Marco Polo Quotes

Kublai noticed this uncommon perception that Marco Polo has, with the idea to explain and talk about his country so vividly that he can see it. ~ Benedict Wong

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind. I guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to light, old ones need to wither away. ~ Elif Shafak

I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice. ~ Marco Polo

Because I live in south Florida I store cans of black beans and gallons
of water in my closet in preparation for hurricane season.
I throw a hurricane party in January. You're my only guest.
We play Marco Polo in bed. The sheets are wet like the roof caved in.
There's a million of me in you. You try to count me as I taste the sweat
on the back of your neck. I call you Sexy Sexy, and we do everything twice.
After, still sweating, we drink Crystal Light out of plastic water bottles.
We discuss the pros and cons of vasectomies. It's not invasive you say.
I wrap the bedsheet around my waist. Minor surgery you say.
You slur the word surgery, like it's a garnish on a dish you just prepared.
I eat your hair until you agree to no longer talk about vasectomies.
We agree to have children someday, and that they will be beautiful even if they're not.
As I watch your eyes grow heavy like soggy clothes, I tell you When I grow up
I'm going to be a famous writer. When I'm famous I'll sign autographs
on Etch-A-Sketches. I'll write poems about writing other poems,
so other poets will get me. You open your eyes long enough to tell me
that when you grow up, you're going to be a steamboat operator.
Your pores can never be too clean you say.
I say I like your pores just fine. I say Your pores are tops.
I kiss you with my whole mouth, and you fall asleep next to my molars.
In the ~ Gregory Sherl

Here people was once used to be honourable: now they are all bad; they have kept one goodness: that they are greatest boozers. ~ Marco Polo

My heart beats as much as I can breathe. ~ Marco Polo

I'd been reborn since Marlboro Man had entered my life; his wild abandon and unabashed passion had freed me from the shackles of cynicism, from thinking that love had to be something to labor over or agonize about. He'd ridden into my life on a speckled gray horse and had saved my heart from hardness. He'd taught me that when you love someone, you say it--and that when it comes to matters of the heart, games are for pimply sixteen-year-olds.
Up until then that's all I'd been: a child masquerading as a disillusioned adult, looking at love much as I'd looked at a round of Marco Polo in the pool at the country club: when they swam after me, I'd swim away. And there are accusations of peeking and cheating, and you always wind up sunburned and pruney and pooped. And no one ever wins.
It was Marlboro Man who'd helped me out of the pool, wrapped a towel around my blistering shoulders, and carried me to a world where love has nothing to do with competition or sport or strategy. He told me he loved me when he felt like it, when he thought of it. He never saw any reason not to. ~ Ree Drummond

At a young age, when I was fascinated with China, I read 'The Travels of Marco Polo' and learned about this exciting, dramatic world he captured and reported on. He's so little known, but yet this mythology has survived that's so misrepresentative of his story. ~ John Fusco

... Marco's answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan's head. That is to say, between the two of them it did not matter whether questions and solutions were uttered aloud or whether each of the two went on pondering in silence. In fact, they were silent, their eyes half-closed, reclining on cushions, swaying in hammocks, smoking long amber pipes.
Marco Polo imagined answering (or Kublai Khan imagined his answer) that the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there ... ~ Italo Calvino

I feel that Marco Polo has really been misrepresented - has never really gotten his due. ~ John Fusco

In China, we don't know about the swimming pool game, but we know about Marco Polo. ~ Zhu Zhu

Quit playing Marco Polo with my ass, Christopher Columbus. This isn't an exploration, so you aren't putting your ding dong in this donut hole ~ B.B. Reid

I got the feeling: It's time to do a Marco Polo story. I felt like everything was lining up right because long-form television series were becoming to me like the new great American novel. ~ John Fusco

Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa's Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs ~ Karl Wiggins

He was an Italian kid traveling in China, and I'm of Italian decent with a fascination for China. So, I always felt this connection to him and lived vicariously through the travels of Marco Polo. ~ John Fusco

I have not told the half of what I saw. ~ Marco Polo

When people hear the name 'Marco Polo,' they tend to think of a map or explorer. Very few people know the true story of Marco Polo, and it's so much more compelling and exciting than the mythology. ~ John Fusco

The personal appearance of the Great Kaan, Lord of Lords, whose name is Cublay, is such as I shall now tell you. ~ Marco Polo

I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed ~ Marco Polo

The scripts for Marco Polo are absolutely, positively fantastic. The challenge of making that show in China has proved to be as formidable as we feared. It's not like making a movie in China where, once you load up and you leave, you're gone. We have to be able to come back and capture something that's going to feel like a major feature film, on a television budget, and do it, hopefully season after season, so we are taking more time than the producers thought. ~ Chris Albrecht

