Ramses Quotes

when we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true deisres-What we WOULD have when that which we DO have so sorely disappoints us

the one for whom the sun shines.. -Ramses II

Now, Mama, Papa, and sir," said Ramses, "please withdraw to the farthest corner and crouch down with your backs turned. It is as I feared; we will never break through by this method. The walls are eight feet thick. Fortunately I brought along a little nitroglycerin--" "Oh, good Gad," shrieked Inspector Cuff.

I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning...rather than one great dull answer to all our questions

His lips parted, but long years of experience with Ramses, and to some extent, Emerson, had taught me how to turn a conversation into a monologue.

...Nefret said with a gusty sigh, 'Well, that's done it. We may as well join in, Ramses, family arguments are the favorite form of amusement here and this looks like being a loud one.

Ramses had always been fond of Helen, in his peculiar fashion, but if he had looked at me as he was looking at her, I would have sent for a constable.

Sekhmet crawled onto Ramses's lap and began to purr. 'The creature oozes like a furry slug,' said Ramses, eyeing it without favor.

What a nice neat deep trench,' I said. 'Er - should Nefret be down in it?' 'She thought she saw a skull,' Ramses said. 'You know how she is about bones.

As the Egyptians say, Ramses can hear a whisper across the Nile.

I knew the answer, and--of course--so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me.

Emerson bent a tender look upon his son and heir. ‘Very well, Ramses; Papa will find you all the dead bodies you want.

It's not unsporting to thrash a cowardly cad,' said Simmons. 'Everyone knows you don't fight like a gentleman.' 'That might be called an oxymoron,' Ramses said. 'Oh--sorry. Bad form to use long words. Look it up when you get home.' The poor devil didn't know how to fight, like a gentleman or otherwise.

The Evasive Cartwheel ™ © etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III— you can just see me in the background of The Dedication of the Royal Family before Ra, wheeling out of sight behind the pharaoh.

You certainly are a repository of useless information. How do you know all that?' David asked, with more amusement than admiration. 'I have a mind like a magpie's, easily distracted by interesting odds and ends,' Ramses admitted.

Unfortunately, identifying Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, which is the identification most frequently found in both scholarly and popular books, does not work if one also wishes to follow the chronology presented in the Bible.

You know how your eyes can deceive you at times--how a group of shapes and shadows can take on a certain form and then shift into another? It wasn't really like that; there was no physical change in him, he was exactly the same as he'd always been. I knew every line of his long body and every curl on his disheveled black head. I'd just never seen him before. you know what I'm trying to say, don't you? The change is in the heart.

As Ramses did the same for his mother, he saw that her eyes were fixed on him. She had been unusually silent. She had not needed his father's tactless comment to understand the full implications of Farouk's death. As he met her unblinking gaze he was reminded of one of Nefret's more vivid descriptions. 'When she's angry, her eyes look like polished steel balls.' That's done it, he thought. She's made up her mind to get David and me out of this if she has to take on every German and Turkish agent in the Middle East.

We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians, those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ.

Still,” said Ramse. “You’re not much. You’re what you are and we love you for it, but you’re not much.

As I left I heard Ramses say, ‘May I remark, Papa, dat alt’ough your consideration for my sensitivities was quite unnecessary, I am not without a proper appreciation of de sentiment dat prompted it.

Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire.

The horror was, Cleopatra meant something to these modern people of the twentieth century which was altogether wrong. She had become a symbol of licentiousness, when in fact she had possessed a multitude of amazing talents. They had punished her for her one flaw by forgetting everything else…Remembered, but not for what she was. A painted whore lying on a silken couch. - Ramses

On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. From that, we might conclude that she was equally dumb about jazz.

I would be the first to admit that my maternal instincts are not well developed--though in defense I must add that the raising of Ramses would have discouraged any woman.

Eavesdropping, Mother?' Ramses inquired. 'It is a shameful habit, but cursed useful,' I said, quoting something he had once said, and was rewarded by one of his rare and rather engaging smiles.

Have you caught cold?' 'It would appear so.' 'You could give it to Margaret,' Ramses suggested. His uncle turned the tinted spectacles toward him and then, unexpectedly, bust into laughter. 'What a charming idea. Will you aid and abet me when I catch her in a close embrace and breathe heavily on her?

And off he marched, his shoulders squared and his eyes lifted to the horizon. He looked so splendid I didn’t have the heart to point out the disadvantages of this posture; when one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one’s footing. Sure enough, he stumbled into Ramses’ pile of potsherds and went sprawling.

So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of . . . “Trojans, Ramses, Magnum . . . Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display. “They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions. Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.” “I don’t get what half these descriptions mean . . . What’s a vibrating ring?” “Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.” I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’” “I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.” “But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him. “Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?” “For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes. We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave. “Do you think he knew?” I ask. “You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?” “The sales guy. Why we were buying these?” A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was a . . . a . . . housewarming gift.” Okay, I’m ridiculous. “Or party favors,” I laugh. “Or”—he scrutinized the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.” “Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans. “Or little raincoats for . . .” He pauses, stumped. “Barbie dolls,” I suggest. “G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.

The Romans can not be condemned for the conquest of Egypt; we were conquered by time itself in the end. And all the wonders of this brave new century should draw me from my grief and yet I can not heal my heart; and so the mind suffers; the mind closes as if it were a flower without sun

Be Warned: I sleep as the earth sleeps beneath the night sky or the winter’s snow; and once awakened, I am servant to no man.

Grief, she thought. It’s a strange and a misunderstood emotion.

You haven’t found all the answers yet. Electricity, telephones, these are lovely magic. But the poor go unfed. Men kill for what they cannot gain by their own labour. How to share the magic, the riches, the secrets, that is still the problem.

