Flanders Quotes

Then I'll go on, get it off my chest. It all starts with yours truly growing up in lovely Flanders, else I'd never of seen him and wouldn't be stuck here now in Poland, cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a Dutchman but thin for once. Kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in those days I didn't know that, or that he'd got a girl already, or that they all called him Puffing Piet cause he never took out his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant that little to him. ~ Bertolt Brecht

The novels of Daniel Defoe are fundamental to eighteenth-century ways of thinking. They range from the quasi-factual A Journal of the Plague Year, an almost journalistic (but fictional) account of London between 1664 and 1665 (when the author was a very young child), to Robinson Crusoe, one of the most enduring fables of Western culture. If the philosophy of the time asserted that life was, in Hobbes's words, 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short', novels showed ways of coping with 'brutish' reality (the plague; solitude on a desert island) and making the best of it. There was no questioning of authority as there had been throughout the Renaissance.
Instead, there was an interest in establishing and accepting authority, and in the ways of 'society' as a newly ordered whole.

Thus, Defoe's best-known heroine, Moll Flanders, can titillate her readers with her first-person narration of a dissolute life as thief, prostitute, and incestuous wife, all the time telling her story from the vantage point of one who has been accepted back into society and improved her behaviour. ~ Ronald Carter

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks. ~ H. H. Asquith

Demonstrating patience and kindness to those around us in concrete ways blesses and enriches us as well. - Louise D. Flanders - ~ Gary Chapman

A Bradypus or Sloth am I, / I live a life of ease, / Contented not to do or die / But idle as I please. ~ Michael Flanders

One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don't understand science; they can't talk to us because they don't understand anything else, poor dears. ~ Michael Flanders

Every society in every period does or doesn't talk about certain topics. We don't discuss money much; it's almost certain that most people don't know how much their colleagues earn. The Victorians, in contrast, were very happy to discuss money. They weren't, however, happy to discuss sex. ~ Judith Flanders

Hitler initially served in the List Regiment engaged in a violent four-day battle near Ypres, in Belgian Flanders, with elite British professional soldiers of the initial elements of the British Expeditionary Force. Hitler thereby served as a combat infantryman in one of the most intense engagements of the opening phase of World War I. The List Regiment was temporarily destroyed as an offensive force by suffering such severe casualty rates (killed, wounded, missing, and captured) that it lost approximately 70 percent of its initial strength of around 3,600 men. A bullet tore off Hitler's right sleeve in the first day of combat, and in the "batch" of men with which he originally advanced, every one fell dead or wounded, leaving him to survive as if through a miracle. On November 9, 1914, about a week after the ending of the great battle, Hitler was reassigned as a dispatch runner to regimental headquarters. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class.

On about November 14, 1914, the new regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philipp Engelhardt, accompanied by Hitler and another dispatch runner, moved forward into terrain of uncertain ownership. Engelhardt hoped to see for himself the regiment's tactical situation. When Engelhardt came under aimed enemy smallarms fire, Hitler and the unnamed comrade placed their bodies between their commander and the enemy fire, determined to keep him alive. The two enlisted men, who were veterans of the earlier ~ Russel H.S. Stolfi

I couldn't ever blame them for trying to get me to shop with them or ship for myself or simply enjoy my money - this was a behavior many people learned and exhibited in all kinds of circumstances in their lives. In my own life, I'd had friends who would hand me another drink and encourage me to stay out all night. I'd had friends who suggested we switch to drugs so we could stay awake longer. I'd also had friends who would happily skip a workout and suggest we split a large pizza instead. Now I had friends who tried to justify why I should buy things for myself. ~ Cait Flanders

The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again! ~ Michael Flanders

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others - Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She'd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they'd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They'd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they'd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man's-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they'd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself. ~ Libba Bray

Under the tropic is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke. ~ Edmund Waller

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium
by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor
which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution. ~ Friedrich Engels

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another....
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants
We ~ William Shakespeare

You have sent me a Flanders mare. ~ Henry VIII Of England

The carillon is, after all, the music of the people. Elsewhere, in the glittering capitals, public festivals are celebrated with fireworks, that magical offering that can thrill the very soul. Here, in the meditative land of Flanders, among the damp mists so antagonistic to the brilliance of fire, the carillon takes their place. It is a display of fireworks that one hears: flares, rockets, showers, a thousand sparks of sound which colour the air for visionary eyes alerted by hearing. ~ Georges Rodenbach

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. ~ John McCrae

The last refuge of the intelligentsia: when life gets too difficult, go find something to read. ~ Judith Flanders

There were other war veterans in the neighborhood, visible thanks to their limps or missing limbs. All those unclaimed arms and legs lost in the fields of Flanders - Ursula imagined them pushing roots down into the mud and shoots up to the sky and growing once again into men. An army of men marching back for revenge. ~ Kate Atkinson

[Ned Flanders]: Well looks like someone's having a pre-rapture party.
[Homer Simpson]: No, Flanders. Its a meeting of gay witches for abortion, you wouldn't be interested. ~ Matt Groening

