Islands

Famous quotes containing the word islands:

    Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    What are the islands to me
    if you are lost
    what is Naxos, Tinos, Andros,
    and Delos, the clasp
    of the white necklace?
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.
    —W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)