Golden Age Mystery Quotes

It's like one of those affairs in books," said Bailey disgustedly."Someone trying to think up a new way to do a murder. Silly, I call it."

"What do you say, Roper?" said Alleyn.

"To my way of thinking, sir," said Sergeant Roper, "these thrillers are ruining our criminal classes. ~ Ngaio Marsh

Through their discomforts Dom and Phil were missing everything of interest: the sudden strip marshes, the faces in the rock formations, the perfect lakes, the awesome måskoskårså valley grooved into the earth during the Ice Age, the golden eagle circling above it, and the views of a landscape it was impossible to believe existed in Europe. ~ Adam Nevill

We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

At the age of four, what prompted me to wake, dress and wander down the corridor of our family home and out into the street at dawn, I cannot say. A mystery to myself, I obeyed rules and directives of which I was unaware. All I knew was the feel of wet grass under my feet, the crisp air filling my lungs and the play of dappled light through the trees, strewing clothing as I made my way down the street. Thoughts of direction and safety never enter the mind of a child locked in an Autistic fog - for them there is only the sensing. ~ Rachael Lee Harris

Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: The idea of the Golden Rule; the idea of natural law; the idea of age-long growth or evolution. ~ Robert Andrews Millikan

,I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema ~ Gore Vidal

People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television. ~ Joel McHale

In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields. ~ George Eliot

Excerpted From Chapter 18
The most famous sign in the world was only a few hundred yards above me, and the sight of it stopped me in my tracks. The light bulbs surrounding the letters must have been controlled by a timer of some kind because they were off now. But what shocked me was the scale. I was used to seeing the sign from a distance. From this perspective there was no sense of the word HOLLYWOODLAND. All I saw were gigantic letters looming dimly above me in the moonlight like ancient monoliths erected in tribute to the gods of some long-extinct tribe.
A primal feeling of foreboding prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I could imagine the traveler of an earlier age coming across Stonehenge in the dark and experiencing a similar sensation. ~ H.P. Oliver

The aspiration to save the world is a morbid phenomenon of today's youth. ~ Marilyn Manson

Iraq was home of the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age when the Muslim world was at the forefront of math, science and medicine. ~ Richard Engel

Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.
[...] Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided
and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches.
[...] I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the p ~ Frederick Douglass

He twisted the heavy gold ring around his finger. It had been in his family for generations, passed down to each eldest child along with the family mission of once again ushering in the Golden Age of Man.
His great-great-grandfather had been the first of their Order to make physical progress toward the ultimate goal: to free the powerful prisoners from the center of the Earth. ~ Lisa Kessler

Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age
the only perfectly beautiful things on earth
joyous, innocent, half divine
useless, say they who are wiser than God. ~ Ouida

People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking "not much has changed" is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back. ~ Dave Matthes

Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for some readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them, Hazel Motes's integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author, Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to do so. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

(Preface to second edition, 1962) ~ Flannery O'Connor

When you start being enthusiastic about whatever it is you like, that is the golden age for you. ~ Michael Winterbottom

I call the years when our children are between six and twelve the "golden years," not because everything's perfect ... but because the kids are capable and independent ... They're becoming fascinating human beings who continually astound us and make us laugh. And they build our self-esteem. They still adore us for the most part, not yet having reached that age of thinking everything we do is dumb, old-fashioned and irrelevant. ~ Vicki Lansky

Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day. ~ Henry Beston

. . . to my surprise I began to know what The Language was about, not just the part we were singing now but the whole poem. It began with the praise and joy in all creation, copying the voice of the wind and the sea. It described sun and moon, stars and clouds, birth and death, winter and spring, the essence of fish, bird, animal, and man. It spoke in what seemed to be the language of each creature. . . . It spoke of well, spring, and stream, of the seed that comes from the loins of a male creature and of the embryo that grows in the womb of the female. It pictured the dry seed deep in the dark earth, feeling the rain and the warmth seeping down to it. It sang of the green shoot and of the tawny heads of harvest grain standing out in the field under the great moon. It described the chrysalis that turns into a golden butterfly, the eggs that break to let out the fluffy bird life within, the birth pangs of woman and of beast. It went on to speak of the dark ferocity of the creatures that pounce upon their prey and plunge their teeth into it--it spoke in the muffled voice of bear and wolf--it sang the song of the great hawks and eagles and owls until their wild faces seemed to be staring into mine, and I knew myself as wild as they. It sang the minor chords of pain and sickness, of injury and old age; for a few moments I felt I was an old woman with age heavy upon me. ~ Monica Furlong

Relationships are like Rome
difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the 'golden age', and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt ... that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soul mate, and your love. ~ Helen Keller

I think the height of ridiculousness was when I was playing Elizabeth in 'The Golden Age' while preparing to start shooting 'I'm Not There.' I literally finished filming Elizabethan grandeur on Friday, flew to Montreal, and started being Bob Dylan on Monday. ~ Cate Blanchett

The members of the Mystery school, during the time of Atlantis, had psychically seen the subsequent ages of darkness. ~ Frederick Lenz

The good thing is that I really think that American television is in kind of a second golden age. Even though there's a lot of reality and all those contest shows, which aren't my kind of shows, the scripted stuff that's going on is so good right now because of basic cable. Everyone has stepped it up and realised that people like quality. ~ Paul Feig

The mystery school continued throughout the greater Egyptian civilization, which was the second age of humankind and later on into the third age of humankind when the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan high cultures flourished ~ Frederick Lenz

Reunion with the mother is a siren call haunting our imagination. Once there was bliss, and now there is struggle. Dim memories of life before the traumatic separation of birth may be the source of Arcadian fantasies of a lost golden age. ~ Camille Paglia

Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir ... Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me. ~ Erik Hassle

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The golden age is before us, not behind us. ~ Simon The Zealot

Reality is never a golden age. ~ Joan Robinson

Whether Hindus or Greeks, Egyptians or Japanese, Chinese, Sumerians, or ancient Americans
or even Romans, the most "modern" among people of antiquity
they all placed the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, the rule of Kronos or of Ra or of any other gods on earth
the glorious beginning of the slow, downward unfurling of history, whatever name it be given
far behind them in the past. ~ Savitri Devi

As Christians, I feel those of us in the creative community must seek to be more than scribes. If Diarmaid MacColloch is right in his immense history, The Reformation, we had plenty of Christian scribes on the eve of that enormous and painful upheaval. But it was the printing press that enabled the great thinkers of that time, both Reformer and Catholic, to transform our "assumptions about knowledge and originality of thought." I suggest now that we must seize the revolutionary media of our age in the way that those earlier Christians and Catholics seized the printed book. We must truly use the realistic novel, the television drama, and the motion picture to tell the Christian story anew. It is our obligation to tell that story over and over and to use the best means that we have. In that spirit this novel was written - with the hope of exploring and celebrating the mystery of the Hypostatic Union as well as the mystery of the Incarnation - in a wholly fresh way. ~ Anne Rice

It's the golden age of French cinema again but it's because Sarkozy had the guts to push through copyright law. ~ Harvey Weinstein

When I started doing 'The City' in 1990, most papers ran it the width of the page, 10 inches or so. It was great! I had lots of room to draw and write. It was the golden age of weekly comix. Today, most run my strip half that size. I just try to make it legible. It's very frustrating. ~ Derf

How often has not the parallel been drawn and the golden age of the Roman Empire, when the external brilliancy of life likewise dazzled the eye, notwithstanding that the social diagnosis could yield no other verdict than 'rotten to the very core'? ~ Abraham Kuyper

Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity. ~ Michael Chabon

The only real mystery in the stories of political plagiarism is its durability in an age of Turnitin and other scanning software that can protect an author from his own mistakes, intentional or otherwise. ~ Evan Osnos