17th Century Quotes

I want to sit around a Gypsy campfire, eating freshly caught rabbit in the company of bare knuckle fighters, and listen to stories about their fights. I want to sit with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table after they've defeated the barbarians in battle. I want to be there when Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, and I want to be surrounded by dragons, wizards and sorcerers. I want to meet the Muslim leader, Saladin, who occupied Jerusalem in 1187, and despite the fact that a number of holy Muslim places had been violated by Christians, preferred to take Jerusalem without bloodshed. He prohibited acts of vengeance, and his army was so disciplined that there were no deaths or violence after the city surrendered. I want to sit around the desert campfire with him.
I want to drink with Caribbean buccaneers of the 17th century and listen to their tales of preying on shipping and Spanish settlements. I want to witness Celtic Berserkers fighting in ritual warfare in a trance-like fury. I want to spend time working on a scrap cruise, the very last cruise before the ship's due to be scrapped, so there's no future in it, and it attracts all the mad faces of the Merchant Navy. Faces that are known in that industry, who couldn't survive outside 'the life' and who for the most part are quite dangerous and mad themselves. I'd rather have one friend who'll fight like hell over ten who'll do nothing but talk shit. And I want to ride with highwaymen on ribbons of moonlight ~ Karl Wiggins

I've had the good fortune of studying the 17th-century art of Amsterdam in preparation for a film. ~ Jack O'Connell

The Devil always takes back his own. ~ Andrea Zuvich

The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood. ~ Kenneth Fisher

17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein. ~ Hilary Kornblith

The "child" was an invention of the 17th century; he did not exist in, say, Shakespeare's day. He had, up until that time, been merged in the adult world and there was nothing that could be called childhood in our sense. ~ Marshall McLuhan

I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and certainly some of the food would have been appealing, but the disease and hygiene would have worried me. ~ Peter Capaldi

Without computers, in the 17th century, we could classify the entire animal kingdom ... there was this idea of the speciation, right? And now, all a search engine is is essentially the mathematical speciation of ideas - and these things really derive from the way that language is used and the way words relate. ~ Joshua Cohen

Lance Armstrong has a 17th-century, 15-foot Spanish fresco of the crucifixion hanging on the wall of his Austin mansion. This doesn't mean - and some of you Armstrong acolytes might want to sit down for this - that Lance is Jesus. ~ Stephen Rodrick

By the mid-17th century, telescopes had improved enough to make visible the seasonally growing and shrinking polar ice caps on Mars, and features such as Syrtis Major, a dark patch thought to be a shallow sea. ~ John Updike

Technologically, I live in the 17th century; I don't have a computer, I don't have any of that stuff. I don't look at the Internet, although I know people tell me I'm all over it. Somebody told me they Googled me, and they said I was mentioned two million times, some stupid thing ... but who cares? ~ Iris Apfel

The curve of man's knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules. ~ Aaron Zigman

I think we as Americans know there's a much better alternative than the 17th century practice of burning rocks to power our economy. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I did not mean to be so long away from you. I had clan business to take care of, which took longer than I anticipated."
She nodded. "I understand."
He blew out a breath. "I'm not sure you do. I was eager to get through that business precisely because I wanted it out of the way so that I could return to your side."
Now it was her turn to feel her body flush with heat. "Oh yeah?"
"Aye." He looked down at his hands and then slowly reached and clasped her hand resting against her thigh. The rough feel of his calloused hands on her skin, and the tentative vulnerability in the movement, about made her slide forward off the bench and melt in a puddle on the stone floor.
He really was just a big - quiet - teddy bear. ~ Angela Quarles

Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion. ~ George Orwell

The oldest book I have is a treatise on architecture from the 17th century. ~ Michael Graves

I'm from Holland and the history of "Admiral" is something you would read about when you're at school. Nobody knows about these stories and when you go to any museum in Holland, you will see these paintings of these 17th century sea beckels that the Dutch were in to, so it always intrigued me. ~ Roel Reine

Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church. ~ Edgar Mitchell

I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through. ~ Amy Smart

The wonderful 17th Century poet, Robert Herrick, wrote a poem entitled, 'To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses.' Easy to say, Robert Herrick; not always easy to do. But it's a good slogan, I think. ~ Robert Pinsky

The technologies for the alternative energy sources exists today. The economics are compelling. The public health is compelling. Why would we maintain a focus on a 17th-century technology, when there are 21st-century alternatives that are both necessary and available? And the answer is the subversion of democracy. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I'd share a pic if the digital camera battery wasn't as flat as 17th century Earth. ~ Simon Haynes

The Salem [witch] trials…can be seen as an example of the propensity of the American people to be convulsed by spasms of self-righteous rage against enemies, real or imaginary, of their society and way of living. Hence the parallels later drawn between Salem in 1692 and the "Red Scare" of 1919-20, Senator McCarthy's hunt for Communists in the early 1950's, the Watergate hysteria of 1973-74, and the Irangate hunt of the 1980s. What strikes the historian, however, is not just the intensity of the self-delusion in the summer of 1692, by no means unusual for the age, but the speed of the recovery from it in the autumn, and the anxiety of the local government and society to confess wrongdoing, to make reparation and search for the truth. That indeed is uncommon in any age. In the late 17th century it was perhaps more remarkable than the hysteria itself and a good augury for America's future as a humane and truth-seeking commonwealth. The rule of law did indeed break down, but it was restored with promptness and penitence. ~ Paul Johnson

There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called "werewolves" tortured and burned at the stake were female. […] In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it."

"Here's also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they're sterile, an aberration, or - most galling of all - they don't even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine - strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism - we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity. ~ Julia Oldham

Yes, I would agree that America, just like Spain was in the 17th Century, is the main empire of the world and they are the ones who, on the surface, are the most pushy: pushing their language, pushing their culture - or what there is of it - pushing by force their system on others. ~ Viggo Mortensen

Humans began to show their pathogenic potential toward the
planet during the 1950s, ravenously devouring natural resources and
discarding waste into the environment with utter carelessness. From
1990 to 1997, human global consumption grew as much as it did from
the beginning of civilization until 1950. In fact, the global economy
grew more in 1997 alone than during the entire 17th century. ~ Joseph C. Jenkins

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter's forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing. ~ Iris Apfel

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist.
(Voltaire) ~ Elizabeth Kales

Footnoting references, signalling quotations, and so on were no part of a 13th-century scholar's duty. He could recycle his own and his predecessor's work without a qualm. He knew nothing of copyright and plagiarism, which are 17th-century inventions. ~ Fergus Kerr

There has never been a 'war on drugs'! In our history we can only see an ongoing conflict amongst various drug users – and producers. In ancient Mexico the use of alcohol was punishable by death, while the ritualistic use of mescaline was highly worshipped. In 17th century Russia, tobacco smokers were threatened with mutilation or decapitation, alcohol was legal. In Prussia, coffee drinking was prohibited to the lower classes, the use of tobacco and alcohol was legal. ~ Sebastian Marincolo

[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child's duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict. ~ C. Sommerville

And while she didn't yet know how she fit into the world, she did know Duncan was a vital part. ~ Angela Quarles

His "Harmonian Court of Love," in which individuals are algorithmically paired for romantic and sexual liaisons, sounded preposterous in the middle nineteenth century. Today it is the banal reality of online dating (eHarmony). Since ~ Chris Jennings

When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect - but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate - may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical - always think for yourself. ~ Linus Pauling

In eighteenth-century England, anchovy sauce became known as ketchup, katchup, or catsup. ~ Mark Kurlansky

What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. ~ James Fenton

Once in a century a man may be ruined or made insufferable by praise. But surely once in a minute something generous dies for want of it. ~ John Masefield

They had been harboring a hatred for us which we had grown accustomed to calling "prejudice." What a gentle word that was! What a euphemism! ~ Edith Hahn Beer

The Bible has been a bestseller for centuries. Why should I let two thousand years of publicity go to waste? ~ Cecil B. DeMille

The Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia struggled along for about a hundred years. Early in the twentieth century it quietly expired. The group initiated the U.S. vegetarian movement and shaped its thesis. Metcalfe gave the cause moral and religious arguments, tended his pastorate, founded the first vegetarian society, edited its magazine, The American Vegetarian, and died in 1862 with full confidence that asparagus seed had a bright future as a coffee substitute; 'already in many places,' he said, 'becoming such a favorite, as to threaten wholly to supplant coffee at the breakfast table. ~ Gerald Carson

The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century. ~ Sylvia Earle

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

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations. ~ Hans Hofmann

Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly ... Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample. ~ Marissa Piesman

Even their contemporaries felt that the relationship of Elizabeth and Robert transcended the details on practicality. There had to be some explanation for their lifelong fidelity, and those contemporaries put it down to 'synaptia', a hidden conspiracy of the stars, whose power to rule human lives no-one doubted: 'a sympathy of spirits between them, occasioned perhaps by some secret constellation', in the words of the historian William Camden, writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Theirs was a relationship already rooted in history and mythology. And that moment when Elizabeth heard she had come to the throne encapsulated much about their story. If our well-loved picture of Elizabeth's accession is something of a fantasy - if the reality is on the whole more interesting - you might say the same about our traditional picture of her relationship with Robert Dudley. ~ Sarah Gristwood

It is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which the genital activity of one person can be differentiated from that of another (dimensions that include preference for certain acts, certain zones or sensations, certain physical types, a certain frequency, certain symbolic investments, certain relations of age or power, a certain species, a certain number of participants, and so on) precisely one, the gender of the object choice, emerged from the turn of the century, and has remained, as THE dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of 'sexual orientation. ~ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sixteenth-century priest who was committed to reforming the church from within, said, When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere, and that which is not voluntary cannot please Christ. ~ Shane Claiborne

I have been the struggler of the century. Fortunately, everyone loves the underdog. ~ Kangana Ranaut

I think the biggest problem of the 21st century is how to deal with minorities. ~ Avigdor Lieberman

The same thing is happening with the State. Call to mind what the State was at the end of the XVIIIth Century in all European nations. Quite a small affair! Early capitalism and its industrial organisation, in which the new, rationalised technique triumphs for the first time, had brought about a commencement of increase in society. A new social class appeared, greater in numbers and power than the pre-existing: the middle class. This astute middle class possessed one thing, above and before all: talent, practical talent. It knew how to organise and discipline, how to give continuity and consistency to its efforts. In the midst of it, as in an ocean, the "ship of State" sailed its hazardous course. The ship of State is a metaphor re-invented by the bourgeoisie, which felt itself oceanic, omnipotent, pregnant with storms. That ship was, as we said, a very small affair: it had hardly any soldiers, bureaucrats, or money. It had been built in the Middle Ages by a class of men very different from the bourgeois - the nobles, a class admirable for their courage, their gifts of leadership, their sense of responsibility. Without them the nations of Europe would not now be in existence. But with all those virtues of the heart, the nobles were, and always have been, lacking in virtues of the head. Of limited intelligence, sentimental, instinctive, intuitive - in a word, "irrational." Hence they were unable to develop any technique, a thing which demands rationalisation. They did not ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order. ~ Laura Kipnis

The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in poetry, the Victorian age or the school of Pope will serve as examples. ~ George Edward Woodberry

Printing with movable letters probably began in China in the middle of the twelfth century, but ~ Jack Weatherford

We may seem competent, but by the end of next century there will be new deserts, new ruins. ~ Edward Bond

First-century Jews looked forward to a public event ... in and through which their god would reveal to all the world that he was not just a local, tribal deity, but the creator and sovereign of all ... The early Christians ... looked back to an event in and through which, they claimed, Israel's god had done exactly that. ~ N. T. Wright

If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles. ~ Carl Sagan

I'm concerned about the role the court will play in protecting individual rights in this and the next century. ~ Dianne Feinstein

