Five Hundred Years Quotes

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence. ~ Wayne Dyer

When the plague struck Chicago, the townspeople here erected the gargoyles, and nary a soul was lost to the Black Death."
"The bubonic plague predates Chicago by about five hundred years."
He lowered himself to the bench. "I know. I was very disappointed when I found out. Almost as bad as when I learned there were no fairies. The world is much more interesting with goblins and plagues."
"Unless you catch the plague. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without. ~ A.R. Ammons

No one has too much time on their hands, even if they had the ability to live five-hundred years. ~ K.R. Royal

Mars is empty now. Five hundred years from now, it'll be full of people. ~ Ray Bradbury

What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, "Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh"; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, "Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh." Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." ~ Isaac Newton

Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis - he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land. Since the principle of any rich person who wants to stay rich is, never give anything away unless you absolutely have to, the land has stayed with Crown ever since. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

One of my prized possessions is a small wooden box with a special lock on it that is more than five hundred years old and works according to a secret code that my grandfather taught me. My grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and his grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and I would teach it to my grandchild if I thought that I would ever have a family of my own instead of living out the remainder of my days all alone in this world. ~ Lemony Snicket

A happy ending. Huh. I thought that was why we were here. Now. Five hundred years into Earth's future. So we could start over, and live happily-ever-after. It wasn't turning out that way, was it? ~ A.B. Shepherd

The fact that your lifespan is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, and that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in five hundred years nobody will remember you and in five billion years the Earth will be boiled into the sun: this can be a profound and defining truth about your existence that you reflexively repulse, that you flinch away from and refuse to accept or even think about, consistently pushing to the back of your mind whenever it sneaks up, for fear that if you allow it to sit in your mind even for a minute, it will swallow everything else. It can make everything you do, and everything anyone else does, seem meaningless, trivial to the point of absurdity. ~ Greta Christina

It is less than five hundred years since an entire half of the world was discovered. It is less than two hundred years since the discovery of the last continent. The sciences of chemistry and physics go back scarcely one century. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

Five hundred years from now, who'll know the difference?! ~ Charles M. Schulz

For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They've lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years. ~ Paul Bowles

In an instant he saw the delusion of his five hundred years. He was not looking into a box; he was looking out of one. All these centuries his mind, his body, his world had been a box of horrors. He took one last breath, then pushed open the lid of his prison and escaped. ~ Frances Hardinge

I love you, Sofia," I whispered. "And I honestly believe that I could never love another woman for the rest of my life. For the first time in the past five hundred years, I am sincerely thankful for my immortality, because without it, I never would've found you. ~ Bella Forrest

In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (Hermite, 1822-1901) could say without exaggeration, 'Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.' Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, 'By studying the masters, not the pupils. ~ Eric Temple Bell

Can you imagine doing ministry the last five hundred years and getting away with 'Sorry, I don't do books'? Can you imagine doing ministry in the next five years and getting away with 'Sorry, I don't do Facebook'? ~ Leonard Sweet

On present-day Earth we have the most Christ-like nation in human history, a civilization built on loving kindness and demilitarization. They are being wiped off the face of their homeland. Well, at least the Chinese government isn't blaming Christ or Buddha for their actions against Tibet! But many savage pillagers throughout the past two thousand years have, and the Romans of a thousand years ago fall into that category. Within five hundred years they erased nearly all the nature-based, matriarchal tribes in what we now know as Europe. The invaders falsified history in order to justify their greed. Harmless facts and beautiful rituals were twisted to appear Satanic. Love of the environment and its animals and plants, love of healing modalities that modern day health professionals are now searching frantically to recover, were spin-doctored into demented superstition and turned outlaw. ~ Doug "Ten" Rose

I've always considered them ideas, forever recorded." Malone motioned to one of the paperbacks. "Malory wrote King Arthur in the late part of the 15th century. So you're reading his thoughts from five hundred years ago. We'll never know Malory, but we know his imagination. ~ Steve Berry

You can only enter the Otherworld by invitation, self-worth or sacrifice. Or by standing beneath a double-rainbow with a belly full of cold, cold sapphires. And I have not seen a double-rainbow in five hundred years. And I know you have no invitation, for your name is on no list. The way you seek before me now is the way of self-worth, and that you have not earned."
"There are demons inside the Otherworld. Flesh-eating bhuts and wraiths the size of whole countries and you're telling me that I have to prove myself to join them?"
"I never said it had to be good self-worth. You could slay a million children. Maybe then you could come. But in your current state, your soul cannot handle the Otherworld. ~ Roshani Chokshi

