The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot Quotes

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, "God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good" ... She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me ... I threw away gold. That's a fact. That's a natural fact. ~ Stephen Adly Guirgis

When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models.

One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face.

Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural.

After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches.

The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features.

When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said:

'I've seen that picture before!'


'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo.

'Three year ~ Paulo Coelho

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon. ~ Lewis Buzbee

Her skin is cold, and clammy; her eyes are the color of sky, on the grey, wet days that leach the world of color and meaning; her voice is little more than a whisper; and while she has no odor, her shadow smells mucky, and pungent, like the skin of a snake. Many years gone, a sect in what is now Afghanistan declared her a goddess, and proclaimed all empty rooms her sacred places. The sect, whose members called themselves The Unforgiven, persisted for two years, until its last adherent finally killed himself, having survived the other members by almost seven months. Despair says little, and is patient. ~ Neil Gaiman

When he was finished, he set his plate down, looked at me, and raised an eyebrow.
I leaned forward and whispered angrily, "I am not going to sit on your lap, so don't get your hopes up, Mister."
He still waited until I picked up a fork and took a few bites. I speared a bite of macadamia nut crusted ruby snapper and said, "Whew. Time's up. Isn't it? The clock is ticking. You must be sweating it, huh? I mean, you could turn any second."
He just took a bite of curried lamb and then some saffron rice and sat there chewing as cool as a cucumber.
I watched him closely for a full two minutes and then folded up my napkin.
"Okay, I give. Why are you acting so smug and confident? When are you going to tell me what's going on?"
He wiped his mouth carefully and took a sip of water. "What's going on, my prema, is that the curse has been lifted."
My mouth dropped open. "What? If it was lifted, why were you a tiger for the last two days?"
"Well, to be clear, the curse is not completely gone. I seem to have been granted a partial removal of the curse."
"Partial? Partial meaning what, exactly?"
"Partial, meaning a certain number of hours per day. Six hours to be exact."
I recited the prophecy in my mind and remembered that there were four sides to the monolith, and four times six was…"Twenty-four."
He paused. "Twenty-four what?"
"Well, six hours makes sense because there are four gifts to obtain for Durga and four sides of the m ~ Colleen Houck

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors underground,
Far now from all the bannered ways
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade--as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done. ~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

If I no longer love Diana,' he wrote, 'what shall I do?' What could he do, with his mainspring, his prime mover gone? He had known that he would love her for ever - to the last syllable of recorded time. He had not sworn it, any more than he had sworn that the sun would rise every morning: it was too certain, too evident: no one swears that he will continue to breathe nor that twice two is four. Indeed, in such a case an oath would imply the possibility of doubt. Yet now it seemed that perpetuity meant eight years, nine months and some odd days, while the last syllable of recorded time was Wednesday, the seventeenth of May. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. ~ Ishmael Beah

As I hurried along I was thinking how great it was to earn real money I don't have to ask my parents for. At last! I've worked out that I could probably handle as many as four dogs at a time. If I take them out just on school days I could earn 200 euros a week for five hours' work and have the weekends free to shop and spend it. It's going to be brilliant.I should have asked Stephanie what kind of dog it was. I eyeballed a Great Dane warily, my face about level with its. Bloody hell it was huge. Size of a pony. Wasn't sure whether I was expected to walk it or stick a saddle on its back and ride the thing. ~ Liz Rettig

MAULANA'S LAST LETTER TO SHAMS

Sometimes I wonder, sweetest love, if you
Were a mere dream in along winter night,
A dream of spring-days, and of golden light
Which sheds its rays upon a frozen heart;
A dream of wine that fills the drunken eye.

And so I wonder, sweetest love, if I
Should drink this ruby wine, or rather weep;
Each tear a bezel with your face engraved,
A rosary to memorize your name...

There are so many ways to call you back-
Yes, even if you only were a dream. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius. ~ Graham Moore

My seams gape wide so I'm tossed aside
To rot on a lonely shore,
While the leaves and mould like a shroud unfold,
For the last of my trails are o'er,
But I float in dreams on Northland streams
That never again I'll see,
As I lie on the marge of the old portage
With grief for company.

When the sunset gilds the timbered hills
That guard Timagami,
And the moon beams play on far James Bay
By the brink of the frozen sea,
In phantom guise my spirit flies
As the dream blades dip and swing
Where the waters flow from the Long Ago
In the spell of the beck'ning spring.

Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal
When the first frost bites the air,
And the mists unfold from the red and gold
That the autumn ridges wear?
When the white falls roar as they did of yore
On the Lady Evelyn,
Do the square-tail leap from the black pool deep
Where the pictured rocks begin?

