Laurel Wreath Quotes

He forced his fists to unclench. "Look, lady, we're not going all Hunger Games on each other. Isn't going to happen." "But you will win a fabulous honor!" Nike reached into a basket at her side and produced a wreath of thick leaves and laurels. "This crown of leaves could be yours! You can wear it on your head! Think of the glory!

Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered. Face it – pitiful monster.

Since you can never be my bride, My tree at least you shall be! Let the laurel Adorn, henceforth, my hair, my lyre, my quiver: Let Roman victors, in the long procession, Wear laurel wreaths for triumph and ovation.

But you will win a fabulous honor!" Nike reached into a basket at her side and produced a wreath of thick green laurels. "This crown of leaves could be yours! You can wear it on your head! Think of the glory!

Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar; By King Nicomedes, he. Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph For his Gallic victory! Nicomedes wears no laurels, Though the greatest of the three.

Man constantly prayed to God for peace, but peace never happened, so he decided that his god must really want war because the other side was sinful. Man invented and extolled virtues which could only be exemplified under conditions of war, like heroism and gallantry and honor, and he gave himself laurel wreaths or booty or medals for such things, thus rewarding himself for behaving well while sinning. He did it when he was a primitive, and he went on with it after he thought he was civilized.

O wind, songs have ye in her name? Plucked her did ye from midnight blasted millyard winds and made her renown ring in stone and brick and ice? Hard implacable bridges of iron cross her milk of brows? God bent from his steel arc welded her a hammer of honey and of balm? The rutted mud of hardrock Time . . . was it wetted, springified, greened, blossomied for me to grow in nameless bloodied lutey naming of her? Wood on cold trees would her coffin bare? Keys of stone rippled by icy streaks would ope my needy warm interiors and make her eat the soft sin of me? No iron bend or melt to make my rocky travail ease--I was all alone, my fate was banged behind an iron door, I'd come like butter looking for Hot Metals to love, I'd raise my feeble orgone bones and let them be rove and split the half and goop the big sad eyes to see it and say nothing. The laurel wreath is made of iron, and thorns of nails; acid spit, impossible mountains, and incomprehensible satires of blank humanity--congeal, cark, sink and seal my blood--

In Paul's day, instead of giving gold medals for winning first place in an Olympic event, a crown of olive or laurel leaves was placed on the winner's head. By the time the athlete went home that night, the wreath would already be wilting and falling apart. Think of that. All that energy expended for a wreath that didn't last beyond a day.

Farther And Farther From Zero Suddenly, I fall from the pavilion into a place where I see the ugliness, hypocrisy, rouge on a sunken face, a thorn lodged in a kidney, the blind crone holding a laurel wreath for the winner, her black ribbons in shreds, her eyes dark with purple, a gold anklet on her shriveled leg. The puppet show looks charming, but go behind the screen and watch who runs it. Wash your hands and face of this charade. Anyone who wants these prizes flares up quickly like a wood chip. There is one who can help, who turns the wheel from non-existence to a sweet-breathing emptiness. Words are ways we add up breath, counting stress and syllable with our exacting musical knack that takes us farther and farther from zero.

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won’t let us win the Laurel. They don’t care that the math doesn’t work. They don’t care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring. Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn’t blame the Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man’s only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children’s ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it’s hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they’d share. They don’t.

His work is as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a more discerning posterity will be to make it the property of mankind. An aim like this far surpasses all others, and for it he wears the crown of thorns which is one day to bloom into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are concentrated in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as the insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it puts its eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well knows, the young will one day find life and nourishment, and then dies in confidence.

A philosopher is a scientific tradesman, who, for a certain price, sells prescriptions of self-denial, temperance and poverty; he generally preaches the pains of wealth, till he becomes rich himself, when he abandons the world for a comfortable and dignified retreat. The father of the philosophers, Seneca, is said to have collected royal wealth. A poet is one who makes a great stir with printed prattle, falsehood and fury. Madness is the characteristic of the true poet. All those who express themselves, with clearness, precision and simplicity are deemed unworthy of the laurel wreath. The grammarians are a sort of military body, who disturb the public peace. They are distinguished from all other warriors, by dress and weapons. They wear black instead of colored uniforms, and wield pens rather than swords. They fight with as much obstinacy for letters and words as do the others for liberty and father-land.

