Alhambra Quotes

Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.

By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and implements. We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and we are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use

My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.

The patterns of tiles created by the Moors are of secondary interest: it is the underlying group of symmetries which preserve aspects of the patterns that defines the geometry of the [Alhambra's] murals.

Éste fue el teatro de su transitoria alegría y hermosura, y allí estaban las huellas de su elegancia y regocijo. ¿Que ha sido de ellos y dónde están? ¡Polvo y cenizas!... ¡Habitantes de las tumbas!... ¡Fantasmas del recuerdo!...

Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good-humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain.

It is remarkable that circumcision, which is invariably practiced by thE Mahometans, and forms a distinguishing rite of their faith, to which all proselytes must conform, is neither mentioned in the Koran nor the Sonna. It seems to have been a general usage in Arabia, tacitly adopted from the Jews, and is even said to have been prevalent throughout the East before the time of Moses. It is said that the Koran forbids the making likenesses of any living thing, which has prevented the introduction of portrait-painting among Mahometans. The passage of the Koran, however, which is thought to contain the prohibition, seems merely an echo of the second commandment, held sacred by Jews and Christians, not to form images or pictures for worship. One of Mahomet's standards was a black eagle. Among the most distinguished Moslem ornaments of the Alhambra at Granada is a fountain supported by lions carved of stone, and some Moslem monarchs have had their effigies stamped on their coins.

No hay nadie en el mundo que atienda mejor que la pobretería en España el arte de no hacer nada y de vivir de nada; el clima del país contribuye con la mitad , el temperamento de las gentes aporta la otra mitad. Dad, en efecto, a un español la sombra en verano, el sol en invierno, un trozo de pan, ajos, aceite, garbanzos, una vieja capa y una guitarra, aunque no sea propia, los sones de la guitarra, ¡y que ruede el mundo como quiera! Hablarle de estreches! Para él no hay desgracia; la soportan sus hombros sin encogerse, lo mismo que cuando cuelga de ellos la raída capa. El español es siempre un hidalgo, aun en hambre y en harapos.

It could not be denied, however, that he set a high value upon justice, for he sold it at its weight in gold.

la ternura de su naturaleza estaba en efervescencia, y que sólo necesitaba un objeto.

To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile!

At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture.

Alhambra Welcome, the water’s voice To one whom black sand overwhelmed, Welcome, to the curved hand The smooth column of the marble, Welcome, slender labyrinths of water Between the lemon trees, Welcome the melodious zéjel, Welcome is love, welcome the prayer Offered to a God who is One, Welcome the jasmine. Vain the scimitar Against the long lances of the host, Vain to be the best. Good to know, foreknow, grieving king, That your courtesies are farewells, That the key will be denied you, The infidels’ cross eclipse the moon, The afternoon you gaze on prove your last. Granada, 1976.

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.

Con tal disposición y determinación, ¡qué país es éste para el viajero, donde la más mísera posada está tan llena de aventuras como un castillo encantado y cada comida es en sí un logro! ¡Que se quejen otros de la falta de buenos caminos y hoteles suntuosos y de todas las complicadas comodidades de un país culto y civilizado en la mansedumbre y el lugar común, pero a mí que me den el trepar por las ásperas montañas, el andar por ahí errante y las costumbres medio salvajes, pero francas y hospitalarias, que le dan un sabor tan exquisito a la querida, vieja y romántica España!

