Parthenon Marbles Quotes

Across the distance, the Acropolis museum cradled within its protective walls its legendary treasures, lulling them to a peaceful sleep under the eerie light from the heavens. Yet, through the large window, the five Caryatids stood alert on their strong platform. The ageless maidens with the long braided hair down their backs remained awake even at this hour gazing across to the Acropolis, full of nostalgia for their sacred home. Inside their marble chests, they nurtured as always, precious hope for the return of their long lost sister. ~ Effrosyni Moschoudi

You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness. ~ Melina Mercouri

We believe in marbles that disintegrate when we search for them but that are as real as any genuine marble when we're not looking for them. Our very nature is such as to prevent us from fully understanding its very nature. Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems - vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful. [...] What one gives up on is a childlike sense that things are exactly as they appear, and that our solid-seeming, marble-like "I" is the realest thing in the world; what one acquires is an appreciation of how tenuous we are at our cores, and how wildly different we are from what we seem to be. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

There didn't seem to be any difference at all between LOSING YOUR MARBLES and HAVING A BREAKDOWN, and whether you called it a BUGHOUSE or a SANNY-TARIUM, there were still bars on the windows and they wouldn't let you out if you wanted to go. ~ Stephen King

I left them to it, the pointing of fingers on maps, the tracing of mountain villages, the tracks and contours on maps of larger scale, and basked for the one evening allowed to me in the casual, happy atmosphere of the taverna where we dined. I enjoyed poking my finger in a pan and choosing my own piece of lamb. I liked the chatter and the laughter from neighbouring tables. The gay intensity of talk - none of which I could understand, naturally - reminded me of left-bank Paris. A man from one table would suddenly rise to his feet and stroll over to another, discussion would follow, argument at heat perhaps swiftly dissolving into laughter. This, I thought to myself, has been happening through the centuries under this same sky, in the warm air with a bite to it, the sap drink pungent as the sap running through the veins of these Greeks, witty and cynical as Aristophanes himself, in the shadow, unmoved, inviolate, of Athene's Parthenon. ("The Chamois") ~ Daphne Du Maurier

You can always care [about what others think]. You probably always will care. But don't let it dictate your choices and what you want and what you want to accomplish and who you want to be. Don't let anyone get in the way of that. That's being yourself. ~ Jenna Marbles

Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults
cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes. ~ Lauren Oliver

If you can't move your brush good, just move your face. ~ Jenna Marbles

Life is short but also like terribly and insufferably long at the same time. ~ Jenna Marbles

Digital media are biased toward replication and storage. Our digital photos practically upload and post themselves on Facebook, and our most deleted e-mails tend to resurface when we least expect it. Yes, everything you do in the digital realm may as well be broadcast on prime-time television and chiseled on the side of the Parthenon. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Do glassmakers not have the ability to knead their own agates, marbles and rock crystals? ~ Emile Galle

You are the most rare & majestic you there ever was and ever will be. ~ Jenna Marbles

Who is that blond child laughing as he runs after his colored marbles? [my marbles]
It's me
And who is the poet writing this poem?
That blond child who laughed as he ran after his colored marbles ~ Pierre Albert-Birot

All the men added together made the solid world
they were the marbles in the jar, and women were whatever sand or water or air claimed the space left between them. That's how I saw things as a young woman, that was my women's studies. Now I've come to know that women are like vodka poured over men, who melt away like ice cubes. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

Before I go to work, I like to pump myself up by crying over my master's degree. ~ Jenna Marbles

Sometimes I like to think it would be nice if you just had a character, and your personal life was your personal life. My life is definitely out there, you know? ~ Jenna Marbles

The self-aggrandizing and widespread assumption that we humans have the full complement of all of the emotions possible to all animals on Earth–basically, that all the marbles belong to us–is not only unscientific but also childish. Do we know how it feel is sail on an updraft in the sky, to echolocate our dinner in the dark, or to see at lightning speed with a compound eye? Fortunately, human understanding is maturing, and we are learning that animals are emotional, thinking, and self-aware beings relative to the niche that they were born to occupy. ~ Else Poulsen

Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we'd live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts - our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles - I believed her. ~ Jessica Taylor

When I was a kid, I used to play marbles. I know some of you think I've lost mine. ~ Jimy Williams

This is it. It's for all the marbles. I'm sitting in the house loading up the pump, I'm loading up the Uzis, I've got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I'm ready for war. ~ Kevin Garnett

Why?' He kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, its tone as pure as marbles swirled around a crystal pail. Why him wun up the tree? Why him nest up theah? Why him gadder nuts? Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward universal knowledge. ~ Ben Fountain

