Feasts Quotes

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Quotes About Feasts

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Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto it thus far, and no farther! ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Feasts quotes by Edgar Allan Poe
From predator-prey models (the so-called Lotka-Volterra type of population dynamics), I knew that populations will experience Extremistan-style variability, hence predators will necessarily go through periods of feast and famine. That's us, humans-we had to have been designed to experience extreme hunger and extreme abundance. So our food intake had to have been fractal. Not a single one of those promoting the "three meals a day," "eat in moderation" idea has tested it empirically to see whether it is healthier than intermittent fasts followed by large feasts.

But Near Eastern religions (Judaism, Islam, and Orthodox Christianity) knew it, of course-just as they knew the need for debt avoidance-and so they had fast days. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Feasts quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
There is such joy in a good ship, and a greater joy to have the ship's belly fat with other men's silver. It is the Viking joy, driving a dragon-headed hull through a wind-driven sea towards a future full of feasts and laughter. The Danes taught me that and I love them for it. ~ Bernard Cornwell
Feasts quotes by Bernard Cornwell
I'll piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal of them," said Nora. "I'll let you know how they taste. ~ Henry James
Feasts quotes by Henry James
Perhaps the most likely answer is that, in the Bible, six is the number for human beings. People were created on the sixth day, and they are to work six of seven days. A Hebrew could not be a slave for more than six years. God's number, on the other hand, is seven. He created seven days in a week. There are seven colors in the visible spectrum and seven notes in a musical scale. Biblically, there are seven feasts of Jehovah (Leviticus 23); seven sayings of Jesus from the cross; and seven "secrets" in the Kingdom parables (Matthew 13). At the fall of Jericho, seven priests marched in front of the army bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns, and on the seventh day they marched around the city seven times (Joshua 6). ~ David Jeremiah
Feasts quotes by David Jeremiah
Our midnight feasts aren't so much 'lashings of ginger beer' as 'whatever booze we can smuggle in'. ~ Cat Clarke
Feasts quotes by Cat Clarke
Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober. ~ Michel De Montaigne
Feasts quotes by Michel De Montaigne
What the mind focuses on, it feasts on. And if you want to know what a person's focus and feast is, all you have to do is listen to the words that come out of her mouth. ~ Lysa TerKeurst
Feasts quotes by Lysa TerKeurst
(I bring food and drink to the guards when they are on post during feasts. I believe it is written in the Obfuscations of St. Pesto: "In nine cases out of ten, a large friend with a poleax shall truly a blessing be." ) ~ Christopher Moore
Feasts quotes by Christopher Moore
I sprayed scent like a saga a little too anxiously, left the porridge burnt at the bottom of the pot that morning: oats. Now I am swimming for my life while my sister in another city reaches for her umbrella next to her front door. I can smell the rosemary chicken but I don't want any feasts. ~ Abigail George
Feasts quotes by Abigail George
The steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit ... One hardly can have virtue when one enjoys meat meals and feasts ... ~ Saint Basil
Feasts quotes by Saint Basil
Twice ten fat oxen to the ships she sends; Besides a hundred boars, a hundred lambs, With bleating cries, attend their milky dams; And jars of gen'rous wine and spacious bowls She gives, to cheer the sailors' drooping souls. Now purple hangings clothe the palace walls, And sumptuous feasts are made in splendid halls: On Tyrian carpets, richly wrought, they dine; With loads of massy plate the sideboards shine, And antique vases, all of gold embossed (The gold itself inferior to the cost), Of curious work, where on the sides were seen The fights and figures of illustrious men, From their first founder to the present queen. ~ Virgil
Feasts quotes by Virgil