A third assumption: a commitment to monogamy is an admirable consequence of love, stemming from a deep-seated generosity and an intimate interest in the other’s flourishing and well-being. A call for monogamy is a sure indication that one partner has the other’s best interests at heart. To Rabih’s new way of thinking, it seems anything but kind or considerate to insist that a spouse return to his room alone to watch CNN and eat yet another club sandwich while perched on the edge of his bed, when he has perhaps only a few more decades of life left on the planet, an increasingly dishevelled physique, an at best intermittent track record with the opposite sex, and a young woman from California standing before him who sincerely wishes to remove her dress in his honour. If love is to be defined as a genuine concern for the well-being of another person, then it must surely be deemed compatible with granting permission for an often harassed and rather browbeaten husband to step off the elevator on the eighteenth floor, in order to enjoy ten minutes of rejuvenating cunnilingus with a near-stranger. Otherwise it may seem that what we are dealing with is not really love at all but rather a kind of small-minded and hypocritical possessiveness, a desire to make one’s partner happy if, but only if, that happiness involves oneself. It’s past midnight already, yet Rabih is just hitting his stride, knowing there might be objections but sidestepping them nimbly and, in the process, acquiring an ever more brittle sense of self-righteousness. A fourth assumption: monogamy is the natural state of love. A sane person can only ever want to love one other person. Monogamy is the bellwether of emotional health. Is there not, wonders Rabih, an infantile idealism in our wish to find everything in one other being – someone who will be simultaneously a best friend, a lover, a co-parent, a co-chauffeur and a business partner? What a recipe for disappointment and resentment in this notion, upon which millions of otherwise perfectly good marriages regularly founder. What could be more natural than to feel an occasional desire for another person? How can anyone be expected to grow up in hedonistic, liberated circles, experience the sweat and excitement of nightclubs and summer parks, listen to music full of longing and lust and then, immediately upon signing a piece of paper, renounce all outside sexual interest, not in the name of any particular god or higher commandment but merely from an unexplored supposition that it must be very wrong? Is there not instead something inhuman, indeed ‘wrong’, in failing to be tempted, in failing to realize just how short of time we all are and therefore with what urgent curiosity we should want to explore the unique fleshly individuality of more than one of our contemporaries? To moralize against adultery is to deny the legitimacy of a range of sensory high points – Rabih thinks of Lauren’s shoulder blades – in their own way just as worthy of reverence as more acceptable attractions such as the last moments of ‘Hey Jude’ or the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace. Isn’t the rejection of adulterous possibilities tantamount to an infidelity towards the richness of life itself? To turn the equation on its head: would it be rational to trust anyone who wasn’t, under certain circumstances, really pretty interested in being unfaithful?

Não acredito em Alá mas senti, já muitas vezes, a força da sua crença nas sombras do palmar de Tamanrasset, no som a dágua correndo, como se fosse um milagre, no oásis de Targhit ou nos azulejos verdes do Alhambra.

With the decree issued in March of 1492, all the Jews in Spain were given six months to leave. Two hundred thousand would ultimately abandon their homes and livelihoods in the only land their families had known for generations. Like the riches of Alhambra, much of the wealth of Jews fleeing Torquemada’s fires fell into royal hands, which in turn financed Columbus’s expedition of commerce and evangelism.

alma reside en la memoria y está tejida con recuerdos. Apenas

Cuando el cielo del Tepeyac abre sus primeras estrellas delgaditas y la oscuridad baja como tinta color azul japones. Sobre la verdad: si se la das a alguien, entonces ese alguien tiene poder sobre ti. El besandome entre grandes mordiscos de pan. El jazmin nocturno con su aroma espumoso de leche dulce. El reir del rio y los canales y la voz alta, melancolica, del viento en las ramas del alto pino. Te extrano aun ahora que estas acostado a mi lado. Mirar mientras duermes el color de tu piel. Ver como a la media luz de la luna emites tu propia luz, como si todo tu estuvieras hecho de ambar. Como si fueras una linternita y todo en la casa estuviera dorado tambien. Hacer el amor en espanol, de una manera tan intricada y devota como la Alhambra.

Twenty years had passed since I’d been to Marbella. And then, looking one last time at Alhambra in all of its glory and beauty past and at the gallows pole that had been used to annihilate that past, looking at the tool of death superimposed on this architecture that so thoroughly celebrated life, I thought, isn’t it possible to transform the cruelty that had connected Omar and me back again into love?

unworthy the Alhambra Varieties in its palmy days. But yet the house was crowded." Even though this critic disliked the play and the cast, he still praised Cody. Prentiss Ingraham, like Ned Buntline, was a colorful character in his own right. Like Buntline, Prentiss was the son of a writer, the Reverend J. H. Ingraham, author of The Prince of the House of David and other books, which his son rather irreverently called "dime novels about the Bible." Again like

I ne treba ti ništa drugo osim krov nad glavom, komadić tla pod nogama i ruke. Pod tim vrtlarskim rukama, iz ove krpice tla, raste alhambra, tvoje drvo života, usred smeća, krhotina, prljavištine, gadosti. I u golemom, konveksnom zrcalu neba vidim: astronauti na drugim planetima već pripremaju vitke svemirske brodove da te ponovno otkriju.