The journey of Marco Polo is the hero's journey, one that all cultures across the globe can relate to. ~ John Fusco

Marco reported that homeless children [in Kublai Kahn's city of Daidu] were cared for and educated. While he says little about the system of education in China, we know from records of the time that Kublai Khan created thousands of public schools to provide a basic education for all children, including those of poor peasants. Until then, only the wealthy were literate. Kublai's bid at 'universal education' had never been attempted by any country on Earth. In the western world, nearly 500 years would pass before governments began to take responsibility for the public education of all children. ~ Russell Freedman

Tons. Marco Polo, who sailed from China to Persia on his return home, described the Mongol ships as large four-masted junks with up to three hundred crewmen and as many as sixty cabins for merchants carrying various wares. According to Ibn Battuta, some of the ships even carried plants growing in wooden tubs in order to supply fresh food for the sailors. Khubilai Khan promoted the building of ever larger seagoing junks to carry heavy loads of cargo and ports to handle them. They improved the use of the compass in navigation and learned to produce more accurate nautical charts. The route from the port of Zaytun in southern China to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf became the main sea link between the Far East and the Middle East, and was used by both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, among others. ~ Jack Weatherford

The militant Muslim is the person who beheads the infidel, while the moderate Muslim holds the feet of the victim. ~ Marco Polo

You will hear it for yourself, and it will surely fill you with wonder. ~ Marco Polo

My mom didn't teach me about Marco Polo. She didn't teach me about Napoleon. She didn't teach me about any of that. But she did teach me how to survive and to be a good person. And you need to be a strong woman to do that. She's the biggest person in my life. She's my Virgin Maria. That's why I love religion so much. ~ Riccardo Tisci

It always circled back around to Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. That always fascinated me because so few people make the connection between the two. ~ John Fusco

Without stones there is no arch. ~ Marco Polo

Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

We go naked because we want nothing of this world; for we came into the world naked and unclothed. As for not being ashamed to show our members, the fact is that we do no sin with them and therefore have no more shame in them than you have when you show your hand or face or the other parts of your body that do not lead you into carnal sin; whereas you use your members to commit sin and lechery, and so you cover them up and are ashamed of them. But we are no more ashamed of showing them than we are of showing our fingers, because we do not sin with them. ~ Marco Polo

There is still one of which you never speak.'
Marco Polo bowed his head.
'Venice,' the Khan said.
Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?'
The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.'
And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice. ~ Italo Calvino

The map of the world is drawn by travelers and nomads. Built into it are steps, nights and days, stations and encounters. ~ Jasna Horvat

The true sweetness of wine is one flavor ~ Marco Polo

I'm a little like Marco Polo, going around and mixing cultures. ~ Gianni Versace

Marco Polo, who wrote that Mongol couriers could cover 250 or even 300 miles in a single day. Reading historical tales about such exploits, one could be forgiven for imagining the steppe as a single flat grassland through which horsemen moved with a sense of freedom and ease. Here on horseback, though, it was clear the cavalry were negotiating deserts, mountains, rivers, swamps, heat, and frosts, and somehow keeping their horses fed and healthy, even before leaving Mongolia. ~ Tim Cope

If you put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians, - aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot, - would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Kublai, who is Lord of all the Tartars in the world. ~ Marco Polo

When I was in Thailand, I went into the up-country because Marco Polo didn't get down into the flesh pots of Bangkok because they didn't exist in those days. ~ Gary Jennings

Then Marco Polo spoke: Your chessboard, sire, is inlaid with two woods: ebony and maple. The square on which your enlightened gaze is fixed was cut from the ring of a trunk that grew in a year of drought: you see how its fibers are arranged? Here a barely hinted knot can be made out: a bud tried to burgeon on a premature spring day, but the night's frost forced it to desist. ~ Italo Calvino

I have not told half of what I saw. ~ Marco Polo

The current fast food fuss obscures the reality that such foods are ancient. Fried kibbeh, sausages, olives, nuts, small pizzas, and flat breads have been sold on the streets of Middle Eastern and North African cities for a cycle of centuries; Marco Polo reported barbequed meats, deep-fried delicacies, and even roast lamb for sale in Chinese markets. ~ Kenneth F. Kiple

Because it did used to be cool, super-cool, in fact - she was our Magellan, our Marco Polo, one of the wayward Walker women whose restless boundless spirit propels her from place to place, love to love, moment to unpredictable moment. ~ Jandy Nelson

