Ivory King Quotes

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way... I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins... I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings; My enemies crumpled like empty sacks. I came to them out of mists and rain; I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn; When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood... The rain made a door for me and I went through it; The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it; Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever; England was given to me to be mine forever. The nameless slave wore a silver crown; The nameless slave was a king in a strange country... The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics; Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts; Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory. I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance But Englishmen have despised my gift Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it; Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it; In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it... Two magicians shall appear in England... The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me; The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction; The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache; The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand... The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler; The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside... I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it; The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it... The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...

Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other's wings, They lay down in their curtained bed: Like two blossoms on one stem, Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow, Like two wands of ivory Tipped with gold for awful kings. Moon and stars gazed in at them, Wind sang to them lullaby, Lumbering owls forbore to fly, Not a bat flapped to and fro Round their rest: Cheek to cheek and breast to breast Locked together in one nest.

The flowers that I left in the ground, that I did not gather for you, today I bring them all back, to let them grow forever, not in poems or marble, but where they fell and rotted. And the ships in their great stalls, huge and transitory as heroes, ships I could not captain, today I bring them back to let them sail forever, not in model or ballad, but where they were wrecked and scuttled. And the child on whose shoulders I stand, whose longing I purged with public, kingly discipline, today I bring him back to languish forever, not in confession or biography, but where he flourished, growing sly and hairy. It is not malice that draws me away, draws me to renunciation, betrayal: it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee, Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon- I have become the expert of the catalogue. My body once so familiar with glory, My body has become a museum: this part remembered because of someone's mouth, this because of a hand, this of wetness, this of heat. Who owns anything he has not made? With your beauty I am as uninvolved as with horses' manes and waterfalls. This is my last catalogue. I breathe the breathless I love you, I love you - and let you move forever.

When you ask what are electrons and protons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave, how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to the game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what chessman is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessman has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game os chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen.

All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.

I stole it from the grave of the king of Skaar, and when his kinsmen found out, they sent twelve warriors to bring me back, but I killed them one by one, the first with a hunting knife and the last with a kiss.

We talk and tease and bargain with the main dish. Maniacal laughter echoes in the marble halls, sweet to my ears. There’s movement at the banquet hall’s entrance. A child with my eyes tumbles in—all wings and blue hair and giggling innocence. Holding his hand is Morpheus, wearing a ruby crown. The Red King. My king. The bubble bursts and takes the vision with it, leaving nothing but the sound of my gasp and wisps of gray smoke behind. “You see,” Ivory says, “once Morpheus knew that one day you would belong to him and he to you, that you would share a child, he was no longer willing to die to save Wonderland. But he’s insecure about your feelings for him. He feared you would refuse to help. So he made a new plan, however flawed it was.

According to royal doctrine, the king’s role as defender of Egypt (and the whole of creation) involved the corresponding defeat of Egypt’s neighbors (who stood for chaos). To instill and foster a sense of national identity, it suited the ruling elite—as leaders have discovered throughout history—to cast all foreigners as the enemy. An ivory label from the tomb of Narmer shows a Palestinian dignitary stooping in homage before the Egyptian king. At the same time, in the real world, Egypt and Palestine were busy engaging in trade. The xenophobic ideology masked the practical reality.

As Kate fell into the rhythm of Darby’s stride—horse and rider becoming one—she felt her spirits soar. For a little while, with the scenery blurring by, she was no longer Traitor Kate. No longer the girl despised by a kingdom. No longer the girl cast aside by the friend and prince she had once loved. In moments like these, atop a horse and flying over the ground, she glimpsed her old life. She became Kate Brighton again. Daughter of Hale Brighton, master of horse to the high king. She was free. A girl with a future. Someone who mattered.

They wept no animal's tears. They mourned in a great wickerwork of hard muscle and ragged breath. The hot smell of their coats, their black lips pulled back over ivory teeth, stiff sprays of white whiskers; their heavy hair plaited with silver and faience. Their thick hides shivered, as cattle will shiver away flies. I sweated and tried not to clear my throat.

