Mansions Quotes

Hillary showed off a new set of White House china at the mansion's 200th birthday dinner Thursday. She said she helped design it. It's thanks to her that all the White House china looks like it's been glued back together. ~ Argus Hamilton

There aren't nearly enough worldly mansions for the kind folks who deserve them. ~ Bryant A. Loney

[Roman] society became steadily more cosmopolitan. By 212 A.D., all inhabitants of the empire, except for slaves, were deemed to be citizens. The old Roman aristocracy was not fixated upon race and color. Wealth and literacy were what opened the doors of their urban mansions and country villas. ~ Norman F. Cantor

Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you. ~ Saul Bellow

I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions ... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it. ~ Sophia Loren

Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. ~ James Joyce

The ordinary build houses when they have bricks; the extraordinary build mansions when they have pebbles. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Hey," the cabbie yelled. "How's about a tip?"
"You bet-ski," Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. "Don't kiss strange men in Penn Station. ~ Libba Bray

Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls. From the opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away, none cries, 'Let no more riches enter!'. ~ Aeschylus

I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions. ~ Saint Teresa Of Avila

I don't know how else to tell the story except to utilise that vocabulary: the rain, the darkness, the mansions, the framing, etc, the lighting and that sort of thing. ~ Martin Scorsese

He's on a mission of mercy to the new frontier, he's gonna check us all on out of here. Up to that mansion on a hill, where you can get your prescription filled. ~ John Hiatt

I know few Christians so convinced of the splendor of the rooms in their Father's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those mansions ... Nor has the Church's ardent "desire to depart, and be with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such departure. ~ John Ruskin

Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. ~ Bob Dylan

Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. ~ E. M. Forster

We don't know how to say goodbye,
We wander on, shoulder to shoulder
Already the sun is going down
You're moody, and I am your shadow.
Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead
Why are we so different from the rest?
Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.
That stick in your hand is tracing
Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together. ~ Anna Akhmatova

If you are not for us, then you are against us! One day we will be living alongside you in those mansions. Your choice. Share or lose it all. We're going to take Africa away from its colonial masters. Step aside gracefully, we'll let you stay. Fight us and we'll drive you out. ~ Richard H. Mcbee Jr.

When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone - a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I love everything that Frank Gehry does. I wish I could have that man build me a Wayne Manor-style mansion, like his idea of it. ~ Pharrell Williams

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something ~ Francis Ford Coppola

His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. Omnis cam ad te veniet ~ James Joyce

Famous Playboy Hugh Hefner managed to successfully stop an order of monks from operating a business on his property. The police forced the friars to close down their stall, which was outside the Playboy mansion where they had been selling flowers. Said one friar, well, if it was anyone else we may have gotten away from it, but, unfortunately, only Hugh can prevent florist friars. ~ Colin Mochrie

In attempting to construct such (artificially intelligent) machines we should not be irreverently usurping His (God's) power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children," Turing had advised. "Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates. ~ Alan Turing

There are so many of these mighty spirit lifters! "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions ... " (John 14:1, 2). "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you ... " (verse 27). "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee" (Isaiah 26:3). "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed ... " (Isaiah 41:10). ~ Norman Vincent Peale

If you have to wear a hazmat suit to raise crops, why would you ever eat them? If you're afraid of getting that crap on your skin, how much more insane would it be to put it in your mouth! Seriously? I often wonder, and I wish someone would research it if they haven't already, whether the CEOs of Monsanto, Dupont, etc., eat GMO products and feed them to their families, or if they send out their 'personal shoppers' to the local farmer's market to bring home fresh, organic produce every week? I suspect the latter. I'm quite sure they all have reverse osmosis water systems in their mansions. Let me put it bluntly, if I haven't been clear so far. The day the CEO of Monsanto guzzles a gallon of Roundup, is the day I'll consider buying their products, maybe. ~ Steve Bivans