The ghosts of Michelangelo and Leonardo and Botticelli and all the rest hang in the air, like San Francisco fog. You'd think it would have burned off by now, five hundred years later, but it hasn't. The half-life of true genius is inexhaustible. ~ Éric Weiner

It felt - nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos - that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks with some friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to place, with no route arranged and no object in view, with liberty to go on all day or to linger all day, as we choose; but the question of luggage, unknown to the simple pilgrim, is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and having no taste for noonday naps under hedges, would be sure to paralyse my plans before they had grown to maturity by the honest horror of their cry, "How very unpleasant if you were to meet any one you know!" The relative of five hundred years back would have said "How Holy! ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. ~ John Trudell

I pulled Thanos in for a kiss, surprising him. I wasn't sure if it was our bond or the fear this might be my last kiss, but I didn't hold anything back. I let him in. He took full advantage, plundering my mouth as if I were the last woman on Earth, which could have been a result of him being trapped in a desolate wasteland for the last five hundred years - but I decided not to overthink it. ~ H.D. Smith

But no one has seen a trace of lightbearers in over five hundred years. Somebody wiped them out. Probably our kind, trying to inherit their magic."

"Probably our kind eating them for dinner," Finn contributed to the conversation for the first time. "Back then we were slightly more primal."

"Slightly," Tanner remarked tongue in cheek. ~ Tami Lund

Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago. ~ Michael Crichton

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years. ~ Charles Hermite

The Islamic world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. Such a transition period…makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam.
[Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution] ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

Montenegro (1877)

THEY rose to where their sovereign eagle sails,
They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night
Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernogora! never since thine own
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1880 ~ Alfred Tennyson

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case. ~ Gore Vidal

Whenever elephants met men, elephants fared badly. Syria's final elephants were exterminated by twenty-five hundred years ago. Elephants were gone from much of China literally before the year 1 and much of Africa by the year 1000. Meanwhile, in India and southern Asia, elephants became the mounts of kings; tanks against forts, prisoners' executioners, and pincushions of arrows, driven mad in battle; elephants became logging trucks and bulldozers, and, as with other slaves, their forced labor requires beatings and abuse. Since Roman times, humans have reduced Africa's elephant population by perhaps 99 percent. African elephants are gone from 90 percent of the lands they roamed as recently as 1800, when, despite earlier losses, an estimated twenty-six million elephants still trod the continent. Now they number perhaps four hundred thousand. (The diminishment of Asian elephants over historic times is far worse.) The planet's menagerie has become like shards of broken glass; we're grinding the shards smaller and smaller. ~ Carl Safina

You may not be aware, ma douce, but not all vampyre have a kindred, some will live out their existence without such beauty in their lives. I have waited five hundred years for you. ~ Nicola Claire

Even after more than five hundred years in Heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine still missed quarreling and dressing up. Eleanor missed strong, sweet smells. Eleanor missed feeling hot and being cold. Eleanor missed Henry. She missed life. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn't matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you're aristocrats.' 'Is that so different from here?' Brunetti asked. 'Of course,' Padovani explained, smiling. 'Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we're aristocrats. And there's another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it's difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants. ~ Donna Leon

But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty. ~ Adolf Hitler

If she was gone, this was it for him. He had lived over a thousand five hundred years. It was enough. If Lijuan had risen monstrous while he and Elena slept, he'd do what he could to burn out that scourge because Elena would want him to do that, but he would not live thousands of years without her. He could not live another day without her. ~ Nalini Singh

The thralls went to work, cutting through the wheat like it was wrapping paper. In a matter of minutes, they had reaped the entire field.
"Amazing!" said Red.
"Hooray!" said Tattoo.
The other thralls cheered and hooted.
"We can finally have water!" said one.
"I can eat lunch!" said another.
"I have needed to pee for five hundred years!" said a third.
"We can kill these trespassers now!" said a fourth.
I hated that guy. ~ Rick Riordan

White men are irresponsible with their power and money. Our beautiful earth is million of years old, and in a mere five hundred years, white people have nearly destroyed it. Another hundred years like the last hundred, and there won't be a living creature left on the planet.
-character Amber Johnson (Broken) ~ J. Matthew Nespoli

You do realize she's over two thousand five hundred years old, speaks at least a hundred languages, and has such a depth of knowledge the Cadre comes to her for advice and information?"
Galen had no doubt all of that was true. "I don't intend to get into an intelligence contest with her. ~ Nalini Singh

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery. ~ Chinua Achebe

All this attempt to control... We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old... The basic idea of science - that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational - that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging... But now... science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting to not fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it can not tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways - air, and water, and land - because of ungovernable science... At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science ~ Michael Crichton

