Gulbransen Paragon Quotes

He who considers himself a paragon of wisdom is sure to commit some superlatively stupid act. ~ Johann Ludwig Tieck

Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals in the theatre. ~ M.C. Scott

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
Prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
And queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
Wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
Custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
With my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
Excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
O'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
With golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
Me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
Express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
World! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
What is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
Me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
You seem to say so. ~ William Shakespeare

"The Bush administration is a paragon of wisdom." ~ George Sanders

Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety. ~ Gabriel Chevallier

Tonights is the first football game of the season West Paragon Dawgs versus East Paragon Dolphins - Cerberus guardiam of the underworld versus Flipper - go figure. ~ Addison Moore

He who, conscious of being strong, is content to be weak, he shall be the paragon of mankind. Being the paragon of mankind, Virtue will never desert him. He returns to the state of a little child. ~ Laozi

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. ~ Anthony Bartlett

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other. ~ Harry Browne

Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues. And what is the result? You all go over like ninepins - one after the other. ~ Oscar Wilde

I think, for one, the LGBTQ community is just a paragon of leadership, of standing up and saying "these are our rights, and we deserve them." As a model of activism, it's so wonderful what the community has been able to achieve towards goals like marriage equality. ~ Jill Stein

If an American is motoring on his own, he (the paragon of morality and chastity) will slow down and stop beside every solitary pretty female pedestrian, bare his teeth in a big smile, and tempt her into his car with a wild roll of the eyes. A lady who fails to appreciate his passion will qualify as an idiot who doesn't realise how lucky she is to have the opportunity of getting to know the owner of this 100-horse-power motor car. ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

As with Jack, the discriminating milieu of loneliness moved Hugh to raise the stakes of solitude, not from a wish to spare himself the sapping drudgery of a conventional, passionless marriage, but rather to gamble on the existence of a just goddess. Like Jack's, his core being was attuned solely to the enrapturing company of a scintillating paragon, to a woman who was indivisibly and alluringly noble. ~ Edward Cline

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do. ~ Steve Coogan

Other Courtesies have been -
Other Courtesy may be -
We commend ourselves to thee
Paragon of Chivalry. ~ Emily Dickinson

You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting, apparently, that he has a long and savage history. He has killed other animals not only for meat but for pleasure; he has enslaved his neighbors, murdered his opponents, and obtained the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe. ~ A.E. Van Vogt

Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most. ~ David Nicholls

Colin. Just the name made Alessandro's gut burn. He knew the man wanted his wife, even if Brianna was too blind to see it. The moron had been cuckolded by the paragon of supposed virtue, his wife Carrie and now he had finally opened his eyes and seen what Alessandro had known all along. Brianna put every other woman in New York to shame. No woman could come near her beauty, her passion, her fire. Colin had tossed her aside for the angelic Carrie and now he was changing his mind. Oh no you don't, you miserable fucker. "Her friend indeed," Bernardo drawled, his Italian accent thick with unmistakable implication. "Dat's da truth. He no make her cry all da time." That was directed at Alessandro, with small dark accusatory eyes. "He nice." Alessandro couldn't look at those eyes without feeling a sickening pang of guilt. She's mine! He wanted to scream. Mine! Mine! Mine! "Oh yes. Very nice. He was very nice when he held her at the cemetery and very nice when he was dancing with her at Adresca." That made Alessandro's head lift in surprise. "Oh yes, my boy. She's been there, cleaning up the rubble and word is that she's working on re-opening it. Her friend Colin has been quite helpful in that endeavour." "I don' like how you say dat," Will said scowling. "Really young William, I only speak the truth," Bernardo taunted. Alessandro's mind was racing. NO! Not Colin. He could not let that imbecile take Brianna away from him. He'd have to be eliminated somehow. Alessandro began to plot a ~ E. Jamie