Why couldn't you have been a Bad? They always get mansions. And now, because of you, I'm stick in this dump. ~ Cale Dietrich

The city had changed beyond recognition. Wrecking balls and bulldozers had leveled the old buildings to rubble. The dust of construction hung permanently over the streets. Gated mansions reached up to the northern foothills, while slums fanned out from the city's southern limits.
I feared an aged that had lost its heart, and I was terrified at the thought of so many useless hands. Our traditions were our pacifiers and we put ourselves to sleep with the lullaby of a once-great civilation and culture. Ours was the land of poetry flowers, and nightingales - and poets searching for rhymes in history's junkyards. The lottery was our faith and greed our fortune. Our intellectuals were sniffing cocaine and delivering lectures in the back rooms of dark cafés. We bought plastic roses and decorated our lawns and courtyards with plaster swans. We saw the future in neon lights. We had pizza shops, supermarkets, and bowling alleys. We had trafric jams, skyscrapers, and air thick with noise and pollution. We had illiterate villagers who came to the capital with scraps of paper in their hands, begging for someone to show them the way to this medical clinic or that government officee. the streets of Tehran were full of Mustangs and Chevys bought at three times the price they sold for back in America, and still our oil wasn't our own. Still our country wasn't our own. ~ Jasmin Darznik

[ ... ] students should be told that an effort is always required, when you start to read a serious author, to overcome mental laziness and reluctance, because you are about to enter the mind of someone who thinks differently from yourself. And that is the whole point and the only point: the literary treasure-house has many mansions. ~ Doris Lessing

The more people told me that, you know, wow, you should be so blessed. Don't you feel blessed? And you have all this - mansion and all these beautiful things. And I said, you know - the more they told me that, the more depressed I got. ~ Tanya Tucker

It was when they determined that I had been born dead
That my life became easier to understand. For a long time,
I wondered why rooms felt colder when I entered them,
Why nothing I said seemed to stick in anyone's ear,
Frankly, why I never had any money. I wondered
Why the cities I walked through drifted into cloud
Even as I admired their architecture, as I pointed out
The cornerstones marked "1820," "1950." The only songs
I ever loved were filled with scratch, dispatches from
A time when dead ones like me were a dime a dozen.
I spent my life in hotels: some looked like mansions,
Some more like trailer parks, or pathways toward
A future I tried to point to, but how could I point,
With nothing but a hand no hand ever matched,
With fingers that melted into words that no one read.

I rehearsed names that others taught me: Caravaggio,
Robert Brandom, Judith, Amber, Emmanuelle Cat.
I got hungry the way only the dead get hungry,
The hunger that launches a thousand dirty wars,
But I never took part in the wars, because no one lets
A dead man into their covert discussions.
So I drifted from loft to cellar, ageless like a ghost,
And America became my compass, and Europe became
The way that dead folks talk, in short, who cares,
There's nothing to say because nobody listens,
There's no radio for the dead and the pillows seem
Like sand. Let me explain ~ John Beer

Having still in my recollection so many excellent men, to whose grandfathers, upon the same spots, my grandfather had yielded cheerful obedience and reverence, it is not without sincere sorrow that I have beheld many of the sons of these men driven from their fathers' mansions, or holding them as little better than tenants or stewards, while the swarms of Placemen, Pensioners, Contractors, and Nabobs ... have usurped a large part of the soil. ~ William Cobbett

I'm a Conservative, but I talk for the ordinary working classes. I get on with the boys at the pub, but I can also mix with Prince Andrew. I understand both levels. The toffs haven't lived in council estates; they've just known big mansions. How can they understand how the postman feels? I would never say no to becoming an MP. ~ Vinnie Jones

One of my favorite things that Yahoo does on a regular basis is this story: "Wealthiest Rap Artists." That's an example of the internet just perpetuating this myth that we're all just sitting around in these mansions like Steven Tyler, bopping around in our swimming pool. It's bullshit. ~ DJ Shadow