In today's impoverished dialogue, critiques of liberalism are often naively called "conservative," as if twenty-five hundred years of Western intellectual tradition presented no other alternatives. ~ Camille Paglia

What would have become of the people five hundred years ago if they had followed strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have all been dead. What would the people have been, if at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the direction of the church? They would have all been idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some grand man who will not mind, and who will think for himself. I believe in allowing the children to think for themselves.
I believe in the democracy of the family. If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home where all are equals. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

We could begin to allow the history of science to curb scientific awe by imposing a rating system, like those used with movies and television. Any scientific claim that lasts longer than a millennium, we'll rate "GC" for "Getting Close." For claims that stand for five hundred years, we'll rate "KP," for "Kinda Probable;" for a century, "PF" for Probably False;" for fifty years, "ACF" for "Almost Certainly False;" for twenty years and less, "TLA," for "Treat Like Astrology. ~ Douglas M. Jones III

Why should I keep myself so safe?" he asked her, but he was almost asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Arjikis, that they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving there, going through th same disputes, herding the same herds, as thy have done for five hundred years? And me, with a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life worth preserving?
"I love you," said Elphaba.
"So that's that then, and that's it," he answered her and himself. "And I love you. So I promise to be careful. ~ Gregory Maguire

You are mine, Aisling. You are mine today, tomorrow and five hundred years from now. You will always be mine. I do not give up my treasures, kincsem. You would do well to remember that. ~ Katie MacAlister

It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up. ~ Joseph Sobran

But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space. ~ Terence McKenna

Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist "sage," his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years. ~ Vladimir Lenin

I somberly reflected that the history of the Highlands is five hundred years of cruelty and bloodshed followed by two hundred years of way too much bagpipe music. ~ Bill Bryson

Cultural relativists prefer to wrap the issue of sharia in the intellectual equivalent of a black jilbab or blue burqa and intone the old platitudes that we should be nonjudgmental about the religious practices of others. Why? The ancient Aztecs and other peoples practiced human sacrifice, tearing the still-beating hearts out of their sacrificial victims. We teach our children that this happened five hundred years ago, but we don't condone it -- and wouldn't if the practice were suddenly revived in Mexico today. So why do we condone the 'sacrifice' of women or homosexuals or lapsed Muslims for 'crimes' such as apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, marrying outside of their faith, or simply wishing to marry the partner of their choice? Why, aside from the publication of reports by human rights organizations, is there no discernible reaction? In the twenty-first century, I believe that all decent human beings can agree that such barbarous acts should not be tolerated. They can and must be condemned and prosecuted as crimes, not accepted as legitimate punishments. The abuses carried out under sharia are irrefutable. If we are to have any hope for a more peaceful, more stable planet, these punishments must be set aside. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. ~ Steve Perry

Goddamn it, do it yourself. You're five hundred years old and you can't use a telephone? Read the directions. What are you, an immortal idiot? ~ Anne Rice

I've spent five hundred years waiting to feel toward anyone the way I feel toward you. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever seen that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in the back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off, I've got the toe clippers right here. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

You wish to rule the Dreaming City; you must excel in all its ways. Play with me, a single game of Lo Shen. If you best me, I will go into seclusion as you ask, and you will ascend to the Tower without the slightest argument, and without battle. No one will contest you, and you will rule as well as you are able. If you lose, however, you must disband your army, and take the vows of one of our Towers, enter it as a novice, and pledge yourself to our City for the rest of your days. In the Anointed City, this is the way disputes are settled. If you would rule us, you must behave as one of us. Show me that you are the rightful Papess. Show me that you exceed us in all things."
Ragnhild seemed to laugh, but no sound issued from her rosy mouth. Her eyes glittered like snowflakes catching the sun. "You cannot be serious. A single game to decide five hundred years of history?"
"Were it not that once my predecessor harmed you, I would simply kill you where you stand. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Paintings, like tombstones, will last a good five hundred years, well into twenty or thirty generations. ~ Robert Genn

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles. ~ Graham Greene

Understand: we live in the world of a sad separation that began some five hundred years ago when art and science split apart. ~ Robert Greene

Mennonites formed themselves in Holland five hundred years ago after a man named Menno Simons became so moved by hearing Anabaptist prisoners singing hymns before being executed by the Spanish Inquisition that he joined their cause and became their leader. Then they started to move all around the world in colonies looking for freedom and isolation and peace and opportunities to sell cheese. Different countries give us shelter if we agree to stay out of trouble and help with the economy by farming in obscurity. We live like ghosts. Then, sometimes, those countries decide they want us to be real citizens after all and start to force us to do things like join the army or pay taxes or respect laws and then we pack our stuff up in the middle of the night and move to another country where we can live purely but somewhat out of context. ~ Miriam Toews