The blood-stain has been much admired by tourists and others, and cannot be removed." "That is all nonsense," cried Washington Otis; "Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up in no time," and before the terrified housekeeper could interfere, he had fallen upon his knees, and was rapidly scouring the floor with a small stick of what looked like a black cosmetic. In a few moments no trace of the blood-stain could be seen. ~ Oscar Wilde

I'm not on a mission. I'm not a paragon of health for anybody. I'm not going to run a marathon or model for 'Men's Health' or go on bike rides with Lance Armstrong. I'm not. Trust me. ~ Duff Goldman

So. Which of our troubles torments you most this evening?"
Althea surrendered. "They all nip at my heels like a pack of yapping feists, ship. I don't know which to worry about first."
The figurehead gave a snort of disdain. "Then kick them away as if they were truly a pack of curs and fix your gaze instead on your destiny." … "Don't think about the obstacles" … The ship spoke in a low, soft voice. "Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end."
"I think we will succeed only if we prepare ourselves," Althea objected.
Paragon shook his head. "Teach yourself to believe you will succeed. … Be now what you must be to succeed at the end of your journey, and when the end comes, you will find it is just another beginning."
Althea sighed. "Now you sound like Amber," she complained.
"No." He contradicted her flatly. "Now I sound like myself. The self I put aside and hid, the self I intended to be again someday, when I was ready. I have stopped intending. I am, now."
p. 86: Paragon to Althea ~ Robin Hobb

Today's Republican Party ... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance. ~ Thomas E. Mann

He's paragon schnitzophonic." "He's what?!" "Paragon schnitzophonic," repeats Uncle Al. "You mean paranoid schizophrenic? ~ Sara Gruen

Oh? Did you think he was some paragon of purity? I've seen him kill girls younger than you. I've seen him wind women up to crawl to his bed. ~ Elise Kova

I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you're a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents. ~ Carolyn Lee Adams

I've come for you, Gerswhen Tormane. To restore the life you have stolen. - The Paragon ~ Mindee Arnett

He is intangible and invisible. But His work is more powerful than the most ferocious wind. The Spirit brings order out of chaos and beauty out of ugliness. He can transform a sin-blistered man into a paragon of virtue. The Spirit changes people. The Author of life is also the Transformer of life. ~ R.C. Sproul

...maybe being an artist is also really about the work. It's not about standing up and trumpeting one's own genius to a throng of adoring inferiors, agog with admiration. Maybe an artist is simply one who does an artist's work, over and over. A process, not a paragon. ~ Olivia Waite

I'm sorry, he says. No two words were ever truer.
Still, she says nothing. Once a shield, now her taciturnity is brandished like a blade, carving away his sanity. She's the flaw in the paragon of life - the reason angels choose to dive to their downfalls in fiery comets of stardust. ~ Laura Kreitzer

I'm not saying I'm a paragon of virtue, but it's hard for me not to be honorable. ~ Wayne Rogers

Darwin's Bestiary

PROLOGUE


Animals tame and animals feral
prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral:
the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile,
rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile.
Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride - every peril
was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural,
while Courage, Devotion, Thrift - every bright laurel
crowned a creature in some mythological mural.


Scientists think there is something immoral
in singular brutes having meat that is plural:
beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral.
Yet between the lines there's an implicit demurral;
the habit stays with us, albeit it's puerile:
when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel.



1. THE ANT


The ant, Darwin reminded us,
defies all simple-mindedness:
Take nothing (says the ant) on faith,
and never trust a simple truth.
The PR men of bestiaries
eulogized for centuries
this busy little paragon,
nature's proletarian -
but look here, Darwin said: some ants
make slaves of smaller ants, and end
exploiting in their peonages
the sweating brows of their tiny drudges.


