The Middle Kingdom Quotes & Sayings

Americans consider the United States an exceptional nation; so do the Chinese people think of their Middle Kingdom. — Patrick Mendis

Oooo, what is that?" Red yelled when she saw the palace. "That's Buckingham Palace," Alex said. "It's where the monarchy resides." Red was mesmerized. "What a stylish and tasteful place! Look at that beautiful statue out front of it in the middle of the street! That looks exactly like the statue I wanted to build in celebration of Charlie's and my wedding!" Red left the others and flew down to the gate. She peered through the bars at the palace in delight. She had to hang on to the bars tightly because the fairy dust was making her drift back to the sky. One of the palace guards on duty saw Red and stared at her in disbelief. It wasn't every day he saw a floating woman at the gate. "Yoo-hoo!" Red called to him. "I just love your hat! Please tell the current monarch that Queen Red of the Center Kingdom says hello - " Conner flew to the gate and pulled Red's hands off the bars. "Red, come on. You're gonna get left behind! — Chris Colfer

He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk - and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk - and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom - all were gone. Whisk - the place where Italy had been empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk ... — Aldous Huxley

Did you hear about the middle Eastern potentate?" he asked me. "This potentate called a meeting of the wise men in the kingdom, and said, "I want you to gather all the world's knowledge together in one place so that my sons can read it and learn."The wise men went off, and after year, they came back with twenty-five volumes of knowledge. This potentate looked at it and he said, "No. It's too long. Make it shorter." So the wise men went off for another year. When they came back, they gave the potentate a piece of paper with one sentence on it. A single sentence. You know what the sentence was?"
Bob looked at me. I shook my head.
"The sentence was: "This too shall pass."
Bob paused, let it sink in: "I heard that when I was very young and it has always stuck with me. — A. J. Jacobs

There's no middle ground in modern movies; you either save a kingdom and marry a princess or you are shot to death by assassins hired by the evil corporation that you are trying to bring to justice in the courtroom of a corrupt judge. — Dean Koontz

Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital for over four hundred years, at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom about four thousand years ago. The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt, and the site is really important because in the Middle Kingdom there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art, architecture and religion. — Sarah Parcak

There, that's better. I want to do this with you looking as God made you. Shannon whatever-your-middle-name-is Tinker, I've never been normal. Not one single day on this planet. But last night? When you clapped for joy at my newfound, piss-soaked balls? My heart stopped. I couldn't even think - my mind stalled. I have never seen anything more beautiful than your face in the moonlight as you clapped for my crazy. Please, let's be stupid together, stupid for each other, stupid for the rest of our lives. Be my queen, officially. With you here, even this tremendous dung pile looks like a kingdom to me. — Debra Anastasia

Shina is the Japanese appellation for China most commonly used during the first half of the twentieth century. After World War II the name for China reverted to chugoku (Middle Kingdom), a common name from before the Meiji Restoration (1868).4 — Stefan Tanaka

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,
the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt. — James A. Garfield

There's no other life for me. Anyway, clemency wouldn't begin to repay your debt. I've given you a greater gift than you know."
"What gift?"
"You'll find out. In return, I expect you to keep it safe."
Kelsea turned back to the mirror. "Great God, tell me you didn't impregnate me while I slept."
The fetch threw back his head and roared with laughter. He placed a friendly hand on Kelsea's back, making her skin prickle. "Tear Queen, you'll either be dead within a week or you'll be the most fearsome ruler this kingdom has ever known. I see no middle ground. — Erika Johansen

Whereas, it is hereby decreed to all felines of the Middle Kingdom: They are enjoined to observe every provision of the judicial codes unless such provisions aforesaid have been abrogated heretofore, though any abrogation is liable to reinstatement at any time whatever and shall be effective retroactively without recourse on behalf of said felines whether or not said felines are presently or will be engaged in litigation. This decree is not susceptible to appeal. — Lloyd Alexander

We hunger for other worlds. We long to go beyond the streets we know, beyond our familiar woods and fields, and into the land of Faerie; to Middle-earth, Narnia, or Summerland; to the kingdom east of the sun and west of the moon. This longing isn't incidental. — Sarah Arthur

Galadriel his sister went not with him to Nargothrond, for in Doriath dwelt Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol, and there was great love between them. Therefore she remained in the Hidden Kingdom, and abode with Melian, and of her learned great lore and wisdom concerning Middle-earth. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Our questions have been wrongly put, because they haven't been about the kingdom. They haven't been about God's sovereign, saving rule coming on earth as in heaven. Instead, our questions have been about a "salvation" that rescues people from the world, instead of for the world. "Going to heaven" has been the object (ever since the Middle Ages at least, in the Western church); "sin" is what stops us from getting there; so the cross must deal with sin, so that we can leave this world and go to the much better one in the sky, or in "eternity," or wherever. But this is simply untrue to the story the gospels are telling - which, again, explains why we've all misread these wonderful texts. Whatever the cross achieves must be articulated, if we are to take the four gospels seriously, within the context of the kingdom-bringing victory. — N. T. Wright