The annual celebrations of God's mercy, justice, and power, the feasts or fasts undertaken in praise of His Name, the miracles He was supposed to have thrown our way over the centuries - in my grandfather's mind, it was all nullified by the thing he had not yet learned to call the Holocaust. In Egypt, in Shushan, in the time of Judah Maccabee, God had intervened to deliver us with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; big deal. When we were sent to the ovens, God had sat with His outstretched thumb up His mighty ass and let us burn. In 1947 there was, to my grandfather, one reason to continue calling oneself a Jew, to go on being Jewish before the world: as a way of telling Hitler Fuck you. ~ Michael Chabon
Feasts quotes by Michael Chabon
It's the centuries, Scarlett darling. All the life lived there, all the joy and all the sorrow, all the feasts and battles, they're in the air around and the land beneath you. It's time, years beyond our counting weighing without weight on the earth. You cannot see it or smell it or hear it or touch it, but you feel it brushing your skin and speaking without sound. Time. And mystery. ~ Alexandra Ripley
Feasts quotes by Alexandra Ripley
It was my mother, my frequent co-conspirator in the kitchen and my conduit to our past, who suggested the means to convey this epic disjunction, this unruly collision of collectivist myths and personal antimyths. We would reconstruct every decade of Soviet history - from the prequel 1910s to the postscript present day - through the prism of food. Together, we'd embark on a yearlong journey unlike any other: eating and cooking our way through decade after decade of Soviet life, using her kitchen and dining room as a time machine and an incubator of memories. Memories of wartime rationing cards and grotesque shared kitchens in communal apartments. Of Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning and Stalin's table manners. Of Khrushchev's kitchen debates and Gorbachev's disastrous antialcohol policies. Of food as the focal point of our everyday lives, and - despite all the deprivations and shortages - of compulsive hospitality and poignant, improbable feasts. ~ Anya Von Bremzen
Feasts quotes by Anya Von Bremzen
Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba. ~ Julia Child
Feasts quotes by Julia Child
Well, you can go on looking forward," said Gandalf. "There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Feasts quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien
Slowly, God is opening my eyes to needs all around me. In Scripture, God revisits this issue of caring for the poor- an echo that repeats itself from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible acknowledges that the poor will always be part of society, but God takes on their cause. The Mosaic law of the Old Testament is filled with regulations to prevent and eliminate poverty. The poor were given the right to glean- to take produce from the unharvested edges of the fields, a portion of the tithes, and a daily wage. The law prevented permanent slavery by releasing Jewish bondsmen and women on the sabbatical and Jubilee year and forbade charging interest on loans. In one of his most tender acts, God made sure that the poor- the aliens, widows, and orphans- were all invited to the feasts. ~ Margaret Feinberg
Feasts quotes by Margaret Feinberg
For some reason foreign to our modern ears, God tells us that celebration is central to pleasing Him; it is central to leading a good life. Modern American life has no time for serious celebrations as did life in centuries past. We've got work to do; projects and deadlines press us. And yet for all our industrial-strength pragmatism, few if any truly important things get accomplished. We have forgotten that celebration isn't just an option; it's a call to full Christian living.
Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating-whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking-are all part of obeying God's command to "love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength" (Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30). We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips. ~ Douglas Wilson
Feasts quotes by Douglas Wilson
Art feasts upon its maker, I ~ David Mitchell
Feasts quotes by David Mitchell
How I loved the feasts! ... I especially loved the processions in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. What a joy it was for me to throw flowers beneath the feet of God! ... I was never so happy as when I saw my roses touch the sacred Monstrance ... ~ Therese Of Lisieux
Feasts quotes by Therese Of Lisieux
The dark has teeth and it will bite,
It feasts begins on Sorry Night.
When cold and fear are intertwined,
They'll chew up your heart and feed on your mind.
Where have the souls gone? What do they see?