She reminded me of something, and suddenly I knew. I was a tiny child again at Radford, my uncle’s home, and he was walking me through the glass-houses in the gardens. There was one flower, an orchid, that grew alone; it was the colour of pale ivory, with one little vein of crimson running through the petals. The scent filled the house, honeyed, and sickly sweet. It was the loveliest flower I had ever seen. I stretched out my hand to stroke the soft velvet sheen, and swiftly my uncle pulled me by the shoulder. ‘Don’t touch it, child. The stem is poisonous.

he takes as his text and example the unfortunate Ahab, seventh king of Israel, who lived in a palace of ivory. Under the influence of the wicked Jezebel he built a pagan temple and gave the priests of Baal places in his retinue. The prophet Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered. The dogs of Samaria licked Ahab’s blood. All his male heirs perished. They lay unburied in the streets. Jezebel was thrown out of a window of her palace. Wild dogs tore her body into shreds.

ALL THESE WORDS FROM THE SELLER, BUT NOT ONE WORD FROM THE SOLD.”" “All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.

...if anyone bothered to search through the laurel bordering the asphalt he'd surely find handfuls of teeth that were said to give the laurel its odd milky color, ivory with a pale pink edge, each blossom forming the shape of a bitter man's mouth.

dropped my ebony king right beside her ivory queen. One light. One dark. Opposing sides. “Queens who pretend they crave the darkness, but in truth want a noble knight on a white horse that will whisk her away to a castle like some fucking fairy tale.

The progress of Sybilla though a market was the progress of worker bee through a bower of intently propagating blossoms. Everything stuck. From the toy stall she bought two ivory dolls, a hen whistle, a rattle and a charming set of miniature bells for a child’s skirts: all were heroically received and borne by Tom, henceforth marked by a faint, distracted jingling. From the spice booth, set with delicious traps for the fat purse, she took cinnamon, figs, cumin seed and saffron, ginger, flower of gillyflower and crocus and—an afterthought—some brazil for dyeing her new wool. These were distributed between Christian and Tom. They listened to a balladmonger, paid him for all the verses of “When Tay’s Bank,” and bought a lengthy scroll containing a brand-new ballad which Tom Erskine read briefly and then discreetly lost. “No matter,” said the Dowager cheerfully, when told. “Dangerous quantity, music. Because it spouts sweet venom in their ears and makes their minds all effeminate, you know. We can’t have that.” He was never very sure whether she was laughing at him, but rather thought not. They pursued their course purposefully, and the Dowager bought a new set of playing cards, some thread, a boxful of ox feet, a quantity of silver lace and a pair of scissors. She was dissuaded from buying a channel stone, which Tom, no curling enthusiast, refused utterly to carry, and got a toothpick in its case instead. They watched acrobats, invested sixpence for an unconvincing mermaid and finally stumbled, flattened and hot, into a tavern, where Tom forcibly commandeered a private space for the two women and brought them refreshments. “Dear, dear,” said Lady Culter, seating herself among the mute sea of her parcels, like Arion among his fishes. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which are the squashy ones. Never mind. If we spread them out, they can’t take much hurt, I should think. Unless the ox feet … Oh. What a pity, Tom. But I’m sure it will clean off.

Morel begins to notice things that unsettle him. At the docks of the big port of Antwerp he sees his company’s ships arriving filled to the hatch covers with valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory. But when they cast off their hawsers to steam back to the Congo, while military bands play on the pier and eager young men in uniform line the ships’ rails, what they carry is mostly army officers, firearms, and ammunition. There is no trade going on here. Little or nothing is being exchanged for the rubber and ivory. As Morel watches these riches streaming to Europe with almost no goods being sent to Africa to pay for them, he realizes that there can be only one explanation for their source: slave labor.

The ivory images of the gods that followed were applauded by their particular devotees: Neptune by sailors, Mars by soldiers, Apollo and Artemis by soothsayers and hunters, Minerva by craftsmen, Bacchus and Ceres by drunks and countryfolk in town for the day. Venus and Cupid were cheered by all - who could be so dull as to deny ever being touched by any aspect, physical or otherwise, of love?

I was around her age when I began. The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

Then he went straightway to the presence-chamber; and he spoke in the speech of men; and he told his lord of that frail wife's dishonor, and said, 'Arise I cast her off, and be strong as thou ever hast been.' But the king, mad with rage, would not hearken; he leaped down from his ivory throne, and drew bis dagger out from his girdle, and thrust it into the heart of Ilderiui. 'So serve I the foes of my angel!' he cried; and Ilderim fell at his feet. 'I forgive,' he said simply,—and died.

