Ossian Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Ossian. Here they are! All 27 of them:

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person - few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.
Clarence Darrow
A little while ago I was able to wander in a beautiful sublime fantasy world, in Ossian’s half-dark magical world. But the blessed dreams dissolve; they seem like love potions - they intoxicate, exalt and then disappear, that is the misery and wretchedness of all our feelings. With thoughts it is no better: one easily overthinks things to the point of staleness.
Karoline von Günderrode
A thoroughbred,” “a pure pedigree,” these figures of speech have replaced the “heavenly angel” and Ossianic nomenclature; the old mythology of love is extinct, doomed to perish by modern dandyism.
Honoré de Balzac
she was fairly good at any kind of housework not demanding brains. Nobody could say why some of Ossian Popham's gifts of mind and conversation had not descended to his children, but though the son was not really stupid at practical work, Lallie Joy was in a perpetual state of coma.
Kate Douglas Wiggin (Mother Carey's Chickens)
There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry. Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted fragance and flavor of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant to the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should understand why he will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian does well to continue Indian.
Henry David Thoreau (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod)
In a day before passive spectatorship and the mass media, entertainment was supplied by actual people—not just paid performers but also ordinary people alone or in groups. Whitman’s picture in “I Hear America Singing” of average people singing their “varied carols” was more than just a metaphor. It reflected a pre-mass-media culture in which Americans often entertained themselves and each other. Whitman’s spouting Shakespeare atop omnibuses, declaiming Homer and Ossian at the seashore, and humming arias on the street typified these performances in everyday life.
David S. Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography)
What to me also seems most striking in this respect is how the great poetic geniuses (an Ossian, a Homer) are presented as blind. Naturally it doesn't matter to me whether they really were blind; the point is people have imagined them so, as if to indicate that what they saw when they sang of the beauty of nature appeared not to the external eye but to an inner intuition. How remarkable that one of the writers on bees - yes, the best of them - was blind from early youth; it's as if to show that here, where you would have thought external observation so important, he had found that point and from it was then able by purely mental activity to infer back to all particulars and reconstruct them in analogy with nature.
Søren Kierkegaard (Papers and Journals: A Selection)
We stepped to the window. Off to one side there was thunder, and the splendid rain was trickling down upon the land; the most refreshing fragrance rose up to us from the rich abundance of the warm atmosphere. She stood leaning on her elbows, with her gaze searching the countryside; she looked up to heaven and at me; I saw her eyes fill with tears, and she laid her hand on mine, saying, "Klopstock!" I recalled at once the glorious ode she had in mind, and became immersed in the stream of emotions which she had poured over me by uttering this symbolic name. I could not bear it, I bent down over hand and kissed it amid tears of the utmost rapture. And looked into her eyes again - noble poet! Would that you had seen your apotheosis in that gaze, and would that your name, so often profaned, would never reach my ears from any other lips.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
Shirt" The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes— The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity. A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers— Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.” Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader, The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields: George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone, The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
Robert Pinsky
From the quote of mine and Learned from Knowledge of soul:- “I have seen the tears of mother; which is deep in future and realistic in nature, the Ossian of heaven and bang for enemies but when fall in support of a man.” Alam Bakshi
Alam Bakshi
How would you define the impression of a dark night, of an ancient forest, of the wind moaning through ruins or over graves, of the ocean stretching beyond our sight? How would you define the emotion caused by the songs of Ossian, the church of St Peter, meditation upon death, the harmony of sound or forms? How would you define reverie, that intimate quivering of the soul, in which all the powers of the senses and thought come together and lose themselves in a mysterious confusion? There is religion at the bottom of all things. All that is beautiful, all that is intimate, all that is noble, partakes of the nature of religion.
Benjamin Constant (Political Writings)
The practice was steeped in worship of the Old Gods. A feminine aspect of the Wild, the Hunt, the Moons, called Fiáin. But the Holy Church beat the paganism out of the Ossians over time. A few traditions survived. Women fought in wars beside their men. Women had the rule of the hearth. But instead of Fiáin, local worship shifted to the Mothermaid after the Wars of the Faith. There were more churches and abbeys devoted to her in the Ossway than anywhere else in the empire.’ Gabriel leaned back, sipped at his wine. ‘It was only in the most remote corners where the ancient ways truly lived on. Old World religion. Worship of Fiáin. Wild Hunts. Fae witchery. All rare enough to be considered folklore by most. But the silversaints knew better.