The gateway to Hell's eternity. ~ Simon Holt
Feasts quotes by Simon Holt
And that, too, was the truth, that a man cannot step back from a fight and stay a man. We make much in this life if we are able. We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation. I could not walk away. ~ Bernard Cornwell
Feasts quotes by Bernard Cornwell
Your prayer must be for a healthy mind in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that has no fear of death, deems length of life the least of nature's gifts and is able to bear any kind of sufferings, knows neither wrath nor desire and believes the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and feasts and downy cushions of Sardanapalus. Reveal what you are able to give yourself; the only path to a life of tranquility lies through virtue. ~ Juvenal
Feasts quotes by Juvenal
Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. ~ Anne Rice
Feasts quotes by Anne Rice
A man will, by fasting, be delivered from the hopelessness of mere gourmandise. The secular, for all its goodness, does not defend itself very well against mindless and perpetual consumption. It cries out to be offered by abstinence as well as use; to be appreciated, not simply absorbed: Hunger remains the best sauce. Beyond that, though, it cries out to be lifted into a higher offering still. The real secret of fasting is not that it is a simple way to keep one's weight down, but that it is a mysterious way of lifting creation into the Supper of the Lamb. It is not a little excursion into fashionable shape, but a major entrance into the fasting, the agony, the passion by which the Incarnate Word restores all things to the goodness God finds in them. It is as much an act of prayer as prayer itself, and, in an affluent society, it may well be the most meaningful of all the practices of religion - the most likely point at which the salt can find its savor once again. Let a man fast in earnest, therefore. One way or another - here or hereafter - it will give him back his feasts. ~ Robert Farrar Capon
Feasts quotes by Robert Farrar Capon
This is a question of freedom," he says. "Which can be discussed until forever, breaking only for sleep, tea, and movable feasts. Would you like to do that? Tell me, if you please, who is more free: an elephant stomping across the savanna or an aphid sitting on the leaf of whatever plant they sit on?" Smoker ~ Mariam Petrosyan
Feasts quotes by Mariam Petrosyan
And the feasts on the poop and the musicians. ~ C.S. Lewis
Feasts quotes by C.S. Lewis
Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise? ~ Elvis Costello
Feasts quotes by Elvis Costello
So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets and ciphers. The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but there was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests who sat at my lord's table. Had he not been so great a Prince very few possibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked at indulgently. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Feasts quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
And we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feasts quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The first years of my life are of no imprtance. At the age of nine, I was packed off to a preparatory school in the South of England, and for the next four years led the usual life of a preparatory-school boy. I indulged in midnight feasts and was periodically beaten. ~ Ludovic Kennedy
Feasts quotes by Ludovic Kennedy
The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally
magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God!
what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very
strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person. ~ Theophile Gautier
Feasts quotes by Theophile Gautier
The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Vermont. On Christmas Eve, as indifferent evening took hold in the blue squares of the windows, he sat alone in the crepuscular kitchen, imbued with a profound sense of the identity of winter and twilight, of twilight and time, of time and memory, of his childhood and that church which on this night waited to celebrate the second greatest of its feasts. For a moment or an hour as he sat, become one with the blue of the snow and the silence, a congruity of star, cradle, winter, sacrament, self, it was as though he listened to a voice that had long been trying to catch his attention, to tell him, Yes, this was the subject long withheld from him, which he now knew, and must eventually act on.