It never ceased to amaze me how disinterested half the knights were in our own history, in taking advantage of the extraordinary gifts we'd been handed the night we were tapped into Rose & Grave. To them, it was just another privilege they'd been born into, like admission to Eli or their Long Island mansions. Did they have any idea how much more it was to ... other people? ~ Diana Peterfreund

For nothing can be sole or whole. That has not been rent. ~ W.B.Yeats

I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face - I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down! ~ Knut Hamsun

See how the Orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn Into the blowing roses, Yet careless of its mansion new; For the clear region where 'twas born Round in its self encloses: And in its little globes extent, Frames as it can its native element. ~ Andrew Marvell

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. ~ James A. Michener

I live in the same house I've lived in for 25 years. I haven't gone off and bought mansions. Even though my subject is living, living in a mansion wouldn't do for my readers. I have to keep my credibility alive with my readers, so we're in the same place. I just make that place nicer and nicer. And that's a secret. People don't know that. People think, oh, she lives in this fabulous place, but it's the same old place. It started out like a farm, it got to be a farmette, then it got to be an estatelet. I built a wall; it helped a lot. But it's the same place, the same grounded nature. ~ Martha Stewart

Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I'd house all the poor scholars and make them beam with smiles ~ Du Fu

Even with the Brotherhood as support, going to the colony was a suicide mission - and she was willing to bet there were a lot of people having sex under the mansion's roof right now.
Sometimes you had to have a taste of life right before you knocked on the Grim Reaper's front
door. ~ J.R. Ward

Like most modern people, we no longer bothered to make the distinction between events in real life and the dramas of fictional worlds, and so the cliff-hanger that inevitably, reliably ended the hour held just as much or more importance to us as the newspaper that usually went from doorstep to garbage bin unread, and we speculated about the future lives of the characters that populated decayed mansions or desert isles as if they weren't inventions of other human minds. ~ Dexter Palmer

Our living quarters were in the same compound as the Eastern District administration. Government offices were mostly housed in large mansions which had been confiscated from Kuomintang officials and wealthy landlords. All government employees, even senior officials, lived at their office. They were not allowed to cook at home, and all ate in canteens. The canteen was also where everyone got their boiled water, which was fetched in thermos flasks.

Saturday was the only day married couples were allowed to spend together. Among officials, the euphemism for making love was 'spending a Saturday." Gradually, this regimented life-style relaxed a bit and married couples were able to spend more time together, but almost all still lived and spent most of their time in their office compounds.

My mother's department ran a very broad field of activities, including primary education, health, entertainment, and sounding out public opinion. At the age of twenty-two, my mother was in charge of all these activities for about a quarter of a million people. She was so busy we hardly ever saw her. The government wanted to establish a monopoly (known as 'unified purchasing and marketing') over trade in the basic commodities grain, cotton, edible o'fi, and meat. The idea was to get the peasants to sell these exclusively to the government, which would then ration them out to the urban population and to parts of the country where they were in short supply. ~ Jung Chang

With awe, around these silent walks I tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead. ~ George Crabbe

And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity. ~ Herman Melville

We were alone in a strange mansion with a baboon, a crocodile, and a weird cat. And apparently, the entire world was in danger.
I looked at Sadie. What do we do now? ~ Rick Riordan

They loved so intensely that moments of their life have been etched into the very fabric of the mansion. Some say the king designed it that way, so if one day he lost her he could come live with her residue. ~ Karen Marie Moning

We did an album one time called White Mansions, about the civil war, but it was written by a guy from England. His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective. ~ Waylon Jennings

When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales. ~ Roald Dahl

One thing I didn't understand in life was that I had $100,000,000 in the bank and I couldn't buy happiness. I had everything: mansions, yachts, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, but I was depressed. I didn't know where I fitted in. But then I found family and friends and I learned the value of life. ~ Vanilla Ice