Ultimately, the challenges of the 21st century can't be met without collective action. Agreement will almost never be easy, and results won't always come quickly. But I am committed to respecting different points of view, and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms ... that's how we will advance and uphold our ideals. ~ Barack Obama

The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn. ~ Guy De Maupassant

I was like one of those people who is allergic to the twentieth century ... I'd been brought up to think there was some order to things, but there was no safety net. Doctors accused me of being mad. ~ Peter Wolf

I don't want to describe either Governor Mitt Romney or the Republicans as stupid, but I will say this - if you look at their platform, the 2012 platform, it looks like it's from another century and maybe even two. It looks like the platform of 1812. ~ Antonio Villaraigosa

Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion. ~ David Ray Griffin

Earlier 18th-century literary language was not supple enough to connect the life of the imagination to that of the street. ~ Rebecca Solnit

To be sure, there are hunter-gatherer societies that don't exhibit the elaborately organized violence denoted by the term "war." But often what turns out to be lacking is the organization, not the violence. The warless !Kung San were billed in the title of one book as The Harmless People, yet during the 1950s and 1960s, their homicide rate was between 20 and 80 times as high as that found in industrialized nations.114 Eskimos, to judge by popular accounts, are all cuddliness and generosity. Yet early this century, after westerners first made contact with a fifteen-family Eskimo village, they found that every adult male had been involved in a homicide. One reason the !Kung and most Eskimo haven't waged war is their habitat.115 With population sparse, friction is low. But when densely settled along fertile ground, hunter-gatherers have warred lavishly. The Ainu of Japan built hilltop fortresses and, when raiding a neighboring ~ Robert Wright

We were taught that the French were our archenemies, that the Italians were traitors, that Austria had lost the First World War only because of a "stab in the back" - but I must tell you, we were never sure who had done the stabbing. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Starting in the seventeenth century, the general theory of extreme values - maxima and minima - has become one of the systematic integrating principles of science. ~ Richard Courant

No doubt, some of the champions of local government hoped to preserve such unsavory local customs as slavery or the local rule of a small group of privileged men, but many of the defenders of local government argued honestly that the states presented the best hope of securing liberty. Liberty, in the eighteenth century, meant not simply liberty from some intrusive outside power. It meant the active exercise of control over one's life, the possession of power in one's own hands. It meant government small enough and close enough to home to be directly accountable and responsive. It meant self-government, not government handed over to some remote rulers. Strictly understood, the principle of local self-government meant a share of power more or less equal to everyone else's share of power, a citizenry more or less equal in wealth and status, not one dominated by one small group or another; that is to say, it meant democracy ~ Charles L. Mee Jr.

The best experience that we have on Earth is the fact that we have scientific stations, weathering over stations down in the Antarctic for almost the entire 20th century to learn how to exist in exceedingly hazardous conditions; and the Moon is far more hazardous than Antarctica. At least they have water there. ~ Edgar Mitchell

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano); Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody. You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.

For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers. ~ Terri Windling

Some say that inside every scholar there is a romantic, trying to get out. That may not be entirely true, but there is much truth in it. It is to such scholars that we owe the preservation of ancient beliefs in magic and witchcraft in a materialistic twentieth century, and many of them more than half believe in these things, cloaking their unfashionable faith behind the impeccable bibliographical apparatus of names, dates and footnotes. ~ Leslie Shepard

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

China has existed within very roughly its present borders for over two millennia and for virtually the whole of that period saw itself as a 'civilisation state.' It was only when it was too weak to resist the western powers in the early 20th century that it finally acquiesced in an arrangement that was alien to it. ~ Martin Jacques

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like
what's going on
what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming another third of it spent in telling lies. [Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness] ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision. ~ Emily Dickinson

The Dark and Middle Ages! The Nineteenth Century had an impudent way with its labels. For there, under the window in Arthur's Gramarye, the sun's rays flamed from a hundred jewels of stained glass in monasteries and convents, or danced from the pinnacle of cathedrals and castles, which their builders had actually loved. Architecture, in those dark ages of theirs, was such a light-giving passion of the heart that men gave love-names to their fortresses. ~ T.H. White