Oh! the fur fleet sings on Temiscaming
As the ashen paddles bend,
And the crews carouse at Rupert's House
At the sullen winter's end;
But my days are done where the lean wolves run,
And I ripple no more the path,
Where the grey geese race 'cross the red moon's face
From the white winds Arctic wrath.

Tho' the death-fraught way from the Saguenay
To the storied Nipigon,
Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell
I watch as the y ~ George Marsh

August was nearly over - the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children. The days were not hot, but sunny and limpidly clear - the first sign of advancing autumn. ~ Victor Nekrasov

In the last few days, I have been the victim of a campaign of slander and shameful lies, a campaign which has deeply shocked and hurt me. Enough is enough. ~ Dominique De Villepin

And finally it seemed autumn had realized it was September. The last lingering days of summer had been pushed off stage and in the hidden garden long shadows stretched towards winter. The ground was littered with spent leaves, orange and pale green, and chestnuts on spiky coats sat proudly on the fingertips of cold branches. ~ Kate Morton

So, in a curious lurid calm which could not last and yet, it seemed, could not end, the days went by. ~ Iris Murdoch

In this way they went on, and on, and on-in the language of the story-books-until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that solemn ground. ~ Charles Dickens

Last night felt good." He chuckled. "Not watching you jerk off, though that was fucking hot, but before that, when you were sleeping between me and Boris. I liked that."
A knot formed in Hans's chest, making it difficult to speak.
"So did Boris," Thomas insisted. "I know he did. Then he started worrying about you getting between me and him. He did what he did because he needed to prove I still belonged to him."
"I already fucking know that!" Hans snapped. He lowered his voice. "I know you have your special things I can't be a part of, like speaking to each other in Russian, and kissing and hugging, and all the things I wish I could do with you…." He stopped himself. He was overstepping again. "I shouldn't have said that. I've only known you guys for like two months. But I like being here. I'm lucky you haven't fired me for what I did last night, considering how much it upset Boris."
He tried to turn pull away, embarrassed, but Thomas wouldn't let go. "Boris and I have things that tie us together - things that do make me his - but despite all that, I think we both want to build something with you too."
Hans huffed out a breath. "I'm not sure how I feel about him now."
"Like I said, there will be bad days. He can't help it, other than to keep taking his meds and going to therapy. He's so much better than he was, when I met him in Russia. You have no idea!"
Hans settled into the embrace, reveling in the feel of Thomas's warm, soft skin. ~ Jamie Fessenden

You sometimes hear people say, with a certain pride in their clerical resistance to the myth, that the nineteenth century really ended not in 1900 but in 1914. But there are different ways of measuring an epoch. 1914 has obvious qualifications; but if you wanted to defend the neater, more mythical date, you could do very well. In 1900 Nietzsche died; Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams; 1900 was the date of Husserl Logic, and of Russell's Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. With an exquisite sense of timing Planck published his quantum hypothesis in the very last days of the century, December 1900. Thus, within a few months, were published works which transformed or transvalued spirituality, the relation of language to knowing, and the very locus of human uncertainty, henceforth to be thought of not as an imperfection of the human apparatus but part of the nature of things, a condition of what we may know. 1900, like 1400 and 1600 and 1000, has the look of a year that ends a saeculum. The mood of fin de siècle is confronted by a harsh historical finis saeculi. There is something satisfying about it, some confirmation of the rightness of the patterns we impose. But as Focillon observed, the anxiety reflected by the fin de siècle is perpetual, and people don't wait for centuries to end before they express it. Any date can be justified on some calculation or other.

And of course we have it now, the sense of an ending. It has not diminished, and ~ Frank Kermode

It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.'
'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.'
'What gives her that curious idea?'
'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.'
'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?'
'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.'
'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.'
'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last ~ Julien Duvivier

There are times in your life when things line up and Fate takes a hand in your future," Ptolemy remembered Coydog saying. "When that happens, you got to move quick and take advantage of the sitchiation or you'll never know what might have been."
"How do I know when it's time to move quick?" L'il Pea asked.
"When somethin' big happens and then somethin' else come up. ~ Walter Mosley

