Island Quotes (page 8)
-
-
-
I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these,...
J. R. R. Tolkien
The growth of his power and fame was matched, in my imagination, by the degree of the punishment I would have liked to inflict on him. Thus, at first, I would have been content with an electoral defeat, a cooling of public enthusiasm. Later I already required his imprisonment; still later, his exile to some distant, flat island with a single palm tree, which, like a black asterisk, refers one to the bottom of an eternal hell made of solitude, disgrace, and helplessness. Now, at last, nothing...
Vladimir Nabokov
Constantin Demiris had arranged with the authorities for her body to be buried on the grounds of the cemetery on Psara, his private island in the Aegean. Everyone had remarked on what a beautiful, sentimental gesture it was. In fact, Demiris had arranged for the burial plot to be there so that he could have the exquisite pleasure of walking over the bitch's grave.
Sidney Sheldon
I looked at her and sighed. In another world, I thought to myself, it might have worked. In another world, in another universe, in another time, as two quite different people, we really might have been able to put all of this behind us, take off to some sun-drenched Caribbean island, and have sex and pineapple juice, non-stop, for a year.
Hugh Laurie
Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet thereis a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turnaway from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has tohold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find thesolitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mindcollects itself and courage gauges its strength?
Albert Camus
Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her.
Jerzy Kosinski
There is much that I could say about the happy and tender incidents in my childhood days, the sense of security which I enjoyed with my parents, my childish affections and carefree, irresponsible existence in a gentle and affectionate ambience. But my interest is reserved for the steps that I took in my life towards self-realization. All the pleasant points of repose, islands of happiness, paradises whose magic was not unknown to me can remain, as far as I am concerned, in the enchanted...
Herman Hesse
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
Herman Melville
The Doctor: Amazing. Nancy: What is? The Doctor: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says "No. No, not here." A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. I don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me.
Steven Moffat