the watchman on the tower Cry: "Up! Thou rascal, Rise, I see the white Light And the night Flies. — Ezra Pound

The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing. — Anton Chekhov

We ask for what reason our Lord was unwilling to state the time of His coming (cf. Mk. 13:31-32). If we ask it, we shall not find it is owing to ignorance, but to wisdom. For it was not to our advantage to know; in order that we being ignorant of the actual moments of judgment to come, might ever be as it were on guard, and set on the watch-tower of virtue, and so avoid the habits of sin; lest the day of the Lord should come upon us in the midst of our wickedness. — Ambrose

The greatest of all humiliations is that disgrace delivered without a word being spoken, or a hand ever raised. — John Zande

It's human desire to be understood. And we always feel we're not understood. — John Baldessari

Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops. — Margaret Atwood

The Empire State, a lonely dinosaur, rose sadly at midtown, highest tower, tallest mountain, longest road, King Kong's eyrie, meant to moor airships, alas. — Vincent Scully

Mr. Bernard died on a Monday, at the age of seventy-five, his body wasted. He lay in state for two days in the lobby of the Bernard Gursky Tower and, as he failed to rise on the third, he was duly buried. — Mordecai Richler

Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance ... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. — Blaise Pascal

For each letter received from a creditor, write fifty lines on an extraterrestrial subject and you will be saved. — Charles Baudelaire

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden

For the house of Dunraven, the ravens represented a spiritual claim to the Tower for the Celtic, especially the Welsh, people. For the English, the ravens represented the colorful savagery of their ancestors, which, however, testified to the exalted state of civilization they had since achieved. The national sagas of the Welsh and English gradually blended in tall tales told to tourists by Yeoman Warders, to eventually create a national myth. The romanticized past of Wales, predicated on survival, was fused with that of England, predicated on progress and conquest, to create a legend of Britain. — Boria Sax

If I was designing a home for Libby Strout, it would be exceptional. It would be one of a kind. It would be bright red with a tin roof, at least two stories, possibly more, a state-of-the-art art weather station, and lots of turrets. Also a tower, but not one to lock her in. It would be a place where she could sit and look out over and beyond the town, as far as the horizon, maybe even past it. — Jennifer Niven

Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar ramblers. Most of the houses had traditional flower gardens with marigolds and zinnias, and some with head-high sunflowers. — John Sandford

I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the bards, leaving no trave in the fables of their time. — Elizabeth Blackwell

I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false. — Marianne Moore

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper. — Steve Martin