Spain Sayings Quotes

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Just trying to get a visual of you on the beach in Spain… How's that working out for you? Pretty spiffy. Spiffy? Did you just say spiffy? I typed it actually. You got something against spiffy?
Alice Clayton (Wallbanger (Cocktail, #1))
Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos.
Subcomandante Marcos
Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go around. "The entire EU is short on coins." And I say, "Really?" because there are plenty of them in Germany. I'm never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian cashiers, who are, in a word, lazy. Here in Tokyo they're not just hard working but almost violently cheerful. Down at the Peacock, the change flows like tap water. The women behind the registers bow to you, and I don't mean that they lower their heads a little, the way you might if passing someone on the street. These cashiers press their hands together and bend from the waist. Then they say what sounds to me like "We, the people of this store, worship you as we might a god.
David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)
There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning. Night life is when everybody says what the hell and you do not remember who paid the bill. Night life goes round and round and you look at the wall to make it stop. Night life comes out of a bottle and goes into a jar. If you think how much are the drinks it is not night life.
Ernest Hemingway (88 Poems)
And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached—it was this last fact which was our undoing for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room)
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count all the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying 'Cheerio.' Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny about This?")
You aren't happy," Estela says. "I can't be happy," I say. "Look at me, Kenzie." "I'm looking at you, Estela." "Do you know your own heart?" "I don't know anything." "Go," she says, "and think. And don't come back until you know.
Beth Kephart (Small Damages)
She always says that americans can understand spaniards. That they are the only two western nations that can realize abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself b disembodiedness, in literature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but ritual.
Gertrude Stein (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas)
Many of us do not believe that it is truly possible to see the whole world in the same way as we travel and see, say, Italy or Spain. However, if we pretend for a moment that there are no borders separating one country from another, if we actually realize that these borders are nothing but imaginary lines drawn on maps and in historians’ heads, we may easily come to view our planet as one country, one destination – as the moon or Mars were when we first set out to explore them.
Nicos Hadjicostis (Destination Earth- A New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler)
He had only thought, and Wolsey had only thought, that the Emperor and Spain would be against it. Only the Emperor. He smiles in the dark, hands behind his head. He doesn't say which people, but waits for Liz to tell him. 'All women,' she says. 'All women everywhere in England. All women who have a daughter but not a son. All women who have lost a child. All women who have lost any hope of having a child. All women who are forty.
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
Yes,' he said. 'That's it. They'd kick him and beat him with a switch. Then if the youngster was really bad, they'd put him in a sack and take him back to Spain.' 'Saint Nicholas would kick you?' 'Well, not anymore,' Oscar said. 'Now he just pretends to kick you.' He considered this to be progressive, but in a way I think it's almost more preverse than the original punishment.'I'm going to hurt you but not really.' How many times have we fallen for that line? The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear. What kind of a Santa spends his time pretending to kick people before stuffing them into a canvas sack? Then, of course, you've got the six to eight former slaves who could potentially go off at any moment. This, I think, is the greatest difference between us and the Dutch. While a certain segment of our population might be perfectly happy with the arrangement, if you told the average white American that six to eight nameless black men would be sneaking into his house in the middle of the night, he would barricade the doors and arm himself with whatever he could get his hands on. 'Six to eight, did you say?
David Sedaris
Some historians say that when the Carthaginians landed in Spain the common soldiers shouted with one accord “Span! Span!”—for rabbits darted from every scrub, from every bush. The land was alive with rabbits. And Span in the Carthaginian tongue signifies Rabbit. Thus the land was called Hispania, or Rabbit-land, and the dogs, which were almost instantly perceived in full pursuit of the rabbits, were called Spaniels or rabbit dogs.
