1887 Paris Quotes

The Tower of Babel" ...
The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others devoted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened ... " The Tower of Babel" ...
How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city ...
Plea to the Exposition Director in opposition to the Eiffel Tower, signed by artists and writers and published in Le Temps, 1887 ~ Carol McCleary

A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what happens when you become a public figure; people eat their dinners off you. ~ Hilary Mantel

She said, 'I'm your biggest fan,' and I said, 'Who are you?' She said, 'Paris Hilton.' ~ Ricky Gervais

For her, marriage was a sweetened version of murder. ~ Daniel Saldana Paris

My joke is a picture of David Bowie on his balcony in the '70s in a suit in Paris, and unless that's you, I'm not interested. There are very few aesthetic types that I have, and people who look like that are not always necessarily good for me. ~ Jen Kirkman

Tabloid photos capture people at their most self-conscious and disoriented; in real life, Paris Hilton is like an elegant paper crane. ~ Diablo Cody

Where are they now? she thought. Her iPod, her iPhone, her iPad, the I-ness of her life? Her mind stretched around in its memories, searching for her things: She saw her phone on the hotel bedside table in Paris; her iPad in her Louis Vuitton urban satchel; her iPod slipping from her pocket in the restaurant, the night before she ran away. ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

The Paris peace talks kept a roof over my head and food on the table and clothes on my back because if something was said going in or coming out, I had the rent for the month. ~ Ed Bradley

In fact, if Paris had not been seated next to Helen when he dined in the court of Menelaus, there never would have been a Trojan War." A ~ Amor Towles

Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span. ~ Bram Van Velde

I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure ... Like, why did Paris Commune go wrong? Trotskyites. Why did the October Revolution go wrong? And so on ... OK, we screwed it up, but we can give the best theory why it had to happen. ~ Slavoj Zizek

He wanted the old Cleo back. His Cleo. That overawed girl who had danced with him in Paris not so long ago and gazed at him at as if he was the sun and she wanted nothing more than to burn alive in him. ~ Caitlin Crews

She felt happy in Paris, happier than here, but only Prague held her by a secret bond of beauty. ~ Milan Kundera

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris. ~ Jessye Norman

The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre. ~ Claude Monet

Remember that the bad days are not forever, and the trouble which seems so terrible at last. ~ George Orwell

Consider the fact that you are now experiencing death, in a curious way. Not being in Paris right now, you know what it is like to be dead in Paris. No lights, no sounds -- nothing. The same goes for Timbuctu. In fact, you are dead everywhere -- except for one small spot. Just think how close you are to being dead everywhere! ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known as the Haymarket Riot. No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not Judge Gary himself said: Not because you have caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial. ~ Emma Goldman

Sometimes one gets the feeling that life still thinks it's living in Paris in the '30s. ~ Tom Robbins

Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine ~ Peter Weiss

I get inspired in certain places. You have to write in places like Amsterdam or Paris or New Zealand, when you're standing on a yacht, looking out at the middle of the ocean. ~ Action Bronson

I live in Paris but I feel I am a daughter of Europe. ~ Monica Bellucci

He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on. He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec. ~ Cassandra Clare

I would love to live in Paris and speak French. That would make me feel glamorous! ~ Amanda Seyfried

I'm going to do the time and I am going to do it the right way ~ Paris Hilton

Lord Maccon reflected upon the state of his life wherein he had somehow gained a spouse who could not give a pig's foot for the latest dresses out of Paris but who whined about not owning an aethographic transmitter. Well, at least the two were comparable obsessions so far as expense was concerned. ~ Gail Carriger

Tell your papa I'll call upon him soon. Mr. Jefferson is still very much needed here in Paris, where his revolution remains undone. In my study, I have a copy of his Declaration of Independence in half a frame. The other half of the frame is empty. One day, with his help, it will house a Declaration of French Rights and they'll stand side by side, like proud brothers. Like France and America. Like your father and me." Ordinarily, ~ Stephanie Dray

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation. ~ Jean-Jacques Annaud

A final reminder. Whenever you are in Paris at twilight in the early summer, return to the Seine and watch the evening sky close slowly on a last strand of daylight fading quietly, like a sigh. ~ Kate Simon

You sayin' you want to go?"
"Don't you?"
"Hell no!"
"Okay,I'll tell Matt and Jared that they can go to Paris without us."
The only response was stunned silence, and I finally turned to smile at him. "Do you want to reconsider?" I asked.
"The wedding's in Paris?"
"Yep."
His dark eyes were huge, and I could see so much in them. He was excited, almost giddy. I could see it bubbling up in him, but he was trying t stay calm and not get his hopes up. "Can we afford Paris?"
"No," I said, "but it doesn't matter. Cole's footing the bill."
He grabbed my shirt and pushed me back against the countertop, almost as if he was going to kiss me, but stopped short, looking into my eyes. "Are you serious?"
"Would I lie to you about something like this?"
"No."
"Do you think I'd make it up just to tease you?"
"No."
"Yes."
He backed up a step. "Yes what?"
he asked.
I could hardly keep from laughing that I'd finally managed to turn the tables on him with his own backward form of communication. "Yes, I'm absolutely serious. Cole offered to fly us all to Paris."
...
His expression was so full of hope, I thought it was a good thing I hadn't tried to say no. He put his hand against my cheek and looked into my eyes. "Tell me what you want to do."
All I had to do was tell him the truth. I brushed his hair out of his eyes and said, "I want to do whatever will make you happy."
He smiled at me, the huge, ~ Marie Sexton