He had managed, though, to avoid it. He only brought it out now to please his editor, at the same time aware that it wasn't what she had in mind at all. But he couldn't do better; he had really only the one subject, if subject was the word for it, this idea of a notion or a holy thing growing clear in the stream of time, being made manifest in unexpected ways to an assortment of people: the revelation itself wasn't important, it could be anything, almost. Beyond that he had only one interest, the seasons, which he could describe endlessly and with all the passion of a country-bred boy grown old in the city. He was beginning to doubt (he said) whether these were sufficient to make an ~ John Crowley
Feasts quotes by John Crowley
Conversation, fastidious goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will. ~ Virginia Woolf
Feasts quotes by Virginia Woolf
I perceive we postpone all our joys of Christ, till He and we be in our own house above, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find it possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy even here. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household. ~ Samuel Rutherford
Feasts quotes by Samuel Rutherford
Discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses,
for fear that your passions and longings may lead you away from the path you should follow.
Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them;
only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Action

Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting –
freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action,
trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.

Suffering

A change has come indeed.
Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action is ended;
you sigh in relief, your cause committing to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.

Death

Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Feasts quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Haisla named this point Obela. Not so long ago, the bay was lined with longhouses and canoes, totem poles and fishing gear. The reserve was once a winter village, a place to celebrate the sacred season, when memories passed in dance and song and stories from one generation to the next with great feasts called potlatches. ~ Eden Robinson
Feasts quotes by Eden Robinson
But its exclusive character and irreconcileable hostility to the religious cults and ceremonies with which the whole social life of the city-state and the empire were inseparably connected at every turn, brought the Christians into inevitable conflict with the government and with public opinion. To the man in the street, the Christian was an anti-social atheist who would take no part in the public feasts and the games, which played such a large part in city life. To the authorities he was a passive rebel, who would neither take his share of municipal offices nor pay loyal homage to the Emperor. Hence the rise of persecution, and the driving of the Christians into an underground existence, as a proscribed sect. The Church grew under the shadow of the executioner's rods and axes, and every Christian lived in the peril of physical torture and death. The thought of martyrdom coloured the whole outlook of early Christianity. But it was not only a fear, it was also an ideal and a hope. For the martyr was the complete Christian, he was the champion and hero of the new society and its conflict with the old, and even the Christians who failed in the moment of the trial - the lapsi - looked on the martyrs as their saviours and protectors ~ Christopher Henry Dawson
Feasts quotes by Christopher Henry Dawson
Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls.
John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral.
'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.'
'It will taint the sugar,' John o ~ Lawrence Norfolk
Feasts quotes by Lawrence Norfolk
Set we forward; let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud's town march,
And in the temple of the great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace. ~ William Shakespeare
Feasts quotes by William Shakespeare
Tonight," said Mack Nuggett,
"These feathery beasts
Will be chopped up and roasted
For Thanksgiving feasts."

The children stood still
As tears filled their eyes,
Then they clamored aloud
In a chorus of cries.

"Oh dear," cried Mack Nuggett,
"Now what shall I do?"
So he dashed to the well,
And the teacher went, too.

And they fetched some water
Fresh from the ground,
In hopes that a swig
Might calm everyone down.

And when they returned
To quiet the matter,
The children were calmer
(And mysteriously fatter!).

The boys and girls drank up
Their drinks in the hay,
Then thanked old Mack Nuggett
And waddled away.

They limped to the school bus
All huffing and puffing--
It's not easy to walk
With hot turkey stuffing.

And then, as the school bus drove off in the night,
Mack Nuggett looked 'round--not a turkey in sight! ~ Dav Pilkey
Feasts quotes by Dav Pilkey
Turkey is the main course in more Christmas dinners than any other meat or fowl. The high proportion of meat to unusable bone and fat makes it an ideal bird for a feast. Turkeys were domesticated in Mexico long before Spanish explores found them and introduced them into their homeland. From there they spread throughout Europe and gradually replaced most of the native Christmas feast foods. ~ Patricia Del Re
Feasts quotes by Patricia Del Re
Beware of little expenses; A small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says; and again, Who dainties love, shall beggars prove; and moreover, Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Feasts quotes by Benjamin Franklin
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes - of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire - fill the glass and send round the song - and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. ~ Charles Dickens
Feasts quotes by Charles Dickens
He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combination, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish. ~ Samuel Johnson
Feasts quotes by Samuel Johnson
What kind of bodies are movable and feasts. What color are visions. ~ Morgan Parker
Feasts quotes by Morgan Parker
The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the house under the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across the sea and across the reef. She lit the lagoon to it's dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains and sand spaces, and the fish casting their shadows on the sand and the coral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of him broke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousand glittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on the reef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley, where the great stone idol had kept it's solitary vigil for five thousand years, perhaps, and more.

