Stirred Quotes
More Stirred Quotes
The populace is like the sea, motionless in itself, but stirred by every wind, even the lightest breeze.
— Book XXVIII, sec. 27 (History of Rome)
This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools To send the Pequod packing off to hell
— 1950 'The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket', pt.4. The Pequod was the ship that sailed after Moby Dick in Melville's novel.
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. Theserough notes andourdead bodiesmusttell thetale.
Robert Falcon Scott— 1912 Message to the public. Quoted in TheTimes,11 Feb1913.
All night has the casement jessamine stirred To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon.
Tennyson— 1855 Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza 3, l.864-7.
Somewhere beneath her hurried curse,A corpse lies bounding in a hearse;And friends and relatives disperse,And are not stirred.
Djuna Barnes— From Third Avenue On
The pure, the beautiful, the bright,That stirred our hearts in youth,The impulse to a wordless prayer,The dreams of love and truth,The longings after something lost,The spirit’s yearning cry,The strivings after better hopes,—These things can never die.
sarah doudney— Poem: Things that never die, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
”And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini — with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka.”
ian fleming— James Bond
Probably none of the Weagles gave five minutes' thought a year to theology or ecclesiology, except Ora, who occasionally stirred up a lot of interesting family irritation by announcing that he was going to become a Catholic, an Episcopalian, a Buddhist, or a Seventh Day Adventist.
sinclair lewis— Work of Art (1934) Ch. 4
Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy.
alexander maclaren— P. 220. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.
Robert Falcon Scott— Journal, 29 March 1912; final words, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol.1, ch.20
My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.
william wordsworth— The Fountain, st. 8 & 9 (1799).
To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated.
sri aurobindo— 4 December 1893
As for the subject matter in my painting.. ..it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me.
william baziotes— In: Fifteen Americans, Ehibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, 1952 p. 12
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred; Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard. A favourite has no friend!
thomas gray— St. 6. (On the Death of a Favourite Cat (1747))
There was no simple riddance to the power of a dangerous political idea; no assassination possible to avert a disruptive change in technology; no natural death to be counted on to stop an economic change that ripped up ancestral estates or stirred up class discontent.
robert heilbroner— Chapter I, Part 6, The Inevitability of Progress, p. 31
The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.
aldous huxley— Point Counter Point (1928)
Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.
vitruvius— Introduction, Sec. 14
The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus , is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought .
— Ch. 28 (The Outline of History (1920))
For out of black soul's night have stirred dawn's cold gleam, morning's singing bird. Let black day die, let black flag fall, let raven call, let new day dawn of black reborn.
George Woodcock— "Black Flag" in Collected Poems (1983)
In academia, ...an art historian, on being stirred to tears by the tenderness and serenity he detects in a work by a fourteenth-century Florentine painter, may end up writing a monograph, as irreproachable as it is bloodless, on the history of paint manufacture in the age of Giotto. It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved.
Alain de Botton— The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009, pp. 27-29)
Terms ill defined, and forms misunderstood, And customs, when their reasons are unknown, Have stirred up many zealous souls To fight against imaginary giants.
martin farquhar tupper— Martin Farquhar Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy, Of Tolerance.
I always liked the common Turkish people unless they were stirred to passion by militarists.
— George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 18.
Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man.
henry george— Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Book II, Chapter 3.
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
carl sagan— Cosmos (1980, p. 135)
My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.
— Martin Luther while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII : Modern Christianity : The German Reformation, § 123. Luther at the Coburg; though it mentions Muhammad, this remark might actually be directed at those responsible for his confinement, as he makes allusions to dwelling in the "empire of birds" and his location as a "Sinai" and regularly uses other uncomplimentary comparisons of those involved in suppressing his ideas to figures unpopular to himself and his contemporaries.
Music is in all growing things. And underneath the silky wings of smallest insects there is stirred a pulse of air that must be heard. Earth's silence lives, and throbs, and sings.
— Lathrop, Music of Growth.
God has stirred up enmity and hatred among Christians.
— Original: ?
— The Qur'an (?), Sura 5:14