In 2009, novelty toymaker Maxfield & Oberton released Buckyballs, sets of curiously powerful magnetic marbles that became the most popular cubicle toy since the Rubik's Cube, selling more than 2 million units in 15 countries. ~ David Sax

The falling apart of a man's life should make more noise. It should startle passesrby with its Sturm and Drang. It ought to sound like the Parthenon crashing down. Not this ordinary, everyday kind of quiet ... He closed his eyes ... And still it was quiet, this falling apart of his life, as silent as the last beat of an old man's heart. A quiet, echoing thud, and then ... nothing. ~ Kristin Hannah

Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important. ~ Sara Gruen

Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger? It's not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday ... If you work, you're surrounded by young people who are plugged into the marketplace, the demographic, the zeitgeist; they want your job and someday they're going to get it. ~ Nora Ephron

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

Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves. ~ Pablo Picasso

Don't ever, ever, ever give up, because you're here for a reason, even if it's just to laugh at cats on the internet. ~ Jenna Marbles

If the plural for marble, marbles, is slang for sanity, then what does it mean to get lost in a room of marble statues? ~ Bridgette Bates

Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays. ~ Mark Twain

To this point, he could not really have said that he loved William. Feel the terror of responsibility for him, yes. Carry thought of him like a gem in his pocket, certainly, reaching now and then to touch it, marveling. But now he felt the perfection of the tiny bones of William's spine through his clothes, smooth as marbles under his fingers, smelled the scent of him, rich with the incense of innocence and the faint tang of shit and clean linen. And thought his heart would break with love. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Renee: "The Greek government doesn't know that I found anything that day in the temple. And they for sure wouldn't want to know about the little mess I left behind." She grimaced.

Trout: "Little mess? You started a freakin' cave in, you moron. Nice work by the way. Way to keep up international relations. 'Uh, yeah, hi, I'm Renée, I'm an American. I'm here to, you know, like, drink all your wine, trash the joint, steal all your valuable shit and then bolt the country.' Why didn't you just drop your shorts and pee in the Parthenon? ~ John C. Stipa

Stop thief! Stop thief!' There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound. ~ Charles Dickens

Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

What if there were no grownups? Suppose the whole idea of grownups was an illusion? What if their money was really just playground marbles, their business deals no more than baseball-card trades, their wars only games of guns in the park? What if they were all still snotty-nosed kids inside their suits and dresses? Christ, that couldn't be, could it? It was too horrible to think about. ~ Stephen King

I'm not an actor. ~ Jenna Marbles

So you don't have time for concealer, you have time for powder for when you start crying later about how some boy doesn't like you. ~ Jenna Marbles

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee. ~ Peter Kreeft

It was a long head.

It was a wedge, a sliver, a grotesque slice in which it seemed the features had been forced to stake their claims, and it appeared that they had done so in a great hurry and with no attempt to form any kind of symmetrical pattern for their mutual advantage. The nose had evidently been first upon the scene and had spread itself down the entire length of the wedge, beginning among the grey stubble of the hair and ending among the grey stubble of the beard, and spreading on both sides with a ruthless disregard for the eyes and mouth which found precarious purchase. The mouth was forced by the lie of the terrain left to it, to slant at an angle which gave to its right-hand side an expression of grim amusement and to its left, which dipped downwards across the chin, a remorseless twist. It was forced by not only the unfriendly monopoly of the nose, but also by the tapering character of the head to be a short mouth; but it obvious by its very nature that, under normal conditions, it would have covered twice the area. The eyes in whose expression might be read the unending grudge they bore against the nose were as small as marbles and peered out between the grey grass of the hair.
This head, set at a long incline upon a neck as wry as a turtle's cut across the narrow vertical black strip of the window.
Steerpike watched it turn upon the neck slowly. It would not have surprised him if it had dropped off, so toylike was its angle.
As he wa ~ Mervyn Peake

Fortunately, when we have all our marbles, we can shift our memories very quickly. ~ Michelle Stuart

How some pre-teens lose their minds for boy bands, rock stars, and hot celebrities, I always lost my marbles for Beau. It all started when he climbed a tree to save my cat. I was eight. He was ten. He'd kissed me on the cheek. He'd wiped my tears. He'd held my hand. He'd hugged me close. He was my hero. He'd saved my cat. ~ Penny Reid

As weird and awful and terrible as it may seem to be yourself sometimes, it will always reward you. ~ Jenna Marbles

Here's a helpful life tip. Stand by things that are white cuz it makes you look less white. ~ Jenna Marbles

The shrinkadinks think I have a screw loose. Ain't playing with a full deck. Whacked-out wiring. Missing marbles." - Dear Life, You Suck ~ Blagden Scott

A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates rail; the others may play marbles. ~ Stephen Crane