The old man was silent: the truth suggested itself to him with the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways of the world were like. ~ Ouida

Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice. ~ Wallace Shawn

Eating people is wrong. ~ Michael Flanders

Amid the echoes of the roar of the guns in Flanders, the world is inclined to overlook India's share in it all and the stout proud loyalty of Indian hearts. May this tribute to the gallant Indian gentlemen who came to fight our battles serve to remind its readers that they who give their best, and they who take, are one. ~ Talbot Mundy

Ben is twenty-six, and this is his first job. He is small, weedy, and terribly, terribly serious about his work. His. Not anyone else's. He despises everyone else's. He has, however, produced our only literary fiction in the last two years that has sold over five thousand copies, so people listen to him. Which is a pity, since he doesn't really have anything to say. ~ Judith Flanders

But since Catt was more realist than fabulist, she understood her actual death at the hands of her killer would be something much slower. It would be a classical feminine death, like a marriage…Raised by meek working-class parents, she despised petty groveling and had no talent for making shit up. She wanted to be a "real" intellectual moving with dizzying freedom between high and low points in the culture. And to a certain extent, she'd succeeded. Catt's semi-name attracted a following among Asberger's boys, girls who'd been hospitalized for mental illness, sex workers, Ivy alumnae on meth, and always, the cutters. With her small self-made fortune, Catt saw herself as Moll Flanders, out-sourcing her visiting professorships and writing commissions to younger artists whose work she believed in. But she'd reached a point lately where the same young people she'd helped were blogging against her, exposing the 'cottage industry' she ran out of her Los Angeles compound facing the Hollywood sign … the same compound these bloggers had lived in rent-free after arriving from Iowa City, Alberta, New Zealand. Loathing all institutions, Catt had become one herself. Even her dentist asked her for money. ~ Chris Kraus

Live, life, love, laugh! ~ Fiona Flanders

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you, from falling hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. ~ John McCrae

The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below ~ John McCrae

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire. ~ James Connolly

In later years, it was common, and I was guilty in this respect, to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the Great War, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland. ~ Sean Lemass

lads who were to fight, and perhaps fall, on the fields of France and Flanders, Gallipoli and Palestine, were still roguish schoolboys with a fair life in prospect before ~ L.M. Montgomery

The cream of a generation was lost in the mud of Flanders. Etonians went over the top with the Illiad in their knapsacks and Athens in their hearts. To protest that such men were statistically not even a trace among the British soldiers killed is to miss the point. At all times the great majority of people have been ignorant of the classics; but the men who mattered; who governed, declared wars and resisted innovation have always had Latin and Greek. ~ William Donaldson

He had chosen to spend his days in the world of men. Life was what mattered, its slow, priceless pulse, its burning fragility; his debt lay with those importunate Flanders echoes that had never really left him. The private could aspire to be a general because both general and private, at their best, recognized the dire importance of strategy, fortitude, the value of their imperiled existence; but when the machinist became the executive he left the world of tangibles and human conjugacy and entered a shadow world of credits and consols - a world that seemed to reward nothing so much as irresponsibility and boundless greed. And when the thunder rolled down upon them - as he knew it would - how would he feel, playing with paper, striving to outwit his fellows, drinking imported Scotch evenings and listening to the brittle parade of comedians on radio ...? ~ Anton Myrer

Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings. ~ Martin Filler

Victorian racehorse owners frequently named their horses after murderers. That was so astonishing. Can you imagine the equivalent today, with a horse named, say, Boston Strangler, running in the Kentucky Derby? This was a new discovery. The Victorians didn't think it was odd, so no one ever mentioned it particularly. ~ Judith Flanders

If God had intended us to fly he would have given us railways. ~ Michael Flanders

I must return to my old comrades of the Great War - to the brown, the treeless, the flat and grave-set plain of Flanders - to the rolling, heat-miraged downlands of the Somme - for I am dead with them, and they live in me again. ~ Henry Williamson

January brings the snow / Makes your feet and fingers glow / February's ice and sleet / Freeze the toes right off your feet / Welcome March with wintry wind / Would thou wer't not so unkind / April brings the sweet spring showers / On and on for hours and hours ... ~ Michael Flanders

Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed, daily, stronger. ~ John Lothrop Motley

In July the Sun is hot. Is it shining? No, it's not! ~ Michael Flanders

Well some are born to be hanged, and some are not; and many of those who are not hanged are much worse than those who are. ~ Judith Flanders

They died in splendour, these who claimed no spark
Of glory save the light in a friend's eye. ~ Edmund Blunden

Hey boys, come up here!" Lee's excited shout bounced from rock to rock down the gulch. "I've got all of California right here in this pan! ~ Phyllis Flanders Dorset

When the war (WWI) finally ended it was necessary for both sides to maintain, indeed even to inflate, the myth of sacrifice so that the whole affair would not be seen for what it was: a meaningless waste of millions of lives. Logically, if the flower of youth had been cut down in Flanders, the survivors were not the flower: the dead were superior to the traumatized living. In this way, the virtual destruction of a generation further increased the distance between the old and the young, between the official and the unofficial. ~ Robert Hughes