Jay Kristoff (Empire of the Vampire (Empire of the Vampire #1))
Ossian more properly pictures the opinions of his race in Ireland and Scotland, though they are rather negative than affirmative. He, doubtless, never entered the esoteric circle of Druidism, and is very far from displaying any tincture of mysticism in his verses.
James Bonwick (Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions)
Dr. Blair was struck with the almost total absence of religious ideas in Ossian.
James Bonwick (Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions)
In this respect he differs from Macpherson's Ossian.
James Bonwick (Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions)
Everything will be okay with the happy face of your face -The sleepless writer
O.G.D Ossian
A WILD storm of controversy once raged, when Macpherson put forth a work purporting to be a collection of old Gaelic songs, under the name of the "Poems of Ossian," who was the last of the Fenian Chiefs, and who, reported, on his return to Ireland after his enchantment, failed to yield his paganism to St. Patrick's appeals. While generally condemned as the inventor of the lays, the charms of which enthralled even Byron and Goethe, he must surely have been a poet of great merit, if they were of his own composition. But if they were remains of ancient traditions, carried down by word of mouth, Macpherson might at least be credited with weaving them into more or less connected narratives.
James Bonwick (Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions)
At Mull, he continues, "Here are some persons who can repeat several of the Celtic poems of Ossian and other bards. The schoolmaster told me he could repeat a very long one on the death of Oscar, which was taught him by his grandfather.
James Bonwick (Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions)
If I am asked,” Sibelius confesses, “what interested me most at school, I can say with a clear conscience: nothing. I must, however, make an exception in favour of natural science, which coincided with my love of nature. History was able to engross my attention at times, if it dealt with periods that appealed to my imagination; then I read the dry schoolbook as though it were a novel. My passion for Ossian’s romantic ancient world in my youth I must also, I suppose, ascribe to my interest in history. I must also not forget the classical languages that opened up a new exalted world of beauty: Homer and Horace had a significance in my development that I cannot value highly enough. Outside music literature interested me most. I remained true to the poets of my childhood, but I was also seized with interest in modern tendencies in Scandinavian literature.
Karl Ekman (Jean Sibelius)
As a result of his experience, Ossian Sweet had packed, among all the moving boxes and satchels, a small arsenal of guns and four hundred pounds of ammunition.95
Carol Anderson (White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide)
One can go scarcely a mile in the mountains without finding one of the scenes of Ossian, one of the caves of Fingal, the traces of their passing, or the site of their tombs.
Charles Nodier (Promenade from Dieppe to the Mountains of Scotland)
The year wears away—the last year it is too—and I find myself near graduation, with every prospect of success. And from the beginning to the close my life has been one not of trouble, persecution, or punishment, but one of isolation only.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
My own success will prove, I hope, not only that I had sufficient ability to graduate—which by the way none have questioned—but also that the authorities were not as some have depicted them. This latter proof is important, first, because it will remove that fear which has deterred many from seeking, and even from accepting appointments when offered, to which determent my isolation is largely due; and second, because it will add another to the already long list of evidence of the integrity of our national army.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
Isn't it strange how some people strive to drag everything into politics! A political reason is assigned to everything, and "everything is politics.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
The one principle which has controlled my conduct while a cadet, and which is apparent throughout my narrative, is briefly this: to find, if possible, for every insult or other offence a reason or motive which is consistent with the character of a gentleman. Whenever I have been insulted, or any thing has been done or said to me which might have that construction, I have endeavored to find some excuse, some reason for it, which was not founded on prejudice or on baseness of character or any other ungentlemanly attribute; or, in other words, I wanted to prove that it was not done because of my color. If I could find such a reason—and I have found them—I have been disposed not only to overlook the offence, but to forgive and forget it.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
As soon as I show that I have some good qualities, do some act of kindness in spite of insult, my color is forgotten, and I am well treated. Again, I have observed that colored men of character and intellectual ability have been treated as men should be by all, whether friends or enemies; that is to say, no prejudice of color or race has ever been manifested.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
something wrong with Mr MacDougall’s Scottishness. It smelt of fraud like Ossian. ‘Svenson,’ the gloomy Scandinavian said sharply from behind his little Swedish flag; at least Wormold thought it was Swedish: he could never distinguish with certainty between the Scandinavian colours. ‘Wormold,’ he said. ‘What is all this nonsense of the milk?’ ‘I think’ Wormold said, ‘that Dr Braun is being a little too literal.’ ‘Or funny,’ Carter said. ‘I don’t think Dr Braun has much sense of humour.’ ‘And what do you do, Mr Wormold?’ the Swede asked. ‘I don’t think
Graham Greene (Our Man in Havana)