At last we came out into a great chamber. Within the door stood either side on a pillar mount the Cretan double ax, the sacred Labrys. So I knew this huge place was a shrine. And at the far end, picked out in light that slanted from the roof, I saw the Goddess. She stood ten feet tall, crowned with a golden diadem; round her waist a gold apron lay over a skirt of many flounces, worked cunningly in enamel and precious gems. Her face was ivory; ivory were her round bare breasts, and her outstretched arms entwined with golden serpents. Her hands were held out low over the earth, as if they said, “Be still.

Beside the great image she seemed little, and even for a woman she was not tall, in spite of her high diadem. She wore the whole costume of the Goddess, all but the snakes. Even her skin, pale golden, polished and clear, had a look of ivory. Her high round breasts had golden tips, like those above her. Their faces were painted just alike, the eyes drawn round with black, the brows arched and thickened, the small mouth red. It seemed the face below must be itself the same. Since childhood I had seen my mother dressed for her priestly office; yet I was awed. She had never claimed to be more than a servant of the deity. This small stiff figure had a bearing that might claim anything.

The women sat with their jewelled boy-dolls in their arms. On the edge of the floor was the music, the tambours and the cytheras, the cymbals and Egyptian harps, the skirling pipes from the aulos to the little flute of ivory whose fine sound flickers like a snake’s forked tongue. The music shrilled, wounding the deathly silence in which the dark god stood waiting. And in the midst of the maze, strung along the crooked path of scoured white marble, hair and skirts and jewels swinging, arms entwined and slim waists swaying to the beat, was the wreath of women, weaving and twisting and turning on itself, like the house snake who sloughs his winter skin and is made new again. It bent about and came toward me. I saw her face, gay and flashing, touched by no dread, no shadow, leading the dance.

In the beginning, there was no time, and no man or beast walked the world. Where the ocean met the land, an ivory mare was born, her mane crafted from sea-foam and her body from barnacles. She was the Creator, goddess of all conception and supreme ruler of seven worlds. The Creator planted the seed of life in her most precious world, and a mighty elderwood tree grew to hold up the sky and nourish life. The elderwood bore creatures of all kinds—including giants from her bark, elves from her leaves, and mankind from her acorns. This elite triad of brothers and sisters dwelled in harmony, but the Creator knew peace was temporary. Avarice, wrath, and pride would set her children against each other, so she appointed a lesser god as guardian over them and commanded that he give every living thing a time to be born and a time to die. But this story isn’t about death. Not yet.

Letter 4 As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus. When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands. He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river’s silence. Then he spoke: „Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own. At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms. I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters. Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible. When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs. The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were reddened with the blood of our children. The sun rose behind a sky filled with plumes of dark smoke. But during night, three birds of phoenix had risen from the burning aviaries. They closed their eyes and soared straight up into the dark clouds. When they opened their eyes they could see the stars clearly, though they could not see the ground below.

What made the process still longer was that it was profusely illustrated, not only with pictures, as that of old Queen Elizabeth, laid on her tapestry couch in rose-coloured brocade with an ivory snuff-box in her hand and a gold-hilted sword by her side, but with scents — she was strongly perfumed — and with sounds; the stags were barking in Richmond Park that winter’s day. And so, the thought of love would be all ambered over with snow and winter; with log fires burning; with Russian women, gold swords, and the bark of stags; with old King James’ slobbering and fireworks and sacks of treasure in the holds of Elizabethan sailing ships. Every single thing, once he tried to dislodge it from its place in his mind, he found thus cumbered with other matter like the lump of glass which, after a year at the bottom of the sea, is grown about with bones and dragon-flies, and coins and the tresses of drowned women.

That evening after tea the four children all managed to get down to the beach again and get their shoes and stockings off and feel the sand between their toes. But the next day was more solemn. For then, in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel--that wonderful hall with the ivory roof and the west door all hung with peacock’s feathers and the eastern door which opens right onto the sea, in the presence of all their friends and to the sound of trumpets, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them onto the four thrones amid deafening shouts of, “Long Live King Peter! Long Live Queen Susan! Long Live King Edmund! Long Live Queen Lucy!” “Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen. Bear it well, Sons of Adam! Bear it well, Daughters of Eve!” said Aslan. And through the eastern door, which was wide open, came the voices of the mermen and the mermaids swimming close to the castle steps and singing in honor of their new Kings and Queens.