Virginia Woolf (Flush)
O Don Quixote, wise as thou art brave, La Mancha's splendor and of Spain the star! To thee I say that if the peerless maid, Dulcinea del Toboso, is to be restored to the state that was once hers, it needs must be that thy squire Sancho take on his bared behind, those sturdy buttocks, must consent to take three thousand lashes and three hundred more, and well laid on, that they may sting and smart; for those are the authors of her woe have thus resolved, and that is why I've come, This, gentles, is the word I bring to you.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
Do not confuse an over-confident person with one who simply is not afraid of making mistakes.
Lisa Sadleir (Moving to Spain with Children: Essential reading for anyone thinking about moving to Spain)
Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
A story went around that someone had asked Mozart how he intended to refute his detractors. "I will refute them with new works," he said. It was a confident, valiant thing for him to say, everyone thought. I thought so too, when I invented the story; and I still believe it today. (172)
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
Hospitality is a prized virtue of monastic communities. Benedict's rule says: 'All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."' Brother Alphonsus served as a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit college in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked at the door he would reply, 'I am coming, Lord!' This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door.
Ken Shigematsu (God in My Everything: How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God)
What we did not say was that with these hurts an edge was worn down. It happens out of necessity -- it would not be safe to carry a knife that sharp. But something is lost too: that early, perfect, impractical sharpness, which is so beautiful but which cannot survive being seen. (171)
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
I don't know whether it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for everyone. It addresses England as well as Spain, Italy as well as France, Germany as well as Ireland, the republics that harbour slaves as well as empires that have serfs. Social problems go beyond frontiers. Humankind's wounds, those huge sores that litter the world, do not stop at the blue and red lines drawn on maps. Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Miserables knocks at the door and says, 'Open up, I am here for you.
Victor Hugo
If he tries this,” she says, “then half the people in the world will be against it.” He had only thought, and Wolsey had only thought, that the Emperor and Spain would be against it. Only the Emperor. He smiles in the dark, hands behind his head. He doesn’t say, which people, but waits for Liz to tell him. “All women,” she says. “All women everywhere in England. All women who have a daughter but no son. All women who have lost a child. All women who have lost any hope of having a child. All women who are forty.
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
We had initially planned to visit France. Then we changed for Spain but finally travelled nowhere.
Andrew D. MIles (400 Ways to Say It in Business English)
However, I will say no more on this subject, for everything is guided and directed by the hand of God.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (The Conquest of New Spain)
In Spain we have a proverb. It is like this: Take what you like and pay for it, says God.
Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot, #20))
City of Gold. City of Water. City of Faiths. " Quien no ha visto Sevilla, " runs a saying, " no ha visto maravilla ".
Laurence Bergreen (Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe)
I suppose this is why I asked her to marry me: to give me something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room)
6. ANDRES INIESTA - SPAIN   (No matter what they say six is better than seven)   5. DAVID BECKHAM - ENGLAND   (High five!)   4. KAKA - BRAZIL   (I'm number four on the list but number one in your heart)   3. DIEGO MARADONA - ARGENTINA   (I'm the trifecta!)   2. LIONEL MESSI - ARGENTINA   (Watch out I'm right behind you.)   1. PELE - BRAZIL   (Knock knock, who's there? Best, Best who, Best Ever)
Alex Trost (100 of the Best Soccer Players of All Time)
When criminals are hanged, priests always officiate, annoying the malefactors by their presence. In Prussia a pastor conducts the poor wretch to the block ; in Austria a Catholic priest escorts him to the gallows ; in France to the guillotine ; in America a clergyman accompanies him to the electric chair ; in Spain to the ingenious appliance by which he is strangled, etc. Everywhere they have to carry a crucifix about on these occasions, as if to say: "You're only having your head chopped off, you're only being hanged, you're only being strangled, you're only having 15,000 volts shoved into you, but don't forget what He had to go through.
Jaroslav Hašek (The Good Soldier Schweik)
Ove didn’t know what he was expected to say to that; clearly the whole matter of car makes was considered quite important in Spain, and certainly Ove could empathise with that. ‘Saaaab,’ he said, therefore, pointing demonstratively at his chest.