Was the tragedy of a Hindu in the twentieth century Kashmir any different from the agony of the Muslims or Jews of Granada, hundreds of years ago?

When the news first broke about the Lana Clarkson killing, one prominent music business figure told me, there was a collective feeling of astonishment among Hollywood circles—“not that a dead body had been found in Phil Spector’s home, but that Phil was living out in Alhambra…Nobody lives in Alhambra.

They tore down many others to use their superior construction materials, including marble, gold, and silver (traditional Arabic architecture used poor construction materials such as plaster, wood, and brick, evident in Andalusian palaces such as the Alhambra, and this is one of the reasons why Ibn Khaldun claimed that the constructions of the Arabs were not solidly built and quickly fell into ruins).

The traveler wishing to observe Islamic Spain has his choice of two cities, Granada with its Alhambra or Córdoba with its Great Mosque (in Spanish Mezquita). Of the two former is be a considerable degree the more exciting and also the easier to absorb for its buildings, gardens and geographic settings are immediately recognizable as significant. It would take a dull man to miss the point of Granada, for its Alhambra is a museum of Islamic memories.

After your Highnesses ended the war of the Moors who reigned in Europe, and finished the war of the great city of Granada, where this present year [1492] on the 2nd January I saw the royal banners of Your Highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, which is the fortress of the said city, I saw the Moorish sultan issue from the gates of the said city, and kiss the royal hands of Your Highnesses …

There is very little light and the hand-rail is rusty, but in the shadows on every landing there are statues, majestic and banal, with that mystery which envelopes the most conventionally imitative and realistic art - the art which creates figures aping the trite transparency of persons in official poses. The arabesques of the Alhambra, or Michelangelo's Prisoners, are there for eternity, while the imposing, melancholy statues on this staircase, insignificant as ourselves, grow old like us, moulder away in this semi-darkness amid the understandable neglect of all and sundry. They exhibit the uselessness and solitude, the incomprehensibility of old age.

banquet oifert à un député par ses électeurs reconnaissants. La cheminée est ornée d’une pendule d’un goût atrocement troubadour, représentant le templier Bois-Guilbert enlevant une Rébecca dorée sur un cheval argenté. A droite et à gauche de cette odieuse horloge sont placés deux flambeaux de plaqué sous un globe. Ces magnificences sont l’objet de la secrète envie de plus d’une ménagère de Pont-de-Arche, et la servante elle-même ne les essuie qu’en tremblant. Je ne parle pas de quelques caniches en verre filé, d’un petit saint Jean en pâte de sucre, d’un Napoléon en chocolat, d’un cabaret chargé de porcelaines communes et pompeusement installé sur une table ronde, de gravures représentant les Adieux de Fontainebleau, Souvenirs et regrets, la Famille du marin, les Petits Braconniers et autres vulgarités du même genre. — Concevez-vous rien de pareil ? Je n’ai jamais su comprendre, pour ma part, cet amour du commun et du laid. Je conçois que tout le monde n’ait pas pour logement des Alhambras, des Louvres ou des Parthénons ; mais il est toujours si facile de ne pas avoir de pendule ! de laisser les murailles nues, et de se priver de lithographies de Maurin ou d’aquatintes de Jazet ! Les gens qui remplissaient ce salon me semblaient, à force de vulgarité, les plus étranges du monde ; ils avaient des façons de parler incroyables, et s’exprimaient en style fleuri, comme feu Prudhomme, élève de Brard et Saint-Omer. Leurs têtes, épanouies sur leurs cravates blanches, et leurs cols de chemise gigantesques faisaient penser à certains produits de la famille des cucurbitacés. Quelques hommes ressemblent à des animaux, au lion, au cheval, à l’âne ; ceux-ci, tout bien considéré, avaient l’air encore plus végétal que bestial. Des femmes, je n’en dirai rien, m’étant promis de ne jamais tourner en ridicule ce sexe charmant. Au milieu de ces légumes humains, Louise faisait l’effet d’une rose dans un carré de choux. Elle portait une simple robe blanche serrée à la taille par un ruban bleu ; ses cheveux, séparés en bandeaux, encadraient harmonieusement son front pur. Une grosse natte se tordait derrière sa nuque, couverte de cheveux follets et d’un duvet de pêche. Une quakeresse n’aurait rien trouvé à redire à cette mise, qui faisait paraître d’un grotesque et d’un ridicule achevés les harnais et les plumets de corbillard. des autres femmes ; il était impossible d’être de meilleur goût. J’avais peur que mon infante ne profitât de la circonstance pour déployer quelque toilette excessive et prétentieuse, achetée d’occasion. Cette pauvre robe de mousseline qui n’a jamais vu l’Inde, et qu’elle a probablement faite elle-même, m’a touché et séduit ; je ne tiens pas à la parure. J’ai eu pour maîtresse une gitana grenadine qui n’avait pour tout vêtement que des pantoufles bleues et un collier de grains d’ambre ; mais rien ne me contrarie comme un fourreau mal taillé et d’une couleur hostile. Les dandies bourgeois préférant de

