Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, austria, years and/or war:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to her mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Have you noticed when reading War and Peace the difficulties Tolstoy experienced in forcing morally wounded Bolkonsky to come into geographical and chronological contact with Natasha? It is very painful to watch the way the poor fellow is dragged and pushed and shoved in order to achieve this happy reunion.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)