To those of us gathered here today, Matthew Connell filled a number of different roles in our lives. Matthew was a son, a brother, a father and a friend. Matthew's last days in his young life were bleak, suffering ones. Yet, we must remember the real Matthew, the loving young man who had a great lust for life. A keen musician, Matthew loved to entertain friends with his guitar playing...
Renton could not make eye contact with Spud, standing next to him in the pew, as nervous laughter gripped him. Matty was the shitest guitarest he'd known, and could only play the Doors' 'Roadhouse Blues' and a few Clash and Status Quo numbers with any sort of proficiency. He tried hard to do the riff from 'Clash City Rockers', but could never quite master it. Nonetheless, Matty loved that Fender Strat. It was the last thing he sold, holding onto it after the amplifier had been flogged off in order to fill his veins with shite. Perr Matty, Renton thought. How well did any of us really know him? How well can anybody really know anybody else? ~ Irvine Welsh

It was like an invisible fire that we could feel, that had been trying to pierce through our mutual darkness. It struck me that each of us is a darkness for the other. Three days or three years don't make a difference unless we can catch hold of a burning moment in the darkness, knowing full well that it won't last and after it is extinguished we will slide back into our own chilling solitude. ~ Nirmal Verma

What do you suppose it means?' he asked. ' "Do what you wish." That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?
All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed.
'No,' he said in his deep rumbling voice. 'It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.' ... 'It's your own deepest secret and you don't know it.'
'How can I find out?'
'By going the way of your wishes, fro one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.'
'That doesn't sound so hard,' said Bastian.
'It is the most dangerous of all journeys.'
'Why? Bastian asked. 'I'm not afraid.'
'That isn't it,' Grograman rumbled. 'It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.'
'Do you mean because our wishes aren't always good?' Bastian asked.
The lion lashed the sand he was lying on with his tail. His ears lay flat, he screwed up his nose, and his eyes flashed fire. Involuntarily Bastian ducked when Grograman's voice once again made the earth tremble: 'What do you know about wishes? How would you know what's good and what isn't?' In the days that followed Bastian thought a good deal about what the Many-Colored Death had said. There are some things, however, that we cannot fathom by thinking about them, but only by experience. ~ Michael Ende

Of the twelve, the most powerful questions (to employees, guaging their satisfaction with their employers) are those witha combination of the strongest links to the most business outcomes (to include profitability). Armed with this perspective, we now know that the following six ar ethe most powerful questions:
1) Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3) Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4) In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6) Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
As a manager, if you want to know what you should do to build a strong and productive workplace, securing 5s to these six questions would be an excellent place to start. ~ Marcus Buckingham

I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. ~ Steve Jobs

There are no words, not in English, Spanish, Arabic, or Hebrew, that have been invented to explain what it's like to lose a child. The nightmarish heartache of it. The unexplainable trepidation that follows. No mother loses a child without believing she failed as a parent. No father loses a child without believing he failed to protect his family from pain. The child may be gone, but the yearsthe child were meant to live remain behind, solid in the mind like an aging ghost. The birthdays, the holidays, the last days of school - they all remain, circled in red lipstick on a calendar nailed to the wall. A constant shadow that grows, even in the dark. As I was saying…there are no words. ~ D.E. Eliot

Dreams rise in the darkness and catch fire from the mirage of moving light. What happens on the screen isn't quite real; it leaves open a vague cloudy space for the poor, for dreams and the dead. Hurry hurry, cream yourself full of dreams to carry you through the life that's waiting for you outside, when you leave here, to help you last a few days more in that nightmare of things and people. Among the dreams, choose the ones most likely to warm your soul. I have to confess that I picked the sexy ones. No point in being proud; when it comes to miracles, take the ones that will stay with you. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Are you hurt? He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"No, miss, just my pride." He cast her a rueful smile. "Don't fret yourself over it. I'm fine."
It was only when he caught Captain Horn's assessing glance that he realized he was behaving more like a servant than a fiancé. As he slid his hand around Miss Willis's waist, ignoring her startled expression, he noticed that the pirate watched them with interest.
"Such a touching scene."
Captain Horn's face wore a look of suspicion and muted anger. "And to think I never guessed until now the grand passion going on beneath my very nose."
"Like Miss Willis said, she chose me." Peter thrust out his chest, affecting a protective stance . . . a little too late unfortunately. "She probably told you that she and I became friendly on the Chastity" It was the story both he and Miss Willis had agreed upon last night, though they knew some would find it less than convincing.
Apparently the captain was one of them. "She did claim something like that."
Claim. Clearly the man didn't believe either one of them.
Then the scourge of the seas cast a low, lascivious, glance over Miss Willis, making her tremble beneath Petey's arm. "She and I have also become quite 'friendly' in the past two days. Haven't we, Sara?"
Petey turned to her, surprised to find her blushing furiously. She cast a guilty look, then lowered her gaze to her hands. "I-I don't know what you're t-talking about."
"Of course not," the captai ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Jessabelle,
I'm sorry to just leave, but I need some time.
Time to get my head back on straight.
Time to remember who I really am.
Time with my Creator, the one who knew before the foundations of the earth what would happen over the last few days.