Into these pavilions he admitted the elect, and there, says Marco Polo, gave them to eat a certain herb, which transported them to Paradise, in the midst of ever-blooming shrubs, ever-ripe fruit, and ever-lovely virgins. What these happy persons took for reality was but a dream; but it was a dream so soft, so voluptuous, so enthralling, that they sold themselves body and soul to him who gave it to them, and obedient to his orders as to those of a deity, struck down the designated victim, died in torture without a murmur, believing that the death they underwent was but a quick transition to that life of delights of which the holy herb, now before you, had given them a slight foretaste." "Then," cried Franz, "it is hashish! I know that - by name at least. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he's just a fresh face on a Taliban creed - the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs. ~ Maureen Dowd

I respect the rights of those who do not share my beliefs, but to teach my faith to my children and to share it with anyone who will listen - that is my right, too. ~ Marco Rubio

We're also optimistic about the future, but only if we do a few things.And that's a big difference in this campaign between Donald Trump's campaign and mine. And I think that's going to begin to matter a lot more now because there are less people in the race and more time to pay attention to some of that. ~ Marco Rubio

I am not doctor who and I can't turn back time. I once said the audience was all punks and little girls, now they are old punks and old little girls. I don't mind the fans being maturer, if there are younger fans that's good too. ~ Marco Pirroni

I've always been interested with the idea of technology and the way technology affects our ability to communicate - our ability to have a rewarding experience with technology versus a kind of dehumanizing experience with technology. ~ Marco Brambilla

That may not be a majority position in my party, but that's down the road. You can't even begin that process until you prove to people - not just pass a law that says you're gonna bring illegal immigration under control. You're gonna have to do it and prove to people that it's working. ~ Marco Rubio

[Donald Trump] hedging his bets because he's used to buying politicians. ~ Marco Rubio

I think we need to simplify our tax code, but not as a way of generating revenue, as a way of making our tax code more growth- friendly. ~ Marco Rubio

Under this president, we have a government that has grown too big, too costly and now even more overbearing by forcing religious entities to abandon their beliefs. ~ Marco Rubio

I challenge the Republican nominees and all Republicans to not just be the anti-illegal immigration party. That's not who we are and that's not who we should be we should be the pro-legal immigration party. ~ Marco Rubio

The firing pattern of both mirror and canonical neurons in area F5 shows clearly that perception and action are not separated in the brain. They are simply two sides of the same coin, inextricably linked to each other. Some ~ Marco Iacoboni

But while I'm realistic about our challenges, I'm optimistic about our future. There are a few things, and if we do them, we're going to have the greatest era in our history. And I have detailed what those things are specifically. ~ Marco Rubio

Magicians are typically introverted; they don't tend to work with others, but I work with software programmers, composers, designers, so it's a very diverse group and the result is always more interesting than something I could have done by myself. ~ Marco Tempest

Regulation is necessary to protect our natural environment, keep our food and medicine safe, and ensure fair competition and fair treatment of our workers. ~ Marco Rubio

The science is settled; it's not even a consensus, it is a unanimity that human life begins at conception. ~ Marco Rubio

When you talk about entitlement programs, it's not just about - it's not about cutting those programs. It is about saving those programs. Those programs are on a path of fiscal unsustainability. ~ Marco Rubio

It wouldn't be bad to have the Secret Service keeping an eye on my teenage daughter. I personally am not troubled by the fact that there would be a couple of big guys with earpieces beside her, just in case. ~ Marco Rubio

And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. ~ Marco Rubio

We need to repeal and replace Dodd-Frank. We need to make America fair again for all businesses, but especially those being run by small business owners. ~ Marco Rubio

Degeneracy is the only freedom fascism allows. ~ Marco Vassi

I think, again, on issues of energy, how are we going to fully utilize our energy resources in this country? What is the role of the federal government in higher education? What kind of justices would you appoint to the Supreme Court, not just because we have a vacancy now, but at least one or two potentially in the next four to eight years? ~ Marco Rubio

I'm so proud of the time I put in the pool, so proud of the people I met along way, just to be asked to do this was exciting for me. I love it when I run into people who remember me from playing water polo as opposed to what I do now, which is an actor. It's rare that anyone remembers me but it's fun when I run into guys that played water polo who, we can speak in terms of water polo and what it was like and how we played, it's the great camaraderie. I was so excited to be asked to be part of this because I'm proud of it. I'm more proud of this probably than I am my professional career. ~ Ted McGinley

When was the last time you heard news accounts of a boatload of American refugees arrive on the shores of another country? ~ Marco Rubio

The Hispanic community understands the American Dream and have not forgotten what they were promised - that in the U.S., a free market system, allows us all to succeed economically, achieve stability and security for your family and leave your children better off than yourselves. ~ Marco Rubio

Someone stop them!" I yell.

No one does.

I think about Porter surrounded by people that horrible day on the beach years ago, when no one would help him save his dad from the shark. If strangers won't help when someone is dying, they're definitely not going to stop two kids from running out of a museum.