People marvel that we’re not out in the streets, decking the monstrous, khaki tanks with roses and jasmine. They wonder why we don’t crown the hard, ugly helmets of the troops with wreaths of laurel. They question why we mourn our dead instead of gratefully offering them as sacrifices to the Gods of Democracy and Liberty. They wonder why we’re bitter.

Hegel did not deceive himself about the revolutionary character of his dialectic, and was even afraid that his Philosophy of Right would be banned. Nor was the Prussian state entirely easy in its mind for all its idealization. Proudly leaning on its police truncheon, it did not want to have its reality justified merely by its reason. Even the dull-witted King saw the serpent lurking beneath the rose: when a distant rumor of his state philosopher's teachings reached him he asked suspiciously: but what if I don't dot the I's or cross the T's? The Prussian bureaucracy meanwhile was grateful for the laurel wreath that had been so generously plaited for it, especially since the strict Hegelians clarified their master's obscure words for the understanding of the common subjects, and one of them wrote a history of Prussian law and the Prussian state, where the Prussian state was proved to be a gigantic harp strung in God's garden to lead the universal anthem. Despite its sinister secrets Hegel's philosophy was declared to be the Prussian state philosophy, surely one of the wittiest ironies of world history. Hegel had brought together the rich culture of German Idealism in one mighty system, he had led all the springs and streams of our classical age into one bed, where they now froze in the icy air of reaction. but the rash fools who imagined they were safely hidden behind this mass of ice, who presumptuously rejoiced who bold attackers fell from its steep and slippery slopes, little suspected that with the storms of spring the frozen waters would melt and engulf them. Hegel himself experienced the first breath of these storms. He rejected the July revolution of 1830, he railed at the first draft of the English Reform Bill as a stab in the 'noble vitals' of the British Constitution. Thereupon his audience left him in hordes and turned to his pupil Eduard Gans, who lectured on his master's Philosophy of Right but emphasized its revolutionary side and polemicized sharply against the Historical School of Law. At the time it was said in Berlin that the great thinker died from this painful experience, and not of the cholera.

A learned society of our day, no doubt with the loftiest of intentions, has proposed the question, “Which people, in history, might have been the happiest?” If I properly understand the question, and if it is not altogether beyond the scope of a human answer, I can think of nothing to say except that at a certain time and under certain circumstances every people must have experienced such a moment or else it never was [a people]. Then again, human nature is no vessel for an absolute, independent, immutable happiness, as defined by the philosopher; rather, she everywhere draws as much happiness towards herself as she can: a supple clay that will conform to the most different situations, needs, and depressions. Even the image of happiness changes with every condition and location (for what is it ever but the sum of “the satisfaction of desire, the fulfillment of purpose, and the gentle overcoming of needs,” all of which are shaped by land, time, and place?). Basically, then, all comparison becomes futile. As soon as the inner meaning of happiness, the inclination has changed; as soon as external opportunities and needs develop and solidify the other meaning—who could compare the different satisfaction of different meanings in different worlds? Who could compare the shepherd and father of the Orient, the ploughman and the artisan, the seaman, runner, conqueror of the world? It is not the laurel wreath that matters, nor the sight of the blessed flock, neither the merchant vessels nor the conquered armies’ standards—but the soul that needed this, strove for it, finally attained it and wanted to attain nothing else. Every nation has its center of happiness within itself, as every ball has its center of gravity!

RUNNING THE RACE The marathon is one of the most strenuous athletic events in sport. The Boston Marathon attracts the best runners in the world. The winner is automatically placed among the great athletes of our time. In the spring of 1980, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line. She had the laurel wreath placed on her head in a blaze of lights and cheering. She was completely unknown in the world of running. An incredible feat! Her first race a victory in the prestigious Boston Marathon! Then someone noticed her legs—loose flesh, cellulite. Questions were asked. No one had seen her along the 26.2-mile course. The truth came out: she had jumped into the race during the last mile. There was immediate and widespread interest in Rosie. Why would she do that when it was certain that she would be found out? Athletic performance cannot be faked. But she never admitted her fraud. She repeatedly said that she would run another marathon to validate her ability. Somehow she never did. People interviewed her, searching for a clue to her personality. One interviewer concluded that she really believed that she had run the complete Boston Marathon and won. She was analyzed as a sociopath. She lied convincingly and naturally with no sense of conscience, no sense of reality in terms of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior. She appeared bright, normal and intelligent. But there was no moral sense to give coherence to her social actions. In reading about Rosie I thought of all the people I know who want to get in on the finish but who cleverly arrange not to run the race. They appear in church on Sunday wreathed in smiles, entering into the celebration, but there is no personal life that leads up to it or out from it. Occasionally they engage in spectacular acts of love and compassion in public. We are impressed, but surprised, for they were never known to do that before.