Each of us has to face the matter - either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.
J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955 — J.R.R. Tolkien

You will not mock me - and you will let me finish. I have owned and lost a kingdom, and I have battled death. I have been through all that, and I will not chase after you like some lovesick poet spouting verse. If you wish to call me yours, then you will have to act as if you are mine. On the front of surrender, there is no middle ground. — Nenia Campbell

Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth. — J.G. Ballard

Life in Christ is not meant to mirror life in a Greco-Roman culture. An ancient Middle Eastern culture is not our standard. We are not meant to adopt the world of Luther's Reformation or the culture of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening or even 1950s America as our standard for righteousness. The culture, past or present, isn't the point: Jesus and his Kingdom come, his will done, right now - that is the point. — Sarah Bessey

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like other countries in the region, rejects the acquisition of nuclear weapons by anyone, especially nuclear weapons in the Middle East region. We hope that such weapons will be banned or eliminated from the region by every country in the region. — Abdullah Of Saudi Arabia

England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial ... until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world. — Samuel Smiles

In the early Middle Ages the dominant form of political organization in Western Europe was the Germanic kingdom, and the German kingdom was in some ways the complete antithesis of the modern state. (p. 13) — Joseph Reese Strayer

I've reached the end of this great history
And all the land will fill with talk of me
I shall not die, these seeds I've sown will save
My name and reputation from the grave,
And men of sense and wisdom will proclaim,
When I have gone, my praises and my fame. — Abolqasem Ferdowsi

(Riku and Mickey walk towards DiZ, who stands at the middle of an intersection)
Riku: What are you making me choose now?
DiZ: Will you take the road to light - or the road to darkness?
Riku: Neither. I'm taking the middle road.
(Riku walks past DiZ)
DiZ: You mean the twilit road to nightfall?
(Riku turns around)
Riku: No ... The road to dawn. — Square Enix

Pilgrims from all over the world were making their way to the place deemed the pearl of the Middle East. The city was reminiscent of a modern-day Persepolis. Its buildings, like towering pillars, tested the sky's limit. The evenly paved roads belched with the smell of new tarmac, as if a million masons woke up every morning and by hand lay asphalt one grain at a time. People of all colors, ethnicities, creed and social statuses came bearing money, knowledge or experience in order to build their legacies in the new kingdom, sprouting out of the desert.
Dubai had arrived. — Soroosh Shahrivar

Teaching by example, radical obedience, justice, mercy, activism, and sacrifice wholly inspires me. I'm at that place where "well done" trumps "well said." When I see kingdom work in the middle of brokenness, when mission transitions from the academic soil of the mind into the sacrificial work of someone's hands, I am utterly affected. Obedience inspires me. Servant leaders inspire me. Humility inspires me. Talking heads dissecting apologetics stopped inspiring me a few years ago. — Jen Hatmaker

The United States, with the greatest ability and the weakest desire to finance a welfare state, winds up in the middle of the pack in terms of the absolute value of the resources devoted to it. By 2003 ... America's per capita Public Expenditures were greater than those in Japan, Spain, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, while lower than those in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark and Sweden. — William Voegeli

When in August 1793 a British delegation showed their hosts a terrestrial globe, it turned into a diplomatic incident, for the Chinese were furious to see that their empire covered so little of it. For centuries the Chinese had thought of themselves as 'The Middle Kingdom', that is the centre of the civilized world. To see otherwise was a shock. — Margaret Thatcher

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times ... But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature. — Ferdinand Cohn

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile. — Oscar Wilde

Critics of the war plans (including myself) have pointed to the disastrous political results that must be expected: Iraq would break into three parts (Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, Shi'ites in the south), the Middle East would be exposed to the onslaught of Iranian fanaticism, pro-Western Arab regimes would collapse. Israel would be surrounded by aggressive Islamic fundamentalism, like the Crusader kingdom with the advent of Saladin. — Uri Avnery

If in the middle of an air raid God sends out the gospel call to his kingdom in baptism, it will be quite clear what that kingdom is and what it means. It is a kingdom stronger than war and danger, a kingdom of power and authority, signifying eternal terror and judgment to some, and eternal joy and righteousness to others, not a kingdom of the heart, but one as wide as the earth, not transitory but eternal, a kingdom that makes a way for itself and summons men to itself to prepare its way, a kingdom for which it is worth while risking our lives. - — Dietrich Bonhoeffer