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove: Now a major film starring Tom Hanks)
Brett emails me with updates on foreign rights. We've sold rights in Germany, Spain, Poland, and Russia. Not France, yet, but we're working on it, says Brett. But nobody sells well in France. If the French like you, then you're doing something very wrong.
R.F. Kuang (Yellowface)
After Greece, Portugal, rural Spain, southern Italy, and the former Communist Länder of Germany, the UK in 2000 was the largest beneficiary of European Union structural funds—which is a way of saying that parts of Britain were among the most deprived regions of the EU.
Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)
And if any one should say: “King Louis yielded the Romagna to Alexander and the kingdom to Spain to avoid war,” I answer for the reasons given above that a blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because it is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage.
Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)
The good news keeps piling up. Brett emails me with updates on foreign rights sales. We’ve sold rights in Germany, Spain, Poland, and Russia. Not France, yet, but we’re working on it, says Brett. But nobody sells well in France. If the French like you, then you’re doing something very wrong.
Rebecca F. Kuang (Yellowface)
Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address; a castle in Spain. [...] Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders.
G.K. Chesterton (The Secret of Father Brown (Father Brown, #4))
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise Hath chid down all the majesty of England; Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation, And that you sit as kings in your desires, Authority quite silent by your brawl, And you in ruff of your opinions clothed; What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled; and by this pattern Not one of you should live an aged man, For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, With self same hand, self reasons, and self right, Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes Would feed on one another.... Say now the king Should so much come too short of your great trespass As but to banish you, whither would you go? What country, by the nature of your error, Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders, To any German province, to Spain or Portugal, Nay, any where that not adheres to England, Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? this is the strangers case; And this your mountainish inhumanity.
William Shakespeare
It’s a bit ironic, you know,” Henry says, gazing up at it. “Me, the cursed gay heir, standing here in Victoria’s museum, considering how much she loved those sodomy laws.” He smirks. “Actually … you remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?” “The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?” “Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man named George Villiers. ‘The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,’ they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” He clears his throat and starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’” Alex must be staring, because he adds, “Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?” “You’re kidding.” “He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’” “Jesus.” “Precisely.” Henry’s still looking up at the statue, but Alex can’t stop looking at him and the sly smile on his face, lost in his own thoughts. “And James’s son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It’s the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn’t even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
when I hear people say “Six Flags,” my mind fills in “Over Texas” and I have to resist the temptation to explain why “Six Flags.” The six flags refer to the six flags of the countries that flew over Texas in history: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Confederate States of America.
Annette Gordon-Reed (On Juneteenth)
When I first went to Rwanda, I was reading a book called Civil War, which had been receiving great critical acclaim. Writing from an immediate post-Cold War perspective, the author, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a German, observed, “The most obvious sign of the end of the bipolar world order are the thirty or forty civil wars being waged openly around the globe,” and he set out to inquire what they were all about. This seemed promising until I realized that Enzensberger wasn’t interested in the details of those wars. He treated them all as a single phenomenon and, after a few pages, announced: “What gives today’s civil wars a new and terrifying slant is the fact that they are waged without stakes on either side, that they are wars about nothing at all.” In the old days, according to Enzensberger—in Spain in the 1930s or the United States in the 1860s—people used to kill and die for ideas, but now “violence has separated itself from ideology,” and people who wage civil wars just kill and die in an anarchic scramble for power. In these wars, he asserted, there is no notion of the future; nihilism rules; “all political thought, from Aristotle and Machiavelli to Marx and Weber, is turned upside down,” and “all that remains is the Hobbesian ur-myth of the war of everyone against everyone else.” That such a view of distant civil wars offers a convenient reason to ignore them may explain its enormous popularity in our times. It would be nice, we may say, if the natives out there settled down, but if they’re just fighting for the hell of it, it’s not my problem. But it is our problem. By denying the particularity of the peoples who are making history, and the possibility that they might have politics, Enzensberger mistakes his failure to recognize what is at stake in events for the nature of those events. So he sees chaos—what is given off, not what’s giving it off—and his analysis begs the question: when, in fact, there are ideological differences between two warring parties, how are we to judge them? In the case of Rwanda, to embrace the idea that the civil war was a free-for-all—in which everyone is at once equally legitimate and equally illegitimate—is to ally oneself with Hutu Power’s ideology of genocide as self-defense.
Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families)
Also, the world contains a lot of people. The statistics of power-law distributions and the events of the past two centuries agree in telling us that a small number of perpetrators can cause a great deal of damage. If somewhere among the world’s six billion people there is a zealot who gets his hands on a stray nuclear bomb, he could single-handedly send the statistics through the roof. But even if he did, we would still need an explanation of why homicide rates fell a hundredfold, why slave markets and debtors’ prisons have vanished, and why the Soviets and Americans did not go to war over Cuba, to say nothing of Canada and Spain over flatfish.
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
How do you teach "work hard, be independent, learn the meaning of money" to children who look around themselves and realize that they never have to work hard, be independent, or learn the meaning of money? That's why so many cultures around the world have a proverb to describe the difficulty of raising children in an atmosphere of wealth. In English, the saying is "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." The Italians say, "Dalle stelle alle stalle" ("from stars to stables"). In Spain it's "Quien no lo tiene, lo hance; y quien no lo tiene, lo deshance" ("he who doesn't have it, does it, and he who has it, misuses it"). Wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted. This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well.
Lewis Hyde (The Gift)
This is a plot: I hope he will keep quiet while he looks at them. I dive under the table and push the chest against his patent leather shoes, I put an armload of post cards and photos on his lap: Spain and Spanish Morocco. But I see by his laughing, open look that I have been singularly mistaken in hoping to reduce him to silence. He glances over a view of San Sebastian from Monte Igueldo, sets it cautiously on the table and remains silent for an instant. Then he sighs: 'Ah, Monsieur, you're lucky ... if what they say is true-travel is the best school. Is that your opinion, Monsieur?' I make a vague gesture. Luckily he has not finished. 'It must be such an upheaval. If I were ever to go on a trip, I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving, so that when I returned I would be able to compare what I was and what I had become. I've read that there are travellers who have changed physically and morally to such an extent that even their closest relatives did not recognize them when they came back.
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache.
G.K. Chesterton (What's Wrong with the World)
A newspaper publisher. In the late 1800s the United States and Spain were warming up for a war over Cuba, and Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to make pictures of the event. When the illustrator got there, he sent a telegram to Hearst saying that as far as he could see, there was no war coming and that he was going home. Hearst sent back that he should stay and said, ‘You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war.’ And he did.
John Scalzi (The Human Division (Old Man's War, #5))
The Spanish say, “El sol es el mejor torero.” The longest books on Spain are usually written by Germans who make one intensive visit and then never return. I know no modern sculpture, except Brancusi’s, that is in any way the equal of the sculpture of modern bullfighting. “mas cornadas dan las mujeres.” Manzanilla also means camomile, but if you remember to ask for a chato of manzanilla there is no danger that you will be served camomile tea.
Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon)
The reunions are always joyous and the good byes bittersweet, everyone regretting they have so little time together. Thomas says that he doesn't know Vilalba very well because they usually just stay at the house for endless conversations, punctuated by laughter and complaints, long lunches and drawn-out dinners. He says that for him Spain is just people in his family who love one another, who eat and drink and cut each other off in conversation until night falls.
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
Now, my friends, keep you from the white and from the red, and especially from the white wine of Spain that is for sale in the streets of London. This wine of Spain creeps subtly into other wines, which are grown nearby, from which there rise such fumes to the head that, when a man has drunk three draughts and thinks he is at home in London, he is in Spain, right at the town of Lepe—not in La Rochelle, nor at Bordeaux town—and then will he drunkenly say, “Samson, Samson!
Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales)
When I went in the military, they asked, 'What race are you?' I had no idea what they were talking about because in Hawaii we don't question a man's race. They said, 'Where are your parents from?' I said they were born in Hawaii. 'Your grandparents?' They were born in Hawaii. 'How about your great-grandparents?' I said they're from Europe. Some from Spain, some from Wales. They said, 'You're Caucasian.' I said, 'What's that?' They said, 'You're white.' I looked at my skin. I was pretty dark, tanned by the sun. I said, 'You're kidding.' They put me down as Caucasian and separated me from the rest of the Hawaiians. … Some of my new buddies asked me not to talk to three of the men. I asked why. They said, 'They're Jews.' I said, 'What's a Jew?' They said, 'Don't you know? They killed Jesus Christ.' I says, 'You mean them guys? They don't look old enough.' They said, 'You're tryin' to get smart?' I said, 'No. It's my understanding he was killed about nineteen hundred years ago.' pp. 19-20.
Studs Terkel (The Good War: An Oral History of World War II)
Pedro, the Guardia, asked him if he could inspect the inside of his van because hundreds of very expensive ham legs had been stolen recently and the robbery perpetrated by a gang of men dressed as priests ‒ how do you say, monks. Danny felt the beads of sweat trickle down his back as he slid open the door. Along the side was a clothes rack with different costumes hung on hangers. He couldn't actually remember when he'd last cleaned the van out, hadn't the front to admit to such slovenliness. Pedro the cop lifted off a cassock. "I use that for my work." Pedro put his hand on the van and poked his nose in, sniffed and backed his face away and looked at his hand covered in sticky egg yolk and shell. "It's for the wash," continued Danny, fighting a smirk. Pedro pointed at his eyes with his fingers and then at Danny's to indicate, I'm watching you. Danny reluctantly handed the cash over to the cop. They ambled off as he watched his money scrunch into his pocket. Danny slumped at the bar, deflated.
Mark Shearman (Zorro's Last Stand)
The initial months of the war had left Barcelona plunged in a strange somnolence of fear and internal skirmishes. The fascist Rebellion had failed in Barcelona in the first few days after the coup, and there were those who wanted to believe that the war was now a distant event, that in the end it would be seen as just one more piece of bravado from generals with little stature and even less shame. In a matter of weeks, they said, everything would return to the feverish abnormality that characterize the countries public life . . . He knew that a civil war is never just one fight, but a tangle of large or small fights bound to one another. It's official memory is always established by chroniclers and trench on the winning or the losing side, but it is never the story of those who are trapped between the two, those who seldom set the bonfire alight...[He] used to say that in Spain and opponent may be scorned, but anyone who does things his own way and refuses to swallow what he doesn't agree with is hated.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Labyrinth of the Spirits)
Every man needs to know what he's fighting for." That was apparently what people said. Or at least it was what Sonja had once read out aloud to Ove from one of her books. Ove couldn't remember which one; there were always so many books around that woman. In Spain she had bought a whole bag of them, despite not even speaking Spanish. "I'll learn while I'm reading," she said. As if that was the way you did it. Ove told her he was a bit more about thinking for himself rather than reading what a lot of other clots had on their minds. Sonja just smiled and caressed his cheek. On that, Ove couldn't say anything.