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The "Gold Coast" was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night.
The world's most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake's edge. ~ Daniel Amory

At this point, a social flaw that always existed with regard to the [Roman] aristocrats in their townhouses became more evident. No longer finding urban life as secure and amenable as in the early empire, the landed rich gave primacy not to their urban mansions but to their country estates, making the latter their principal residences. The dominant forces in urban life increasingly became the bishops and cathedral clergy. ~ Norman F. Cantor

To get over my divorce, I got a prescription to live at the Playboy Mansion for a while. ~ James Caan

Once our idea of heaven meant
all the dead relatives waiting
on the kept lawn of the many mansions
as if, suddenly sinless, they had nothing
to do ... ~ Deborah Digges

A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favour or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harbouring of grovelling thoughts. Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master. ~ James Allen

Trickle-down economics So long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal, and that's to make sure that the rich folk are happy - because, unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So, if you're a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let's say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy - because, if they're happy, then they'll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they're not happy, everything's going to grind to a halt, and you're not even going to get anything trickling down. ~ Noam Chomsky

Mr. Hussein began building Ghazalia in the early 1980s as a home for army officers and other members of his Baath Party. Concrete mansions with pillars and domes are common in the southern half of the district. ~ Alex Berenson

In an age of million-dollar mansions for God, it's hard to imagine that our God prefers tents. ~ Shane Claiborne

He (the Shaman) is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe. ~ Michael Harner

It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something - but he does not know where it leads him. The first sign of realization of truth is tolerance towards others. There are the words of Christ, "In the house of my Father are many mansions", and those of the Prophet, "Each soul has its own religion." This means that according to his evolution so man knows the truth and the more a man knows, the more he finds there is to learn. ~ Inayat Khan

She will not believe me if I tell her love is all anyone ever needs. Everything else – the fast cars, the private aeroplanes, the mansions, the diamonds, the watches, the fancy clothes, the perfect bodies, the publicity, the awards, the applause – all are ways of filling the emptiness created by the lack of love. ~ Manjul Bajaj

We don't compare our houses to the mansions across town; we compare our yard to the yards on our block. When we compare, we want to be the best or have the best of our group.

The comparison mandate becomes this crushing paradox of "fit in and stand out!" It's not cultivate self-acceptance, belonging, and authenticity; it's be just like everyone else, but better. ~ Brene Brown

But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life ... as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures ... ~ John Muir

But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people's lives and bend the people's will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, details of the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their household at nominal prices, and send their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers. Even though every Chinese knew how these leaders lived, no one dared to talk about it. If we had to pass by a special shop for the military or high officials, we carefully looked the other way to avoid giving the impression we knew it was there. ~ Nien Cheng

Have your name put in the Lamb's Book of Life in Heaven so you'll be sure you've got your reservation confirmed for one of those mansions in God's golden Space City! ~ David Berg

Pablo Neruda's poems tramped through the mud [with the fieldworker] ... knocked at the doors of mansions ... sat at the table of the baker ... The shopkeeper leaned over his counter and read them to his customers and said "Do you know him? He is my brother."
The poems became books that people passed from hand to hand. The books traveled over fences ... and bridges ... and across borders ... soaring from continent to continent ... until he had passed thousands of gifts through a hole in the fence to a multitude of people in every corner of the world. ~ Pam Munoz Ryan

Think of what you are, you Christians. You are God's children; you are joint heirs with Christ. The 'many mansions' are for you; the palms and harps of the glorified are for you. You have a share in all that Christ has and is and shall be. ~ Charles Spurgeon

He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few ~ Chris Highland

I blaze with a deep sullen magic, smell lust like a heron on fire; all words I form into castles then storm them with soldiers of air. What I seek is not there for asking. My armies are fit and well trained. This poet will trust her battalions to fashion her words into blades. At dawn I shall ask them for beauty, for proof that their training went well. At night I shall beg their forgiveness as I cut their throats by the hill. My navies advance through the language, destroyers ablaze in high seas. I soften the island for landings. With words, I enlist a dark army. My poems are my war with the world. I blaze with a deep southern magic. The bombardiers taxi at noon. There is screaming and grief in the mansions and the moon is a heron on fire. ~ Pat Conroy