The King Horse was so near that I could see the lashes of his dark eyes. His forelock fell between them like a white waterfall between shining stones. His teeth were as big as the ivory plates upon a war helm; but his lip, when he licked the salt out of my palm, felt softer than my mother’s breast. When the salt was finished, he brushed my cheek with his, and snuffed at my hair. Then he trotted back to his hillock, whisking his long tail. His feet, with which as I learned later he had killed a mountain lion, sounded neat on the meadow, like a dancer’s. Now I found myself snatched from all sides, and hustled from the pasture. It surprised me to see the Horse Master as pale as a sick man. He heaved me on his mount in silence, and hardly spoke all the way home. After so much to-do, I feared my grandfather himself would beat me. He gave me a long look as I came near; but all he said was, “Theseus, you went to the horse field as Peiros’ guest. It was unmannerly to give him trouble. A nursing mare might have bitten your arm off. I forbid you to go again.” This happened when I was six years old; and the Horse Feast fell next year.

All wore coronets of some kind and many had chains of pearls. They wore no other clothes. Their bodies were the color of old ivory, their hair dark purple. The King in the center (no one could mistake him for anything but the King) looked proudly and fiercely into Lucy’s face and shook a spear in his hand. His knights did the same. The faces of the ladies were filled with astonishment. Lucy felt sure they had never seen a ship or a human before--and how should they, in seas beyond the world’s end where no ship ever came? “What are you staring at, Lu?” said a voice close beside her. Lucy had been so absorbed in what she was seeing that she started at the sound, and when she turned she found that her arm had gone “dead” from leaning so long on the rail in one position. Drinian and Edmund were beside her. “Look,” she said. They both looked, but almost at once Drinian said in a low voice: “Turn round at once, your Majesties--that’s right, with our backs to the sea. And don’t look as if we were talking about anything important.” “Why, what’s the matter?” said Lucy as she obeyed. “It’ll never do for the sailors to see all that,” said Drinian. “We’ll have men falling in love with a sea-woman, or falling in love with the under-sea country itself, and jumping overboard. I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening before in strange seas. It’s always unlucky to see these people.

Sovereign King of Detachment and Renunciation, Emperor of Death and Shipwreck, living dream that gradually wanders among the worlds ruins and wastes! Sovereign King of Despair amid splendours, grieving lord of palaces that don't satisfy, master of processions and pageants that never succeed in blotting out life! Sovereign King risen from the tombs, who came in the night by the light of the moon to tell your life to the living, royal page of lilies that have lost their petals, imperial herald of the coldness of ivory! Sovereign King Shepard of the Watches, knight errant of Anxieties traveling on moonlit roads without glory and without even a lady to serve, lord in the forest and on the slopes, a silent silhouette with visor drawn shut, passing through valleys, misunderstood in villages, ridiculed in towns, scorned in the cities! Sovereign King consecrated by Death to be her own, pale and absurd, forgotten and unrecognized, reigning amid worn-out velvets and tarnished marble on his throne at the limits of the Possible, surrounded by the shadows of his unreal court and guarded by the fantasy of his mysterious, solidierless army. (...) Your love for things dreamed was your contempt for things lived. Virgin King who disdained love, Shadow King who disdained light, Dream King who denied life! Amid the muffled racket of cymbals and drums, Darkness acclaims you Emperor!

Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the Narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab. Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more" He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

Alan Millard (1981, 5-18), however, has made a thorough study of the use of gold and wealth in general in the ancient Near East, and his conclusions were that the descriptions of Solomon’s wealth and that of the temple are entirely in keeping with the use and accumulation of wealth in ancient times.  He wrote, “There are no grounds for dismissing Solomon’s glory as exaggeration or legend in the history and culture of the ancient world. Solomon could well have ruled in Jerusalem exactly as 1 Kings describes him, seated on his ivory throne, worshipping at the golden Temple.” (Millard, 1981, 17). 

Jaya nudges me with her elbow. “Kali, look.” A gold-leafed round-top carriage pulled by an ivory horse team ambles over the jutted roadway. The golden carriage is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but an inner chill shakes me. I cannot mistake who is inside. One of the empire’s elite has come to Samiya, and the benefactors make this journey up from the valley below for only one reason. A Claiming.