Seeing the God statement Suppose the statement Blessed Are the pure in heart, for they shall see God were placed like a wreath of violets, Lilies, laurel, and olive, blossoms strung together Like words in a sentence, a garland Launched, set out on a flowing creek Imagine that wreath carried Down the frothy rapids, tossed, floating Slipping over water-smooth, moss-colored Boulders, in and out of slow, dark pools, Through poplar and willow shadows. It dips, Sinks momentarily, emerges, travels, maitains Its ring, its declaration and syntax. At times it widens in a broad, deep Current, makes sense as a gift. The pure becomes inclusive, spatial, Generous. God and heart are two Spread wings of one open reading. And at times it narrows, restricts. Violets and heart entangle With God. The blessed braces, Overlaps lilies and laurel. Still, at any point you might reach down yourself, catch that ring of blossoms, lift it up, wear its beauty and blooming distinction across your forehead. Look into a mirror. See what you can see.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Is my victory real, does the winner adorned with a laurel wreath ask this question? Do I deserve victory or did I steal it from someone who is more worthy of victory?

Your own name isn’t half-bad. Bet you don’t know what Loretta means.” Rachel folded the dough over, then glanced up with a teasing grin. “Your momma and me picked it, mainly for the meaning.” “It’s a variation of Laura, isn’t it? Laurel wreath or something?” “That’s the common meaning. But in your ma’s name book, there was another.” “Well? Give over.” Loretta waited, watching her aunt. “What’s it mean? Flat-chested and scrawny?” Rachel threw back her head and chuckled. “Flat-chested and scrawny? Loretta Jane, I swear, no one can say you have too high an opinion of yourself. It means little wise one.” The color washed from Loretta’s face, and she planted her feet on the floor to stop the chair from rocking. “It means what?” “Little wise one.” Rachel’s smile faded. “You feelin’ peaked? What’s wrong?” Loretta set her sewing aside and pushed to her feet. “Nothing, Aunt Rachel. N-nothing.” Glancing dazedly around the room, Loretta pressed the back of her wrist to her temple, a feeling of unreality surrounding her. “I, um, think I’ll get a breath of air.” After hurrying from the house, Loretta struck off across the yard to lean on the fence, her favorite spot because it afforded her a view of the rise. Little wise one. Still numb with shock, she stared off into the distance, remembering the night Hunter had recited his song to her. The People will call her the Little Wise One… She studied the rise, truly believing, for the first time, that she and Hunter were destined to be together. She tried to remember all the words to his song. They came to her in snatches. Between them will be a great canyon that runs high with blood. A silly legend, she had once called it. Now she knew better. Too much of it had already come to pass for her to scoff. A canyon of blood. Loretta curled her hands into fists. Hunter would return to her. She didn’t know when, or how, but suddenly she felt certain the song, once the bane of her existence, had become her greatest hope.

Your own name isn’t half-bad. Bet you don’t know what Loretta means.” Rachel folded the dough over, then glanced up with a teasing grin. “Your momma and me picked it, mainly for the meaning.” “It’s a variation of Laura, isn’t it? Laurel wreath or something?” “That’s the common meaning. But in your ma’s name book, there was another.” “Well? Give over.” Loretta waited, watching her aunt. “What’s it mean? Flat-chested and scrawny?” Rachel threw back her head and chuckled. “Flat-chested and scrawny? Loretta Jane, I swear, no one can say you have too high an opinion of yourself.

when in Rome don’t forget your laurel wreath.

AGNUS CASTUS  (AGNUS CASTUS)   n.s.[Lat.]The name of the tree commonly called the Chaste Tree, from an imaginary virtue of preserving chastity. Of laurel some, of woodbine many more,And wreathes of agnus castus others bore.Dryden.

If the first-century dating was ever going to be in doubt, this settled it. We’ve found several so far.’ Elisabetta took the bag. It contained a large silver coin. The bust on the obverse showed a flat-nosed man with curly hair who was wearing a laurel wreath. The inscription read ‘NERO CLAVDIVS CAESAR’. She flipped the bag over. The reverse was an elaborate arch flanked by the letters S and C – Senatus Consulto, the Senatorial mint mark. ‘The lost arch of Nero,’ she said. ‘AD 54.’ ‘Precisely,’ Trapani said, visibly impressed by the nun’s acumen. ‘But this isn’t a typical columbarium, is it?’ she said, glancing at the tarps. ‘Hardly.