Thus the ant speaks out of both
sides of its mealy little mouth:
its example is extolled
to the workers of the world,
but its habits also preach
the virtues of ~ Philip Appleman

Take George W. Bush: He was an unpopular two-term president. Three times, his approval rating dropped to 25 percent. [To be fair, he also had the highest approval rating of all time, very briefly. But that was immediately after 9/11  -  and in the wake of domestic terrorism, a well-dressed mannequin's approval rating might have hovered around 50.] During his last two years in office, he was hammered nonstop, periodically classified as the worst U.S. president since Ulysses Grant or James Buchanan. Yet was Bush a villain? No. He was not. He was never, ever calculating. He didn't know the most (which is not to say he was dumb), and he didn't care the least (which is not to say he was a paragon of empathy). He was just the guy who ended up with the job. The villain of his administration ended up being Vice President Dick Cheney, a frosty puppet master who radically expanded the powers of the presidency even though he was not the president. ~ Chuck Klosterman

The Exo went pale when he realized what we were dealing with. Well, what he thought we were dealing with. I never really thought he was a paragon of courage, mister 'I'll-be-Captain-one-of-these-days' Beckett. He wanted to turn a blind eye as it were, and keep going. Of course we didn't want to break the law – or tempt karma… so the Captain over-ruled him and decided to stop. It was. A trap, I mean. But nothing like we thought – not something as mundane as Corsairs. Oh, no. And it didn't spring on us till days later, when we were light-years away. ~ Christina Engela

He closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to Tessa's hair. Behind his lids he did not see darkness, but the light of a London morning and Will there, smiling at him. A new soul made of you and Tessa, Will said. I can hardly wait to meet such a paragon. "Do you see him, too?" Tessa whispered. "I see him," Jem said, and he held her even more tightly against him, the new life they had created together between them. ~ Cassandra Clare

What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger! the man in black laughed. ~ Stephen King

We can paint unrealistic pictures of the juggler
displaying her now as a problem-free paragon of glamour and now as a modern hag.Or we can see in the juggler a real person who strives to overcome the obstacles that nature and society put in her path and who does so with vigor and determination. ~ Faye J Crosby

Can you please stop talking so I can go back to enjoying Daniel Craig's outrageously good body?" "That's so gay," JP said. "I'm a girl," said the Duke. "It's not gay for me to be attracted to men. Now, if I said you had a hot body, that would be gay, because you're built like a lady." "Oh, burn," I said. The Duke raised her eyes at me and said, "Although JP's a freaking paragon of masculinity compared to you." I had no response to that. "Keun is at work," I said. "He gets paid double on Christmas Eve." "Oh, right," said JP. "I forgot that Waffle Houses are like Lindsay Lohan's legs: always open. ~ John Green

If there is a lesson here it has to do with humility. For all our vaunted intelligence and complexity, we are not the sole authors of our destinies or of anything else. You may exercise diligently, eat a medically fashionable diet, and still die of a sting from an irritated bee. You may be a slim, toned paragon of wellness, and still a macrophage within your body may decide to throw in its lot with an incipient tumor. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Her mind, shaped so long before my own, was for me the equivalent of what had been offered me by the behaviour of the girls of the little gang along the sea-shore. Mme de Guermantes offered me, tamed and subdued by good manners, by respect for intellectual values, the energy and charm of a cruel little girl from one of the noble families around Combray, who from her childhood had ridden horses, sadistically tormented cats, gouged out the eyes of rabbits, and, while remaining a paragon of virtue, might equally well have been, some years back now, and so much did she share his dashing style, the most glamorous mistress of the Prince de Sagan. ~ Marcel Proust

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE

There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.

If you would glimpse the beauty we r ~ Attar Of Nishapur

July 15, 1991

Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. "Don't you see what's going on in this house?" To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood. ~ Sarah E. Olson

Singapore is what your city could become if everyone obeyed the rules, did their jobs diligently, and just shut up. When your city gets to be this paragon of efficiency and discipline, would you still want to live there? Singapore is a model city, which is terrific if you happen to be a model human. ~ Jessica Zafra