At this base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay two human beings, naked, clasped in each other's arms and fast asleep. One could scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through the years by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless and without sin. A marriage according to Nature, without feasts or guests, consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion a thousand years dead. ~ Henry De Vere Stacpoole
Feasts quotes by Henry De Vere Stacpoole
It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body.
Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death,
which places the length of life last among nature's blessings,
which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings,
does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes
the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than
the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king.
I will reveal what you are able to give yourself;
For certain, the one footpath of a tranquil life lies through virtue. ~ Juvenal
Feasts quotes by Juvenal
Bountiful was the table of your grandsire, for there is still fat at the root of my heart from the feasts he gave in my honour. ~ Raymond E. Feist
Feasts quotes by Raymond E. Feist
On Translating Eugene Onegin


1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.


2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Feasts quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. ~ Homer
Feasts quotes by Homer
Faith, if the truth were known, I was begot
After some gluttonous dinner; some stirring dish
Was my first father. When deep healths went round,
And ladies' cheeks were painted red with wine,
Their tongues as short and nimble as their heels,
Uttering words sweet and thick, and when they rose
Were marrily disposed to fall again:
Oh, damnation met
The sin of feasts, drunken adultery!
I feel it swell me; my revenge is just:
I was begot in impudent wine and lust
( ... )
As for my brother, the duke's only son,
Whose birth is more beholding to report
Than mine, and yet perhaps as falsely sown,
I'll loose my days upon him, hate all I. ~ Thomas Middleton
Feasts quotes by Thomas Middleton
Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery. ~ John Suckling
Feasts quotes by John Suckling
Our relationships with one another are the canvas upon which our relationship with God is put on display. We know we have passed from death to life because we love the brotherhood, [38] not because we are scrupulous about observing the Sabbath and keeping the feasts. Our love of the brotherhood is the proof of our love for God, not the lists of things that we so often accept as the standard for holiness. ~ Stephen Crosby
Feasts quotes by Stephen Crosby
Turning away, sobbing, I hide behind my hair, the kettle and coffee forgotten. It's too hard to talk about it. I can't talk about it. It's no one's business but mine. The trauma breathes in my blood, it feasts on my life, it gives me cold sweats and nightmares still. ~ Poppet
Feasts quotes by Poppet
But even now the city's freewheeling virtual world stood in stark contrast to the day-to-day lives of most people, to those of young men, and especially of young women, and above all of children who went to sleep unfed but could see on some small screen people in foreign lands preparing and consuming and even conducting food fights with feasts of such opulence that the very fact of their existence boggled the mind. ~ Mohsin Hamid
Feasts quotes by Mohsin Hamid
I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. ~ H.P. Lovecraft
Feasts quotes by H.P. Lovecraft
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In "Brave New World" non-stop distractions of ~ Aldous Huxley
Feasts quotes by Aldous Huxley
For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'
'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'
Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days ... why aren't you fat?'
'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay
Feasts quotes by Guy Gavriel Kay
Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale. ~ Oliver Goldsmith
Feasts quotes by Oliver Goldsmith
We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us. ~ Pat Conroy
Feasts quotes by Pat Conroy
Keep out of the Sight of Feasts and Banquets as much as may be; for 'tis more difficult to refrain good Cheer, when it's present, than from the Desire of it when it is away; the like you may observe in the Objects of all the other Senses. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Feasts quotes by Benjamin Franklin
Just when the air turns frosty and the days shrink into darkness, the Christmas season arrives in America. It begins at Thanksgiving--with families, feasts and football. Then during the next six weeks we shop and decorate, worship and make merry. Our hearts warm in the winter cold. We find compassion for strangers, and we remember there are miracles. Pious or festive or both, we join together in an extraordinary national festival. ~ J. Curtis Sanburn
Feasts quotes by J. Curtis Sanburn
He does not want a girl who trifles with Christianity. He wants a woman who is radically given to Christ. He does not want a girl who prays tepid, lukewarm prayers. He wants a woman who lives in defiance of the powers of Hell. He does not want a girl who is self-adorning with the latest fashions and trends. He wants a woman who is adorned with the inner jewelry of Christ-given holiness. He does not want a girl who dishonors and belittles her parents. He wants a woman who honors the authorities God has placed in her life and serves them with charity and gladness. He does not want a girl whose Bible is an accessory to her wardrobe. He wants a woman whose hunger and thirst is to know the Lord, and who diligently feasts upon His Word. He does not want a girl whose tongue is a deceptive weapon of selfishness. He wants a woman whose words drip with the honey of the name of Jesus. ~ Leslie Ludy
Feasts quotes by Leslie Ludy
To be a stranger in a strange land: Whenever one feasts, one thinks of one's brother twice as much as before, There where my brother far away is ascending, The dogwood is flowering, and a man is missed. ~ Wang Wei
Feasts quotes by Wang Wei
But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Feasts quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
the First Salmon Ceremony, in all its beauty, reverberates through all the domes of the world. The feasts of love and gratitude were not just internal emotional expressions but actually aided the upstream passage of the fish by releasing them from predation for a critical time. Laying salmon bones back in the streams returned nutrients to the system. These are ceremonies of practical reverence. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Feasts quotes by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Hymn to Mercury : Continued