I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me. ~ John Keats

Lexington, Kentucky looks like paradise. Acres of grass as green and tender as a golf course putting green surround hilltop mansions. New Circle Road--a beltway enveloping the city's heartland like a moat--attempts to separate the wealthy landowners from the encroaching strip centers and fast-food joins that are symbolic of the rest of the state .... Combining the traditional feelings of Southerners with the uniquely gorgeous landscape of the bluegrass, Lexingtonians consider themselves and their region the cream of the crop--not only of Kentucky, but also of the nation. ~ Sally Denton

I grew up in Kolkata in a traditional family. We had friends who lived in mansions just like the one in 'Oleander Girl.' Growing up, I was fascinated by the old house and the old Bengal lifestyle. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything - millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace. ~ Richard Pryor

Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson blood, songs that are filled with biblical wording that's no longer understood by a lot of people. ~ Larry Norman

His feeling for the South was not so much historic as it was
of the core and desire of dark romanticism--that unlimited and
inexplicable drunkenness, the magnetism of some men's blood that
takes them into the heart of the heat, and beyond that, into the
polar and emerald cold of the South as swiftly as it took the heart
of that incomparable romanticist who wrote The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, beyond which there is nothing. And this desire of his was
unquestionably enhanced by all he had read and visioned, by the
romantic halo that his school history cast over the section, by the
whole fantastic distortion of that period where people were said to
live in "mansions," and slavery was a benevolent institution,
conducted to a constant banjo-strumming, the strewn largesses of
the colonel and the shuffle-dance of his happy dependents, where
all women were pure, gentle, and beautiful, all men chivalrous and
brave, and the Rebel horde a company of swagger, death-mocking
cavaliers. Years later, when he could no longer think of the
barren spiritual wilderness, the hostile and murderous intrenchment
against all new life--when their cheap mythology, their legend of
the charm of their manner, the aristocratic culture of their lives,
the quaint sweetness of their drawl, made him writhe--when he could
think of no return to their life and its swarming superstition
without weariness and h ~ Thomas Wolfe

There are a countless variety of hardships in any life," Kedean answered," ... only the most basic of which can be solved with mansions, gold pieces, and titles of nobility. ~ Anihyr Moonstar

Heart resides
where crumbling churches give way to blossoming trees
empty storefronts to towering mansions
it doesn't want just another heist movie
or an illusion of cleavage
it's not accidental or meaningless
it wants to be known ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us. ~ Terence McKenna

The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold. ~ Georg Hermes

Through no fault of his own was a victim of an economy in the toilet. Joe used to make six figures a year in a corporate position commanding a crew that installed high-end security systems in Malibu mansions much like the one he was visiting right now. Joe's Geek Squad job was a step down with no chance of stepping up. He had a monstrous mortgage on a house that was worth half of what he'd originally paid for it. His wife had left him and taken the dog. And his Lexus had been repossessed. He sometimes thought he'd like to become an alcoholic, but he couldn't afford the liquor. ~ Janet Evanovich

Man is made and unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons which will destroy him. He also creates the tools with which he will build for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peach. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and their master. ~ James Allen

The wild pursuit of status and wealth has destroyed our souls and our economy. Families live in sprawling mansions financed with mortgages they can no longer repay. Consumers recklessly rang up Coach handbags and Manolo Blahnik shoes on credit cards because they seemed to confer a sense of identity and merit. Our favorite hobby, besides television, used to be, until reality hit us like a tsunami, shopping. Shopping used to be the compensation for spending five days a week in tiny cubicles. American workers are ground down by corporations that have disempowered them, used them, and have now discarded them ~ Chris Hedges

Roses can grow in slums just as weeds can grow around mansions. ~ Richard Paul Evans

They have opinions, but no facts;
assumptions, but no proof;
information, but no reason;
arguments, but no evidence;
beliefs, but no wisdom;
counsel, but no guidance;
pleasures, but no peace;
luxuries, but no comfort;
toys, but no amusement;
laughter, but no peace;
entertainment, but no bliss;
and recreation, but no happiness.