All implements of war or industry known to the early Hawaiians were made either of wood, stone, or bone, as the islands are destitute of metals; but with these rude helps they laid up hewn-stone walls, felled trees, made canoes and barges, manufactured cloths and cordage, fashioned weapons, constructed dwellings and temples, roads and fish-ponds, and tilled the soil. They had axes, adzes and hammers of stone, spades of wood, knives of flint and ivory, needles of thorn and bone, and spears and daggers of hardened wood. They wove mats for sails and other purposes, and from the inner bark of the paper mulberry-tree beat out a fine, thin cloth called kapa, which they ornamented with colors and figures.

Fifty years earlier, before its sandstone blocks were carried off to serve as the foundations of a factory in a nearby town, the ruins of a little temple had stood upon that hill. And it was there, in the footings of a vanished temple, by the remnants of a prehistoric shrine, that Quibell and Green uncovered a vast agglomeration of courtly objects, a cache such as had not been seen before and has never since been equalled in all of Egypt: a pair of beautiful life-sized pharaonic statues made of sheets of beaten copper; a golden image of a hawk with glittering obsidian eyes still standing in its ancient shrine; two splendidly engraved cosmetic palettes; some prehistoric slaughtering knives; a remarkable collection of stone vases; a heap of mace heads piled like potatoes, some of which were vividly engraved in a manner similar to the cosmetic palettes. And in amongst all this, suffused by ground-water and penetrated by the roots of thorn and halfa grass, lay a mass of ivories which, Quibell remarked, ‘resembled potted salmon’, but on inspection proved to be hundreds of separate and delicately carved objects from the time of the first kings but which were so cemented and decayed that they are still under restoration to this day.

When Emeline passed through, she didn't step onto boardwalk, but flagstones. She paused, disoriented. The darkness of the woods morphed into soft, dewy lamplight and the sour-water smell of Bog was replaced by the perfumed scent of late-blooming roses. They'd stepped out of a swamp and into... a city. Before her lay a quiet, cobbled street lined by white row houses, many of them creeping with green ivy. The city stretched out, its streets rising and twisting towards the top of a lush green hill thick with trees. Emeline caught glimpses of rust-red rooftops and stone bridges over steep canals, of a white-bricked bell tower and a wide blue lake. At the crest of the hill, a fortress crowned the city, gleaming like ivory in the starlight. It was just as Tom had described it. "The Wood King's palace," she whispered.

George Washington Williams, a black American journalist, appears to have been the first foreign visitor to the Congo who saw savagery in the station commanders’ business-as-usual, and committed the rest of his life to telling the world this truth. Edmund Morel, employed by a British shipping company, noticed that vessels sent off to the Congo carried only weaponry, and returned full of ivory, rubber, and other valuables; looking into this mystery, he uncovered horrors that catapulted him into a career of human-rights advocacy.

something.” I slipped my hand out of his grasp, my throat tightening. “Yes?” “Why were you on the forest road, alone at nightfall, fifteen days past?” The shock of seeing the Nightmare Card in his pocket disappeared, replaced by a cold, nauseous terror. The sound of insects and the beat of the owl’s wings came back in vivid detail. I stared into Ravyn Yew’s face, perhaps for the first honest time—and could not recognize it. But the highwaymen had worn masks. My eyes lowered to Ravyn’s belt. There it was, plain as day. The ivory hilt—the dagger he’d pressed to my chest. It’s him, I gasped. I assaulted the bloody Captain of the Destriers.

David’s procession had journeyed through the other side of the city, allowing the opportunity for those who were fortunate to get a glimpse of their future prince. He was clothed like a warrior priest. His long flowing hair was gathered beneath his headdress of gold and ivory. He wore new royal robes of many colored embroidered Phoenician cloth. He wore rings and a necklace of gold and silver embedded with gems. He carried an ornamental bronze sword sheathed to his hip and wore an ephod of linen beneath his robes. A pack of minstrels also led him to the palace with their playing. They arrived at the front entrance to meet Michal’s entourage. When David saw her, his loins burned for her. They had hidden their love for such a long time. They had shared souls in their singing, now they would share their bodies. They would play a concert for their king, Yahweh.

you don’t have to be with someone in a relationship to love them; you have to learn to love from a distance

never allow a man to devour your growth in order for you to remain two levels beneath him. You weren’t created to be a stepping stone. You weren’t created to be a punching bag. That’s not something you should accept as the definition of love.