At the end of this journey, it seems to me that reconciling the long shadows cast by the uneasy past may ultimately depend on elements so basic that they bring to mind a simple Slav proverb I once came across and never forgot: Eat bread and salt and speak the truth. They are the recovery of fact, public accountability and the instituting of fair trials of one sort or another, to help mark ends and beginnings and to return the moral compass as close to the centre as possible. ~ Erna Paris

loved you very much. I might say that of Paris; my memories are heaped there. Somehow I was constantly returning - the train gliding through the endless suburbs or in blue air the airplane banking as, face close to the window, I looked down. ~ Vintage

I've no desire to hang around with a bunch of upper-class delinquents, do twenty minutes' work and then spend the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne and having dozens of moist, pink, highly experienced French peasant girls galloping up and down my - hang on ... ~ Rowan Atkinson

How long have you been cheating on me Gabriel? ~ Paris Hansen

In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and put his arms around her, smelling of turpentine.
"The first one is always the hardest," he said.
"The first?"
"The first one you love who dies," he said. "It gets easier, after. ~ Cassandra Clare

I understand addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could a man (or a woman) do something so self-destructive, knowing that they're hurting not only themselves, but the people they love? It seemed that it would be so incredibly easy for them to just not take that next drink. Just stop. It's so simple, really. But as so often happens with me, my arrogance kept me from seeing the truth of the matter.
I see it now though.
Every day, I tell myself it will be the last. Every night, as I'm falling asleep in his bed, I tell myself that tomorrow I'll book a flight to Paris, or Hawaii, or maybe New York. It doesn't matter where I go, as long as it's not here. I need to get away from Phoenix - away from him - before this goes even one step further.
And then he touches me again, and my convictions disappear like smoke in the wind.
This cannot end well. That's the crux of the matter, Sweets. I've been down this road before - you know I have - and there's only heartache at the end. There's no happy ending waiting for me like there was for you and Matt. If I stay here with him, I will become restless and angry. It's happening already, and I cannot stop it. I'm becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, he'll leave me. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. One way or another, he'll be gone. Is it not wiser to end it now, Sweets, before it gets to t ~ Marie Sexton

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub. ~ C. Wright Mills

In Paris the past is always with you: you look at it, walk over it, sit on it. ~ Elizabeth Bard

Indulgence comes in all varieties: a mouthful of gourmet chocolate, a hot stone massage, a week in Paris or 20 uninterrupted minutes to get
lost in a book. ~ Gina Greenlee

Evidence of this [transformation of animals into fossils] is that parts of aquatic animals and perhaps of naval gear are found in rock in hollows on mountains, which water no doubt deposited there enveloped in sticky mud, and which were prevented by coldness and dryness of the stone from petrifying completely. Very striking evidence of this kind is found in the stones of Paris, in which one very often meets round shells the shape of the moon. ~ Albertus Magnus

A few minutes ago, I felt as if I was back in Paris,
sitting in a park.
It is funny how our mind sometimes wanders
back to times past.

When each of my parents was dying,
floating in a sea of pain medication,
their minds drifted back to their early twenties
when they were newly in love.
They both talked as if they were lost,
and they had to find each other.

In one corner of my house,
I display some things that my parents cherished:
my mother's china
and my father's fishing gear.
I don't know if there is an afterlife,
but if their ghosts visit me someday,
then their cherished things will be waiting for them.
I also display photographs of my late parents,
not when they were old,
but when they were a newlywed couple,
young, happy, smiling
and full of hope
and love. ~ Jeffrey A. White

I'd get out of here," he said. "Go someplace where no one knew me. Start over. Go to Paris like you did or go to - I don't know - Prague. Somewhere." He looked toward the window, like he could already see himself gone.
"Oh," she said, because it hurt that he was thinking about that when she was thinking about him. She narrowed her eyes. "What's stopping you?"
The boy looked down at the book of fairy tales. "Nothing," he said.
Lila wanted to be the one to stop him. ~ Holly Black

[When asked at age 79 why her Paris apartment was located up many flights of stairs at the top of the building:] It's the only way I can still make the hearts of men beat faster. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

It's sexier when a girl is flirty but she doesn't do anything. ~ Paris Hilton

I am working in Paris . I cannot for a single day get the thought out of my head that there probably exists something essential, some immutable reality, and now that I have lost everything else (thank God, it gets lost all on its own) I am trying to preserve this and, what is more, not to be content. In a word: I am working. ~ Marc Chagall

He came down from the North to Paris with a mind like Aristotle's and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the Commandments on the spot. ~ James Goldman

People can't believe how hard I work ... I love it. I think it just runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was a bellboy and had a dream to do a hotel chain, so I think I get it from him. ~ Paris Hilton

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted. ~ Honore De Balzac

When Angkorian society began, Paris and London were not much more than elaborate villages. Europe was crawling with barbarians, and here were the Khmer engineering sophisticated irrigation systems and constructing the biggest temple in the world. ~ Kim Fay