For a girl, how about Nicole? It means a girl who’s victorious for her people.” “Oh, I like that,” Loretta whispered. “Hunter would love that.” Rachel smiled. “Nicole Wolf. If she has her daddy’s eyes, Indigo would go perfect with it. Nicole Indigo Wolf.” “Doesn’t sound right,” Amy argued. “Indigo Nicole Wolf! That, I like.” “Indigo Nicole.” Tears burned behind Loretta’s eyelids. A girl victorious for her people. “Yes, that’s beautiful, for both worlds.” “Your own name isn’t half-bad. Bet you don’t know what Loretta means.” Rachel folded the dough over, then glanced up with a teasing grin. “Your momma and me picked it, mainly for the meaning.” “It’s a variation of Laura, isn’t it? Laurel wreath or something?” “That’s the common meaning. But in your ma’s name book, there was another.” “Well? Give over.” Loretta waited, watching her aunt. “What’s it mean? Flat-chested and scrawny?” Rachel threw back her head and chuckled. “Flat-chested and scrawny? Loretta Jane, I swear, no one can say you have too high an opinion of yourself. It means little wise one.” The color washed from Loretta’s face, and she planted her feet on the floor to stop the chair from rocking. “It means what?” “Little wise one.” Rachel’s smile faded. “You feelin’ peaked? What’s wrong?” Loretta set her sewing aside and pushed to her feet. “Nothing, Aunt Rachel. N-nothing.” Glancing dazedly around the room, Loretta pressed the back of her wrist to her temple, a feeling of unreality surrounding her. “I, um, think I’ll get a breath of air.” After hurrying from the house, Loretta struck off across the yard to lean on the fence, her favorite spot because it afforded her a view of the rise. Little wise one. Still numb with shock, she stared off into the distance, remembering the night Hunter had recited his song to her. The People will call her the Little Wise One…

Most often, adorned winners haven’t worked for posterity but for the laurel wreaths and real winners don’t care about adorned victories.

Time often removes the laurel wreaths and places them on the heads of the real winners. But then usually both are dead.

Ye wha are fain to hae your name Wrote in the bonny book o fame, Let merit nae pretension claim To laurel'd wreath, But hap ye weel, baith back and wame, In guid Braid Claith.

To make its work, as a sacred trust and the true fruit of its existence, the property of mankind, laying it down for a posterity better able to appreciate it: this becomes for genius a goal more important than any other, a goal for which it wears the crown of thorns that shall one day blossom into a laurel-wreath. Its striving to complete and safeguard its work is just as resolute as that of the insect to safeguard its eggs and provide for the brood it will never live to see: it deposits its eggs where it knows they will one day find life and nourishment, and dies contented.

The official manuscript was kept in two gilded cabinets constructed below the idol of the Palatine Apollo. The college especially intervened when it was necessary to appeal to gods other than those of the strictly Roman rite. So through Apollo they were concerned with the ritus graecus and contributed to the naturalisation of foreign cults, over which they retained control. They wore the Greek cloak (Fig. 9) and a laurel wreath. Their symbols were the tripod (cortina) of the Sibyl, the dolphin and the crow of Apollo.

For instance, Ben Jonson’s folio of 1616 features a laurel wreath, a motto, and a Latin inscription from Horace explaining that he wrote not for the crowd but for the discriminating few: Neque, me vt miretur turbo laboro: Contentus paucis lectoribus

For instance, Ben Jonson’s folio of 1616 features a laurel wreath, a motto, and a Latin inscription from Horace explaining that he wrote not for the crowd but for the discriminating few: Neque, me vt miretur turbo laboro: Contentus paucis lectoribus (“ I do not labor for the crowd to admire me, I am content with a few readers”).

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).

We coordinated train rides and met halfway between Boston and Manhattan, in New London, Connecticut. Annabeth was there before me, standing on the platform in jeans and sandals and a long-sleeved purple shirt with a laurel-wreath design and the letters SPQR: UNR.

It is my…pleasure,” Octavian said, forcing out the last word, “to bestow upon you the Mural Crown for being first over the walls in siege warfare.” Octavian handed him a bronze badge shaped like a laurel wreath. “Also, by order of Praetor Reyna, to promote you to the rank of centurion.

the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won’t let us win the Laurel. They don’t care that the math doesn’t work. They don’t care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.