71.
Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill
Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might
Of winning music, to his mightier will;
His left hand held the lyre, and in his right
The plectrum struck the chords - unconquerable
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
The gathering music rose - and sweet as Love
The penetrating notes did live and move

72.
Within the heart of great Apollo - he
Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.
Close to his side stood harping fearlessly
The unabashed boy; and to the measure
Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free
His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure
Of his deep song, illustrating the birth
Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth:

73.
And how to the Immortals every one
A portion was assigned of all that is;
But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son
Clothe in the light of his loud melodies; -
And, as each God was born or had begun,
He in their order due and fit degrees
Sung of his birth and being - and did move
Apollo to unutterable love.

74.
These words were winged with his swift delight:
'You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you
Deserve that fifty oxen should requite
Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now.
Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight,
One of your secrets I wou ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Feasts quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now. ~ Rabih Alameddine
Feasts quotes by Rabih Alameddine
I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths. ~ Alain De Botton
Feasts quotes by Alain De Botton
Furniture is like that. Used and enjoyed as intended, it absorbs the experience and exudes it back into the atmosphere, but if simply bought for effect and left to languish in a corner, it vibrates with melancholy. Furnishings in museums ... are as unspeakably tragic as the unvisited inmates of old folk's homes. The untuned violins and hardback books used to bring 'character' to postwar suburban pubs crouch uncomfortably in their imposed roles like caged pumas in a zoo. The stately kitchen that is never or rarely used to bring forth lavish feasts for appreciative audiences turns inward and cold. ~ Will Wiles
Feasts quotes by Will Wiles
My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts - with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist - outside on the church lawn. ~ Tori Amos
Feasts quotes by Tori Amos
The living have no place at the feasts of the dead. ~ George R R Martin
Feasts quotes by George R R Martin
Loki was convinced everyone loathed the feasts but no one dared say so for fear of appearing small-minded. Being quite confident of the size of his mind-large-and his ability to walk in heels, he was comfortable saying it. ~ Mackenzi Lee
Feasts quotes by Mackenzi Lee
Peter feasts off people-he finds himself so totally boring that he's got to escape from himself and find refuge and security in another personality-that's the only form of communication left open to him. ~ Roger Lewis
Feasts quotes by Roger Lewis
He who feasts every day, feasts no day. ~ Charles Simmons
Feasts quotes by Charles Simmons
Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship. ~ John Milton
Feasts quotes by John Milton
The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity. ~ Lysa TerKeurst
Feasts quotes by Lysa TerKeurst
The Omanis had feasts called haflas where they'd bring a goat in and cook it in the fire. It was always a fantastic gathering. They'd turn up in their Land Cruisers in the middle of nowhere, put the carpets out, and start a fire up. Sometimes they'd tow in a small water bowser as well. There was a huge amount of ritual involved; the animal was treated with immense respect before it was killed, in accordance with Islam. ~ Andy McNab
Feasts quotes by Andy McNab
If men with fleshly mortals must be fed, and chew with bleeding teeth the breathing bread; what else is this but to devour our guests, and barbarously renew Cyclopean feasts? While Earth not only can your needs supply, but, lavish of her store, provides for luxury; a guiltless feast administers with ease, and without blood is prodigal to please. ~ Pythagoras