Nadie ha sido más cruel en Barcelona que Almanzor en 985 que la quemó por completo. Pusieron sus mezquitas y giraldas, y un rey como Fernando III de Castilla no las destruyó. Tampoco los Reyes Católicos tocaron la Alhambra de Granada. En cambio, los invasores musulmanes demolieron en el siglo xii el monumento fenicio a Hércules y cuando cayó el califato de Córdoba destruyeron Medina Azahara. También desterraron a Averroes por considerar su obra peligrosamente heterodoxa. Y en contra de la visión ingenua que convierte a los moriscos en víctimas y a los españoles en verdugos, no hay que olvidar que está históricamente probada la colaboración entre los moriscos de la costa española y los piratas argelinos (desde su base del centro corsario de Cherchel) que golpeaban continuamente a nuestra flota, y que albergaban intenciones de reconquistar al menos parte de España. La España reconquistada podía luchar contra el islam (que la había invadido) pero tenía tiempo para la Escuela de Traductores de Toledo, una tierra de las tres culturas, un Arcipreste de Hita o un Francisco de Rojas.

If to-night turns out to be absolutely mouldy, have you any objection to receiving a sudden call from a sick aunt in town?" "If you only knew the number of aunts I left on their death-beds." "And spending the weekend with me at my flat , and having a nice little dinner at the club, and paying a return visit to Raoul at the Alhambra, and--" "There are times," said Jim, "when I'm convinced that you were given some sort of brain after all.

Cape Town lived up to its name as the tavern of the seas. It was a wonderful fun place and I loved it. The weather was Mediterranean and after two weeks at sea, all the girls were beautiful. The crew was convinced that the constant sunshine, in this part of the world, had something to do with it but whatever the reason, it seemed to be true. Luckily I could get off the ship on a Saturday afternoon, when all of South Africa comes to a halt. For whatever reason South African tradition called for all the shops to close and only restaurants, bars, beer halls and other vital services remained open. For an otherwise stargy place, they got this one right. I headed for Delmonico’s on Riebeeck Street across from the famous Alhambra Theatre where everyone went to have fun. When I got there I found the place packed, but luckily I found a seat at a table, in a corner that was not quite as loud as the rest of the hall. It all started off all right while as we listened to the vivacious brunette playing a huge Hammond Organ. From the marque I knew that her name was Cherry Wainer, a celebrated musical star in South Africa. It didn’t take long for me to introduce myself to her and before I knew it she had the manager find me a seat right up in front. The amplified sound of swing music filling the hall would have been enjoyable if it wasn’t for the crew of another ship that were causing a problem. I never looked for a fight but I also never back away from one and this time was no exception. It all happened very quickly and obviously they didn't take kindly to my intervention. One of them charged and took a wild swing that just missed me. I was lucky that he missed me but I didn't as I rammed him backward, pushing his total weight onto their table. The table collapsed and the libations on it toppled, totally soaking him.