Pulse swishing in my temples, I race around the information booth, pumping my arms, and watch them split up again. Polo is heading for the easy way out: the main exit, where there's (1) only a set of doors to go through, and (2) Hector, the laziest employee on staff.

But Backpack is headed for the ticketing booth and the connecting turnstiles. Freddy should be there, but no one's entering the museum, so he's instead chatting it up with Hector. The turnstiles are unmanned.

Like a pro hustler who's never paid a subway fare, Backpack hurdles over the turnstiles in one leap. Impressive. Or it would have been, had his backpack not slipped off his shoulder and the strap not caught on one of the turnstile arms. While he struggles to free it, I take the easier route and make for the wheelchair access gate.

I unhitch the latch.

He frees the strap.

I slip through the gate, and just as he's turning to run, I lurch forward and -

I jump on his back.

We hit the ground together. The air whooshes out of my lungs and my knee slams into tile. He cries out. I don't.

I freaking ~ Jenn Bennett

The blue whale was so magnificent and her song so beautiful, that Becca's heart swelled. She felt Marco's hand tighten on hers and knew he felt the same way. She turned to him, but Marco wasn't looking at the whale anymore, he was looking at her. He was still holding her hand and was floating close to her now. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

The fact of the matter is that within a couple of weeks all of this will seem quite normal. That's when you know you've really got a problem. But I've found a solution, something that can make all of the weirdness worth putting up with, something I call . . . senior boys' water polo practice. Every Wednesday night – bring refreshments. ~ Mark Walden

We need to put people on the bench that understand the Constitution is not a living and breathing document. It is to be interpreted as originally meant. ~ Marco Rubio

I think there are many in the Democratic Party that want immigration to be unsolved issue at least for the time being, because it's more useful as a campaign issue than it is as a solved issue. ~ Marco Rubio

All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)'. Flowers in your hair? Do me a f**king favour.
[...]
Who gave a dog's arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway? The only flowers anyone saw in Aston were the ones they threw in the hole after you when you croaked it at the age of fifty-three 'cos you'd worked yourself to death.
I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.
Really hated them. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Think you can maybe not die for five minutes?"
"I'll try,"I told him seriously.
"You know, if anyone else said that, it would be funny. ~ Karen Chance

I have never voted for a tax increase. ~ Marco Rubio

I have been an underdog my whole life, both in life and in politics. We're going to do well. We're going to pick up a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday. ~ Marco Rubio

The air strikes are important [to fight ISIS], but we need to have an air force capable of it. And because of the budget cuts we are facing in this country, we are going to be left with the oldest and the smallest Air Force we have ever had. We have to reverse those cuts, in addition to the cuts to our Navy and in addition to the cuts to our Army, as well. ~ Marco Rubio

authentic curses, which means "misfortune caused by the intervention of the devil. ~ Marco Tosatti

It's important to be qualified, but if election 2016 is a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton's gonna be the next president, because she's been in office and in government longer than anybody else. ~ Marco Rubio

Her mind wandered a little bit during the slow moments. Human violence as a kind of fractal - self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shoving and shoving back, neither side sure they wanted to escalate and uncertain how to back down. All of that was the history of the inner planets and the Belt since the beginning. Then Marco had thrown his sucker punch and sent the system reeling back. Since then, feints and evaluations, flurries of violence that weren't meant to end anything so much as find position, test the opponent. Everything ~ James S.A. Corey

This country is facing an economy that has been radically transformed.And these changes have been disruptive. They have changed people's lives. The jobs that once sustained our middle class, they either don't pay enough or they are gone, and we need someone that understands that as our nominee. ~ Marco Rubio

The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for President, but they didn't. I think Mitt Romney would be a fine President, and he'd be way better than the guy who's there right now. ~ Marco Rubio

Charge for something and make more than you spend. ~ Marco Arment

You know what the fastest growing religion in America is? Statism. The growing reliance on government. ~ Marco Rubio

The American people don't trust the Federal Government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control. And we can do that. We know what it takes to do that. ~ Marco Rubio

Marco [Rubio] now is attached to that establishment. I don't see his future, not in this particular cycle. ~ Rush Limbaugh

You can't carpet bomb ISIS if you don't have planes and bombs to attack them with. And if we continue those cuts that we're doing , not to mention additional cuts, we are going to be left with the oldest and the smallest Air Force this country has ever had, and that leaves us less safe. ~ Marco Rubio

Larry had brought me blue jeans, a red polo shirt, jogging socks, my white Nikes, an extra cross from my suitcase, the silver knives, the Firestar complete with inner pants holster, and the Browning and its shoulder holster. He'd forgotten a bra, but hey, except for that it was perfect. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

And I think for some - not all - but for some Democrats, the issue of immigration is better politically if they just leave it the way it is now because they can use it against Republicans. ~ Marco Rubio