veil quotes

   Jesus, whenhehad cried againwith a loud voice, yielded up theghost. And behold, the veil of thetemple wasrent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 27:50^2.

And thesunwasdarkened, andtheveilofthetemplewas rent in the midst.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Luke 23:45.

And every warrior that is rapt with love Of fame, of valour, and of victory, Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits: I thus conceiving and subduing both, That which hath stopped the tempest of the gods, Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds'flames, And march in cottages of strowe'  d weeds, Shall give the world to note, for all my birth, That virtue solely is the sum of glory, And fashions men with true nobility.

- Christopher Marlowe
  Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 5, sc.1.

It was as if a veil had been torn suddenly away; I had understood, I had grasped what painting could be.

- Claude Monet
After painting with the artist Boudin in the open air. Quoted in J Isaacson Claude Monet (1978).

Iguess I'mjust anoldmad scientist at bottom.Givemean underground laboratory, half a dozen atomsmashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.

- S(ydney) J(oseph) Perelman
  Crazy Like a Fox,'Captain Future, BlockThat Kick'.

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
'TheWaning Moon' (published1824).

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

- E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
  One Man's Meat,'Poetry'.

   Even forms and substances are circumfused By that transparent veil with light divine, And, through the turnings intricate of verse, Present themselves as objects recognised, In flashes, and with glory not their own.

-William Wordsworth
^1805  The Prelude, bk.5, l.601^5 (published1850).