Feasts quotes by Pythagoras
It crouches near the center of creation. There is no night where it waits. Only the riddle of which terrible dream will set it loose. It beheaded mercy to take possession of that place. It feasts on darkness from the minds of men. No one has ever seen its eyeless face. When it sleeps we know a few moments of peace. But when it breathes again we go down in fire and mate with jackals. It knows our fear. It has our number. It waited for our coming and it will abide long after we have become congealed smoke. It has never heard music, and shows its fangs when we panic. It is the beast of our savage past, hungering today, and waiting patiently for the mortal meal of all our golden tomorrows. It lies waiting. ~ Harlan Ellison
Feasts quotes by Harlan Ellison
How stupid man is to be unable to restrain feelings in suffering the human lot! That was my state at that time. So I boiled with anger, sighed, wept, and was at my wits' end. I found no calmness, no capacity for deliberation. I carried my lacerated and bloody soul when it was unwilling to be carried by me. I found no place where I could put it down. There was no rest in pleasant groves, nor in games or songs, nor in sweet-scented places, nor in exquisite feasts, nor in the pleasures of the bedroom and bed, nor, finally, in books and poetry. ~ Augustine Of Hippo
Feasts quotes by Augustine Of Hippo
The position of sun and moon on the Feast of Beltane is one, with a list if two hundred paired figures laid out beneath. Similar tables existed for Hogmanay and Midsummer's Day, and Samhainn, the Feast of All Hallows. The ancient feasts of fire and sun, and Beltane's sun would rise tomorrow. ~ Diana Gabaldon
Feasts quotes by Diana Gabaldon
Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.
Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view. ~ Shel Silverstein
Feasts quotes by Shel Silverstein
That one small noise brought back the old days to the children's minds more than anything that had happened yet. All the battles and hunts and feasts came rushing into their heads together. ~ C.S. Lewis
Feasts quotes by C.S. Lewis
The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names... Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape. ~ Michael Ondaatje
Feasts quotes by Michael Ondaatje
Wolves are hosting wedding feasts and witches are brushing their hair today." Presence ~ Helen Oyeyemi
Feasts quotes by Helen Oyeyemi
It is agreed by most men, that the Eele is a most daintie fish; the Romans have esteemed her the Helena of their feasts, and some The Queen of pleasure. ~ Izaak Walton
Feasts quotes by Izaak Walton
You'd be wise to eat lightly, or not at all, of any food you do not prepare yourself." "At all the feasts and festivities that will be there?" "No. Only at the ones you wish to survive. ~ Robin Hobb
Feasts quotes by Robin Hobb
Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labor when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain. ~ Alexander Pope
Feasts quotes by Alexander Pope
There can be no emblem or parable in a village idiot's hallucinations or in last night's dream of any of us in this hall. In those random visions nothing – underline nothing (grating sound of horizontal stroke can be construed as allowing itself to be deciphered y a witch doctor that can then cure a madman or give confort to a killer by laying the blame on a too fond, too fiendish or too indifferent parent – secret festerings that the foster quack feigns to heal by expensive confession feasts (laughter and applause). ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Feasts quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness. ~ William Law
Feasts quotes by William Law
We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption. ~ Lewis H. Lapham
Feasts quotes by Lewis H. Lapham
All your female friends are either old or ugly; nay, more ugly than old women usually are. These you lead about in your train, and drag with you to feasts, porticos and theaters. Thus, Fabulla, you seem handsome, thus you seem young. ~ Martial
Feasts quotes by Martial
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