I wish more than anything, that I could process all of this with you, go through all of this together, because I'm coming to understand that, out of all the men in the world, God picked me for you. It's so much more than lineage. It's you. How you've come into your own. How you've blossomed and grown. I'm so privileged to see that secret side of you-the side no one else gets to see. The side where you secretly paint your second toenail a different color because everyone else does the fourth one, but you're not sure my mother would approve so you never wear open-toed shoes to show them off. You only eat M&Ms in odd numbers. You use your right hand to put hair behind your ear, but never your left.
You didn't know I knew those things, did you?
I've watched you over the last few months and learned more about you than I realized until I tried to put my thoughts on paper. You're sleeping just feet away from me as I write this. Your even breathing brings some peace to my troubled soul. The small smile on your face makes me wonder what your dreaming about and if, in your sleep, you've managed to find happiness instead of the turmoil life always seems to bring. I have to stop myself ~ Carol Moncado

The Africans and the underdeveloped peoples, contrary to what is commonly believed, are quick to build a social and political consciousness. The danger is that very often they reach the stage of social consciousness before reaching the national phase. In this case the underdeveloped countries' violent calls for social justice are combined, paradoxically enough, with an often primitive tribalism. The underdeveloped peoples behave like a starving population - which means that the days of those who treat Africa as their playground are strictly numbered. In other words, their power cannot last forever. A bourgeoisie that has only nationalism to feed the people fails in its mission and inevitably gets tangled up in a series of trials and tribulations. If nationalism is not explained, enriched, and deepened, if it does not very quickly turn into a social and political consciousness, into humanism, then it leads to a dead end. A bourgeois leadership of the underdeveloped countries confines the national consciousness to a sterile formalism. Only the massive commitment by men and women to judicious and productive tasks gives form and substance to this consciousness. ~ Frantz Fanon

A few seconds more and the Negress will sing. It seems inevitable, so strong is the necessity of this music: nothing can interrupt it, nothing which comes from this time in which the world has fallen; it will stop by itself, as if by order. If I love this beautiful voice it is especially because of that: it is neither for its fulness nor its sadness, rather because it is the event for which so many notes have been preparing, from so far away, dying that it might be born. And yet I am troubled; it would take so little to make the record stop: a broken spring, the whim of Cousin Adolphe. How strange it is, how moving, that this hardness should be so fragile. Nothing can interrupt it yet it can break it.
The last chord has died away. In the brief silence which follows I feel strongly that there is, that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED.
Silence.
SOME OF THESE DAYS
YOU'LL MISS ME HONEY ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in. a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people's relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain. At the very least. you have asked questions that expose to the destroying air fibers that can only exist and fulfill their function in coddling darkness. Cousin Amy, now, mousing about in back passages or trilling with feverish shyness at sherry parties - was she really made all the way through of dust and fluff and unused ends of cotton and rusty needles and unmatching buttons and all the detritus at the bottom of God's sewing basket? Or did He put a machine in there to tick away and keep her will stern and her back straight as she picks out of a vase of brown-at-the-edges dahlias the few blooms that have another day's life in them? Or another machine, one of His chemistry sets, that slowly mixes itself into an apparently uncaused explosion, poof!, and there the survivors are sitting covered with plaster dust among the rubble of their lives. It's always been the explosion by the time the police come stamping in with ignorant heels on the last unbroken bit of Bristol glass; with luck they can trace the explosion back to harmless little Amy, but as to what set her off - what were the ingredients of the chemistry set and what joggled them together - it was ~ Peter Dickinson

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the eyeballs like everyone else and rushed for time, toward what end no one asked. Their cupidity and self-love were no worse than anyone else's, but their many experiences' having taught them so little irked Lou. One hated tourists, another southerners; another despised immigrants. Even dying, they still held themselves in highest regard. Lou would have to watch herself. For this way of thinking began to look like human nature
as if each person of two or three billion would spend his last vital drop to sustain his self-importance. ~ Annie Dillard

It has been said by a distinguished philosopher that England is "usually the last to enter into the general movement of the European mind." The author of the remark probably meant to assert that a man or a system may have become famous on the continent, while we are almost ignorant of the name of the man and the claims of his system. Perhaps, however, a wider range might be given to the assertion. An exploded theory or a disadvantageous practice, like a rebel or a patriot in distress, seeks refuge on our shores to spend its last days in comfort if not in splendour. ~ Isaac Todhunter