Finest Hours Best Quotes

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.

How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What’s this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…

I believe in Free Will, the Force Almighty by which we conduct ourselves as if we were the sons and daughters of a just and wise God, even if there is no such Supreme Being. And by free will, we can choose to do good on this earth, no matter that we all die, and do not know where we go when we die, or if a justice or explanation awaits us. I believe that we can, through our reason, know what good is, and in the communion of men and women, in which the forgiveness of wrongs will always be more significant than the avenging of them, and that in the beautiful natural world that surrounds us, we represent the best and the finest of beings, for we alone can see that natural beauty, appreciate it, learn from it, weep for it, and seek to conserve it and protect it. I believe finally that we are the only true moral force in the physical world, the makers of, ethics and moral ideas, and that we must be as good as the gods we created in the past to guide us. I believe that through our finest efforts, we will succeed finally in creating heaven on earth, and we do it every time that we love, every time that we embrace, every time that we commit to create rather than destroy, every time that we place life over death, and the natural over what is unnatural, insofar as we are able to define it. And I suppose I do believe in the final analysis that a peace of mind can be obtained in the face of the worst horrors and the worst losses. It can be obtained by faith in change and in will and in accident and by faith in ourselves, that we will do the right thing, more often than not, in the face of adversity. For ours is the power and the glory, because we are capable of visions and ideas which are ultimately stronger and more enduring than we are. That is my credo. That is my belief, for what it's worth, and it sustains me. And if I were to die right now, I wouldn't be afraid. Because I can't believe that horror or chaos awaits us. If any revelation awaits us at all, it must be as good as our ideals and our philosophy. For surely nature must embrace the visible and the invisible, and it couldn't fall short of us. The thing that makes the flowers open and the snowflakes fall must contain a wisdom and a final secret as intricate and beautiful as the blooming camellia or the clouds gathering above, so white and so pure in the blackness. If that isn't so, then we are in the grip of a staggering irony. And all the spooks of hell might as well dance. There could be a devil. People who burn other people to death are fine. There could be anything. But the world is simply to beautiful for that. At least it seems that way to me.

Very shoddy dressing. Leave it to Sophia to bring her B game to a sacrifice with cosmic and eternal implications.” Luce was desperate to study the reaction on Miss Sophia’s face, but Daniel held her back. There were a scraping sound, a melodramatic gasp, and a cruel soft cackle. “Ah yes,” Miss Sophia said. “My tramp sister returns, just in time to witness my finest hour. This will trump your overrated piano recital!” “You’re really very dumb.” “Because I don’t have the recommended brand of rope?” Sophia snorted. “Forget the rope, dope,” Dee said. “You’re dumb in many dozens of ways, not the least of which is thinking you might get away with this.” “Do not condescend to her!” hissed the third Elder. “There’s really no other way to approach her,” Dee instantly replied. “Thank you, Lyrica, but I can handle Paulina,” Sophia said without looking away from Dee. “Or what do you have people call you now? Pee?” “You know very well it is Dee. You only wish you knew why.” “Ah yes, Dee. Biiiiiig difference. Well, let us enjoy our brief reunion as best we can.

​Now it often happens to me with poets that I sense in a doubtless “bad” one, a desire to accept themselves, even to praise, while the good, even the best often appeared to me suspicious.  It is the same feeling that you can have at times against a professor or an official or a madman: for usually you know certainly and are convinced that the Mr. Official is an impeccable citizen, a justified child of God, a rightly numbered and useful member of mankind; while the madman is just a poor guy, an unlucky sufferer who you tolerate, who you pity, but who has no worth.  But then comes days or even hours, where you have unusually more dealings with professors or with madmen, then suddenly the opposite is true: you see in the madman a quiet luckiness, sure in itself, a sign, a darling of God, full of character in themselves and satisfied in their beliefs—but the professor or official seems superfluous, of modest character, without personality and nature, figures from which twelve goes in a dozen.  ​It goes similarly to me sometimes with bad poems.  Suddenly they seem to me no longer bad, suddenly they have a scent, a uniqueness, a childishness, now their obvious weaknesses and faults are stirring, are original, are lovely and dear, and next become the finest poems that you especially love, if a little pale and derivative.  With many of our younger poets we see, since the days of expressionism, similar work: they make fundamentally no more “good” or “fine” poems.

7. Our task, as the Minister of Supply rightly reminds us, is indeed formidable when the gigantic scale of German military and aviation equipment is considered. This war is not however a war of masses of men hurling masses of shells at each other. It is by devising new weapons, and above all by scientific leadership, that we shall best cope with the enemy’s superior strength.

When good people get into trouble because they are attacked and heavily smitten by the vile and wicked, they must be very careful not to get at loggerheads with one another. The common enemy is always trying to bring this about, and, of course, in bad luck a lot of things happen which play into the enemy’s hands. We must just make the best of things as they come along.

Most of the ingredients she cooked with came from the tiny farm immediately behind the restaurant. It was so small that the Pertinis could shout from one end of it to another, but the richness of the soil meant that it supported a wealth of vegetables, including tomatoes, zucchini, black cabbage, eggplant and several species that were unique to the region, including bitter friarielli and fragrant asfodelo. There was also a small black boar called Garibaldi, who despite his diminutive size impregnated his harem of four larger wives with extraordinary diligence; an ancient olive tree through which a couple of vines meandered; a chicken or two; and the Pertinis' pride and joy, Priscilla and Pupetta, the two water buffalo, who grazed on a patch of terraced pasture no bigger than a tennis court. The milk they produced was porcelain white, and after hours of work each day it produced just two or three mozzarelle, each one weighing around two pounds- but what mozzarelle: soft and faintly grassy, like the sweet steamy breath of the bufale themselves. As well as mozzarella, the buffalo milk was crafted into various other specialties. Ciliègine were small cherry-shaped balls for salads, while bocconcini were droplet-shaped, for wrapping in slices of soft prosciutto ham. Trecce, tresses, were woven into plaits, served with Amalfi lemons and tender sprouting broccoli. Mozzarella affumicata was lightly smoked and brown in color, while scamorza was smoked over a smoldering layer of pecan shells until it was as dark and rich as a cup of strong espresso. When there was surplus milk they even made a hard cheese, ricotta salata di bufala, which was salted and slightly fruity, perfect for grating over roasted vegetables. But the cheese the Pertinis were best known for was their burrata, a tiny sack of the finest, freshest mozzarella, filled with thick buffalo cream and wrapped in asphodel leaves.