No one knows for sure what the Mayan pyramids are for-navigation and chronography, some say, like Stonehenge-but we know damn well what the Egyptian pyramids were and are . . . great monuments to death, the world's biggest gravestones. Here Lies Ramses II, He Was Obedient . . .

You will learn as you get older, my dear girl, that not everyone reads as you do. Not everyone has the same encounter with language. There is a heightened sensitivity in you, to be sure, but you can embrace it. It’s far more than just a nervous condition, these tears you shed when you read of Cleopatra and Marc Antony’s fall. You are a rare and beautiful thing, Sibyl. For most people, words are just symbols for sounds, made on paper. For you, they can create all new worlds in your mind.

Papa, I would like to attend de funeral.’ ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ Emerson asked. ‘Dere is a variety of folktale dat claims dat de murderer is drawn to de funeral services of his victim. I suspect dat is pure legend, but a truly scientific mind does not dismiss a t’eory simply because it – ’ ‘Ramses, I am surprised

Either the War Office had recruited Ramses - in which case I would have General Spencer's head on a platter - or Ramses had come across something that, in his opinion, merited investigation.... I am never guilty of idle speculation, so I kept an open mind on that. Except that once I caught up with him, I would have Ramses' head on another platter.

I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine

You will learn as you get older, my dear girl, that not everyone reads as you do. Not everyone has the same encounter with language.

For some reason his parents had a low opinion of his common sense.

We are all born without our consent. Should it really be so thoroughly shattering to be reborn the same way.

For most people, words are just symbols for sounds, made on paper. For you, they can create all new worlds in your mind.

Among other emotions – I confess it without shame – was maternal pride. Ramses had displayed the qualities I might have expected from a descendant of the Emersons and the Peabodys. I

This was that lucid and dangerous state with drinking, when everything began to shimmer; when there was meaning in the grain of the marble; when one could make the most offensive speeches.

This is what love is, isn’t it? It’s not a thing for which you clear a certain space in your life. It takes over your life, and all else must be made to fit to it, or the result is endless grief or a willful numbness that results in the death of your spirit before your body.

I used to wonder: Do only ignorant laypeople gaze on the colossal bust of Ramses II at the British Museum and ask themselves how it ended up there? Is it only the unschooled visitor who looks at the soaring column from the Temple of Artemis at the Met and questions why it exists in this place?

So maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards. The average Egyptian was far less likely to die from starvation, plague or violence under Hosni Mubarak than under Ramses II or Cleopatra. Never had the material condition of most Egyptians been so good. You’d think they would have been dancing in the streets in 2011, thanking Allah for their good fortune. Instead they rose up furiously to overthrow Mubarak. They weren’t comparing themselves to their ancestors under the pharaohs, but rather to their contemporaries in the affluent West.

When the valley surrounding St. Cloud's was cleared and the second growth (scrub pine and random, unmanaged softwoods) sprang up everywhere, like swamp weed, and when there were no more logs to send downriver, from Three Mile Falls to St. Cloud's--because there were no more trees--that was when the Ramses Paper Company introduced Maine to the twentieth century by closing down the saw mill and the lumberyard along the river at St. Cloud's and moving camp downstream. . .There were no Ramses Paper Company people left behind, but there were people. . . Not one of the neglected officers of the Catholic Church of St. Cloud's stayed; there were more souls to save by following the Ramses Paper Company downstream.

All life seeks rebirth when removed from the mortal realm. All life, through its very nature, returns.

Life is too strong to be contained. It is never destroyed. Divorced from the flesh, it moves through all matter and form to find flesh again.

Ah, yes, beautiful English bones.

Ah, so much to ponder. But not now. Now was the time for the conjugal blessing of this new abode.

And we are this, this only, this ecstasy that flesh can give to flesh.

All over the lawn, the immortals had begun to wither and decompose, creating little pockets of chaos among the guests.

I am your queen,” the woman answered.

I have named them the hounds of Sisyphus.

It would have been enough to exhume Ramses to ensure his extermination by museumification. Because mummies don’t’ rot from worms: they die from being transplanted from a slow order of the symbolic to an order of history, science and museums. Irreparable violence toward all secrets, the violence of a civilization without secrets, hatred of a whole civilization for its own foundation.

I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning. Do you think the hereafter could be like that?

To see Ramses, at fourteen months, wrinkling his brows over a sentence like 'The theology of the Egyptians was a compound of fetishism, totem-ism and syncretism' was a sight as terrifying as it was comical. Even more terrifying was the occasional thoughtful nod the child would give. ...the room was dark except for one lamp, by whose light Emerson was reading. Ramses, in his crib, contemplated the ceiling with rapt attention. It made a pretty little family scene, until one heard what was being said. '...the anatomical details of the wounds, which included a large gash in the frontal bone, a broken malar bone and orbit, and a spear thrust which smashed off the mastoid process and struck the atlas vertebra, allow us to reconstruct the death scene of the king.' ... From the small figure in the cot came a reflective voice. 'It appeaws to me that he was muwduwed.'...' a domestic cwime.'...'One of the ladies of the hawem did it, I think.' I seized Emerson by the arm and pushed him toward the door, before he could pursue this interesting suggestion.

Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the “Peoples of the North” was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners. This enabled him to increase appreciably the slave labor force on royal construction sites and in the army. Such was invariably the procedure for acclimating white-skinned persons in Egypt, a process that became especially widespread during the low period. By bearing this in mind, we may avoid attributing a purely imaginary role to people who contributed absolutely nothing to Egyptian civilization.