They also have charm, but no integrity;
eloquence, but no logic;
knowledge, but no sense;
food, but no satisfaction;
money, but no peace;
property, but no contentment;
entertainment, but no enjoyment;
acquaintances, but no friends;
creeds, but no conviction;
religion, but no faith;
pride, but no confidence;
mansions, but no home;
relationships, but no marriage;
children, but no family;
laws, but no justice;
morals, but no compassion;
passion, but no love;
sleep, but no rest;
days, but no nights;
brains, but no heart;
and courage, but no soul. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

But Tudor mansions on manicured grounds didn't look right with their grand front doors wide open to the night. It was like a debutante flashing her bra thanks to a wardrobe malfunction. ~ J.R. Ward

President Obama awarded a National Medal of Arts to author Stephen King. You know, because if there's anyone who can relate to the story of a guy trapped in a mansion that's driving him insane, it's Obama. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness
stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared. ~ John Henry Newman

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers. ~ Michael Dirda

We're in the Chicago suburbs, ruling our 'hood and the streets that lead here. It's a street war, where other
suburban gangs fight us for territory. Three blocks away are mansions and million-dollar houses. Right here,
in the real world, the street war rages on. The people in the million-dollar houses don't even realize a battle is
about to begin less than a half mile from their backyards. ~ Simone Elkeles

I had seen buildings burn before, as part of my training and as part of my childhood. I had seen small homes and enormous mansions devoured by fire, and I had seen flames destroy factories and symphony halls and houses of worship. A school seems worse, I thought as the fire roared into the sky. Even when the school is empty, it's a terrible thing. ~ Lemony Snicket

Mr. Severin, may I ask something personal?"
"Of course."
"Why did you offer to be my oyster?" A hot blush climbed her face. "Is it because I'm pretty?"
His head lifted. "Partly," he admitted without a hint of shame. "But I also liked what you said- that you never nag or slam doors, and you're not looking for love. I'm not either." He paused, his vibrant gaze holding hers. "I think we would be a good match."
"I didn't mean I don't want love," Cassandra protested. "I only meant I'd be willing to let love grow in time. To be clear, I want a husband who could also love me back."
Mr. Severin took his time about replying. "What if you had a husband who, although not handsome, was not altogether bad-looking and happened to be very rich? What if he were kind and considerate, and gave you whatever you asked for- mansions, jewels, trips abroad, your own private yacht and luxury railway carriage? What if he were exceptionally good at..." He paused, appearing to think better of what he'd been about to say. "What if he were your protector and friend? Would it really matter so much if he couldn't love you?"
"Why couldn't he?" Cassandra asked, intrigued and perturbed. "Is he missing a heart altogether?"
"No, he has one, but it's never worked that way. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else. ~ Anna Godbersen

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is warm within the mansions of Hel. ~ Carrie Jones

How do you 'accidentally' kill a noble man in his own mansion?"
"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest ... ~ Brandon Sanderson

An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy. ~ Christopher Isherwood

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets
returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted
stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one
eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from
one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of
the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the
children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women
who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they
wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of
the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up
and down the city's greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken
tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of
the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas' mansions,
all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking
through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the
evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, a ~ Orhan Pamuk

Og led us through the mansion's lavish front entrance. The lights were off inside, but instead of turning them on, Morrow took an honest-to-God torch off the wall and used it to illuminate our way. ~ Ernest Cline