Nonethless it had been a castle, with all that this implies: it had had towering walls and turrets, beams as great as trees, arched doorways wide enough for processions to pass through, ceilings so cavernous that owls nested in them. It had had wings and ramparts and thin windows from which to shoot arrows, internal courtyards, banquet rooms, hidden doors, secret passages. It had had a chapel and, in its bowels, a dungeon. It housed sculptures and paintings, tapestries and cushions, carpets and carvings, its fortressed heart had been clad in glit, silver, glass, gold, damask, ivory, ermine.

Peter King paused just inside taking in the scene with a few critical sweeps of eyes so dark they didn’t catch any light from the sunlight or the chandelier. His irises seemed to bleed pigment into the whites, warming them with swirls of ivory. In his black suit, his skin tanned almost to match, he might have been a heroically sized construction paper cutout against white walls, white carpet, the white-and-gold marble-topped table that looked both antique and French.

Everything had already changed though, and both men knew it. The city they had built together—a smaller, quieter repository of some of the same graces Silvenes had embodied under the khalifs—was already finished, its brief flowering done. However this invasion ended, King Badir’s city of music and ivory was lost.

In 1892, a Belgian trader and his entire caravan of six Europeans and 40 porters were beheaded by a thug controlled by the notorious slaver and warlord Msiri, who asked that their heads be returned to him to decorate his compound. The trader had tried to persuade Msiri and other local tyrants to sell their ivory to his company, which could transport it by river, thus obviating the need for slaves.

Conrad spent six months working for a cargo company in the EIC in 1890, three weeks of it aboard a steamship traveling up river to today’s Kisangani. There is no mention of rubber in the novel because Conrad was there five years before rubber cultivation began. Kurtz is an ivory trader. So whatever sources Conrad was using when he began work on Heart of Darkness in 1898, his personal experiences would at most have added some color and context. Hochschild will have none of it, insisting that Conrad “saw the beginnings of the frenzy of plunder and death” which he then “recorded” in Heart of Darkness. The brutalities by whites in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now were inspired by the novel, Hochschild avers, because Conrad “had seen it all, a century earlier, in the Congo.” In another example of creative chronology, Hochschild cites a quotation that he believes was the inspiration for Kurtz’s famous scrawl, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The quotation was made public for the first time during a Belgian legislative debate in 1906. Whatever its authenticity, it could not be a source for a book published in 1902.

My heart stuttered and it felt like time stood still the moment Harley turned the corner of the aisle and laid eyes on me. Fuck. She was always drop dead gorgeous, but right here, right now, as she sauntered towards me in her satin ivory gown I felt like luckiest fucking man in the world. - Owen

The triumphant leader, whose face was coloured with vermilion (Serv., B, 10, 27), personified Jupiter, He wore the tunica Jovis (Juv., 10, 38) embroidered with palm leaves - under his purple toga scattered with golden stars (App., Pun., 66). in one hand he held a laurel branch, in the other an ivory staff crowned by an eagle. A laurel wreath was on his head; round his neck hung a gold ball enclosing talismans against envy (Macr., S, 1,6, 9). Behind him, a slave held the golden crown said to be of Etruscan origin (Tert., Cor., 13, 1) borrowed for the occasion from Jupiter. Four white horses were harnessed to his chariot, making it worthy 'of the king and father of the gods' (Plut., Cam., 7, 2).

Of the riches Leopold hoped to find in the Congo, the one that gleamed most brightly in his imagination was ivory.

ivory in the nineteenth century was a more rare and expensive version of what plastic is today,

Near the entrance to the famous Specimen Room at Tokyo University, there was a lavishly gilded casket that housed an ancient Egyptian mummy, said by some to have been the favorite concubine of King Tut himself. Elsewhere in the room, the disembodied brains of such celebrated novelists as Natsume Soseki and Kanzo Uchimura were on display, floating dreamily in formaldehyde. Then there was the distinguished married couple, both professors of medicine, who had willed their bodies to science in the 1920s. Now their perfect ivory skeletons stood at attention by the entrance, like a pair of sentries. Interesting though these objects were, the most riveting thing in the room was the collection of vividly colored, intricately-tattooed skins hanging on the walls and suspended from the ceiling. They looked to Kenzo like an eerie parade of souls in limbo, and he gazed at them in awe and fascination.

It was a modest invention, but its uses were so varied that man always looked upon it as a symbol of power and authority, from the wand of the fairies and the staff of the shepherd to the rod of Moses or Aaron, the ivory cane of the Roman consul, the lituus of the augurs, and the mace of the magistrate or the king.