This has been going on through the ages. They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world that escapes criticism. There never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved. Shakyamuni Buddha said that more than twenty-five hundred years ago, but it seems that some things never change. ~ Pema Chodron

Then he is a monster!" the Prince crowed, "and I must slay him at once. The Formula works!"
"Your Formula must result in a great deal of fighting," I mused.
"Oh, yes, when applied correctly mighty and noble battles result! Of course I always win - the value of Prince X is a constant. It cannot be lesser than that of Monster Y - this is the Moral Superiority Hypothesis made famous five hundred years ago by my ancestor Ethelred, the Mathematician-King. We have never seen his equal, in all these centuries. ~ Catherynne M Valente

We must, however, note that what are usually called the high religions made their appearance within about twenty-five hundred years - most of them within fifteen hundred years. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. ~ Edmond De Goncourt

I began to count mile markers, made mental lists of everything I really needed: a new pair of shoes, a winter coat for the baby, a ticket for a Greyhound traveling back or ahead five hundred years. ~ Sherman Alexie

FOR MOST OF human history, education was job training. Hunters, farmers, and warriors taught the young to hunt, farm, and fight. Children of the ruling class received instruction in the arts of war and governance, but this too was intended first and foremost as preparation for the roles they would assume later in society, not for any broader purpose. All that began to change twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Five-hundred years ago people were saying in manuscripts, "Can you believe these kids today?" They were saying that same phrase everyone says now. No one can believe the youth and what they're doing and how culture is going and how it might fall apart. ~ Joel McHale

There exists a remarkable consensus among those who have studied and practiced public speaking over the last twenty-five hundred years that the most effective way to structure a speech is to build it around a single significant thought. ~ Keith Willhite

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born. ~ Mark Twain

Shanna was across the room with her new husband, chatting happily with Gregori's mother.
With a sly grin, Gregori motioned toward them. Let's go congratulate Roman for taking five hundred years to find a bride. ~ Kerrelyn Sparks

While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them. ~ Crystal King

Not only are we going to shift in our own lives - away from always trying to identify ourselves on the basis of what we have, what we do, and who we are better than, and so on - but shift into more reaching out, more service, more kindness, more living the virtues that Lao Tzu spoke about twenty-five hundred years ago. ~ Wayne Dyer

Scotch Kirk, speaking of the precept uttered by Confucius, five hundred years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth ("Whatsoever ye would not that others should do unto you, do not ye unto them"), says: "That Confucius is the author of this precept is undisputed, and therefore it is indisputable that Christianity has incorporated an article of Chinese morality. ~ Thomas William Doane

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries.

It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names - Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch - and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the need of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind. ~ Neil Gaiman

I have challenged several theologians to provide evidence contradicting the premise that theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years at least, since the dawn of science. So far no one has provided a counterexample. The most I have ever gotten back was the query, 'What do you mean by knowledge?' From an epistemological perspective this may be a thorny issue, but I maintain that, if there were a better alternative, someone would have presented it. Had I presented that same challenge to biologists, or psychologists, or historians, or astronomers, none of them would have been so flummoxed. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

She sighed "Can't you just think about sex like a normal guy?"
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"How are you not thinking about sex right now?"
"You don't know what I'm thinking about."
"Yeah, but I know what you're feeling. And you're feeling…happy. Where's all the desire and want?"
He picked up another arrow. "Are you seriously mad at me right now because I'm not having lustful thoughts?"
"No. I'm just confused. I mean, I'm thinking about sex. But you're over there coating arrows in blood and thinking about God knows what - "
"Star Wars figurines."
"What?"
"That's what I was thinking about."
She blinked in confusion. "Star Wars figurines make you happy?"
He smiled and went back to the arrows on the table. "No. You make me happy. My happy feelings are because of you. My desire and want feelings - which I have plenty of - are also because of you, but I have those contained right now because I'm trying not to overwhelm you with emotions."
"Oh."
"Trust me," he grabbed another arrow. "You don't want me to think about sex when you can feel my emotions. It's very intense. I could barely handle it with you and I had five hundred years of practice."
She shot her eyes to him. "What are you trying to say? That I'm some kind of baby? I can handle it."
He shook his head and smiled. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Try me."
This was a dangerous game, but since only his life was at stake…
"Okay ~ Chelsea Fine

Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock. ~ Kevin Wilson

The 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of 'raw materials,' and that we may safely possess those materials by taking them ... And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as 'environmental' problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them. ~ Wendell Berry

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive. ~ Joshua Hammer

Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

I'd seen Sage bleed. I'd made Sage bleed. Not that it hurt him any; he healed so quickly ... In smaller doses it has incredible healing powers. Ben's voice rang out in my head. I remembered he said that earlier, about ... the Elixir of Life.The crackpot, completely bogus, absolutely insane Elixir of Life.Did it actually exist? Had Sage had some? Enough to keep him alive, young, and speed-healing for the last five hundred years?And if so, had he used that time to find one woman, again and again in different incarnations, to love her ... or destroy her? ~ Hilary Duff

We thought we were tying our marriage-knots more tightly by removing all means of undoing them;22 but the tighter we pulled the knot of constraint the looser and slacker became the knot of our will and affection. In Rome, on the contrary, what made marriages honoured and secure for so long a period was freedom to break them at will. Men loved their wives more because they could lose them; and during a period when anyone was quite free to divorce, more than five hundred years went by before a single one did ~ Michel De Montaigne

Why do I matter to you?" I say, my voice breaking.
"You don't."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Because I can. Because I slept for five hundred years and now I want some sport. ~ Melinda Salisbury

Why should we hate them? Because ours is the only true civilization! Even in science -- consider that we invented the sternpost rudder twelve hundred years before the Europeans did! Fore-and-aft sails in the third century! Treadmill paddle wheel for boats five hundred years later! Warships with rams and twenty paddle wheels by the twelfth century -- the British thought we had copied theirs, the fools! In the thirteenth century we had ships with fifty cabins for passengers, six-masts, double planking, water-tight compartments! Only in the last century did the barbarians even have transverse bulkheads! Five hundred years ago we already had ships four hundred and fifty feet long, and we grew fresh vegetables aboard in tubs! WE sailed the high seas to Sumatra and India, to Aden and Africa and even to Madagascar -- sixty years before the Portuguese bit a piece from the thigh of India! I curse Confucius and all those mad saints who persuaded us against war! Did you ever hear of Sun Wa, who lived three thousand years ago? No? Read the Art of War! 'If you are not in danger, do not fight,' he wrote. Now we are in danger! ~ Pearl S. Buck

Five hundred years ago, I fought on battlefields not far from this house. I fought beside human and faerie alike, bled beside them. I will stand on that battlefield again, Nesta Archeron, to protect this house - your people. I can think of no better way to end my existence than to defend those who need it most." I ~ Sarah J. Maas

The ability to live for five hundred years would be an incredible gift. But I greatly fear it would be a gift only for the wealthy - one that might greatly widen the gap between those with access and those without. ~ Ann Leckie

The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two-thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished? ~ Francis Bacon

Well, we know that eighteen years after that solemn declaration it was disregarded, and the Irish Parliament, which lasted for five hundred years, was destroyed by the Act of Union. Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood. ~ John Edward Redmond

Wait." "So what am I supposed to do now?" "You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years' imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey." (222-223) ~ Gene Luen Yang

Aw, fudge,' floated down to me, as a couple of golden eyes peered over a third-floor window ledge. 'You're a freaking dhampir. Why are you reading Tolkien?'
I shrugged, then had to dodge the potted geranium he threw at me. 'After five hundred years, you've read just about everything. Besides, he had hella world-building skills. ~ Karen Chance

Most people never question the core beliefs they grow up with," Emil confirmed. "You can look back on any culture five hundred years later and wonder how they could have ever believed some of the contradictory or flat-out insane things they accepted as law or common sense. ~ Elliott James

Arthur is very obviously checking Louis out. "What?" Louis asks finally. "So you're Violette's new consort," the older revenant says, amused. "You're with her for six months and you want to run away? Try five hundred years." Louis's jaw drops. ~ Amy Plum

My son, be worthy of your noble name, worthily borne by your ancestors for over five hundred years. Remember it's by courage, and courage alone, that a nobleman makes his way nowadays. Don't be afraid of opportunities, and seek out adventures. My son, all I have to give you is fifteen ecus, my horse, and the advice you've just heard. Make the most of these gifts, and have a long, happy life. ~ Alexandre Dumas

You are only responsible for your own actions, and what you do today speaks to who you are now, not what your people did five hundred years ago. ~ Lilo Abernathy

More than that, in the five hundred years of European OCCUPATION, Native cultures have already driven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient. ~ Thomas King

And then - then I learned your name. Hearing you say it … it was like an answer to a question I'd been asking for five hundred years. ~ Sarah J. Maas