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove)
Jackson himself described how the treaties were obtained: “. . . we addressed ourselves feelingly to the predominant and governing passion of all Indian tribes, i.e., their avarice or fear.” He encouraged white squatters to move into Indian lands, then told the Indians the government could not remove the whites and so they had better cede the lands or be wiped out. He also, Rogin says, “practiced extensive bribery.” These treaties, these land grabs, laid the basis for the cotton kingdom, the slave plantations. Every time a treaty was signed, pushing the Creeks from one area to the next, promising them security there, whites would move into the new area and the Creeks would feel compelled to sign another treaty, giving up more land in return for security elsewhere. Jackson’s work had brought the white settlements to the border of Florida, owned by Spain. Here were the villages of the Seminole Indians, joined by some Red Stick refugees, and encouraged by British agents in their resistance to the Americans. Settlers moved into Indian lands. Indians attacked. Atrocities took place on both sides. When certain villages refused to surrender people accused of murdering whites, Jackson ordered the villages destroyed.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
[Galba] was killed beside the Lake of Curtius​ and was left lying just as he was, until a common soldier, returning from a distribution of grain, threw down his load and cut off the head. Then, since there was no hair by which to grasp it, he put it under his robe, but later thrust his thumb into the mouth and so carried it to Otho. He handed it over to his servants and camp followers, who set it on a lance and paraded it about the camp with jeers, crying out from time to time, "Galba, thou Cupid, exult in thy vigour!" From these it was bought by a freedman of Patrobius Neronianus for a hundred pieces of gold and thrown aside in the place where his patron had been executed by Galba's order. ... [Galba's] hands and feet were so distorted by gout that he could not endure a shoe for long, unroll a book, or even hold one. The flesh on his right side too had grown out and hung down to such an extent, that it could with difficulty be held in place by a bandage. He was more inclined to unnatural desire,​a and in gratifying it preferred full-grown, strong men. They say that when Icelus, one of his old-time favourites, brought him news in Spain of Nero's death, he not only received him openly with the fondest kisses, but begged him to prepare himself without delay and took him aside.
Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars)
We disagree, perhaps, about the urgent need to abolish slavery,” said Chase mildly. “You would go to war for that?” “If it was necessary, yes.” “Wouldn’t you rather go to war against Spain, and acquire Cuba? Against the French, and acquire Mexico?” “I would rather acquire Charleston.” “But we would have outflanked the cotton states.” Seward was persuasive; and elaborate. Chase listened, carefully. The concept was ingenious. The famed two birds that it was always his dream with one stone to kill might, at last, be snared. “Let us say,” said Chase, when Seward had finished with his design for empire, “that I am open to the idea in general. But in particular
Gore Vidal (Lincoln)
the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: The Fascinating History of the English Language)
18. A third powerful factor in the diffusion of communism is the conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world. We say conspiracy, because it is impossible otherwise to explain how a press usually so eager to exploit even the little daily incidents of life has been able to remain silent for so long about the horrors perpetrated in Russia, in Mexico and even in a great part of Spain; and that it should have relatively so little to say concerning a world organization as vast as Russian communism. This silence is due in part to short-sighted political policy, and is favored by various occult forces which for a long time have been working for the overthrow of the Christian Social Order.
Pope Pius XI (Divini Redemptoris: On Atheistic Communism)
Philippe, I’m going to Spain and I’m not coming back, at least not right away. You are going to Bordeaux and I know it will be only the first step in a long journey. I always knew you were made for somewhere else. Our paths are separating. I know you would have liked for things to be different, for me to say the words that would have reassured you, but I could not, and I never knew how to talk anyway. In the end, I tell myself that you understood. It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
Philippe, I’m going to Spain and I’m not coming back, at least not right away. You are going to Bordeaux and I know it will be only the first step in a long journey. I always knew you were made for somewhere else. Our paths are separating. I know you would have liked for things to be different, for me to say the words that would have reassured you, but I could not, and I never knew how to talk anyway. In the end, I tell myself that you understood. It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what the hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
I’m rather an admirer of the book,” Robert said and took a sip from his glass. “Damien, when you marry, you might want to see if Brianna won’t lend it out to your bride. I promise you no regrets if you give it to your beloved. Let’s just say there are certain things a gentleman won’t address with his wife that Lady Rothburg has no trouble discussing in detail.” If his younger brother’s sinful grin was any indication, it was true. “I’m headed back to Spain tomorrow.” Damien pointed out. “So I doubt romance of any kind is in my future, but I’ll keep it in mind.” “One never knows.” Colton commented. “Had anyone said it was in mine, I would have protested vehemently.” How true. How could anyone have guessed his upright older brother would marry such a lovely but impulsive young lady and manage to become a different man than the upright, unapproachable Duke of Rolthven?
Emma Wildes (Lessons From a Scarlet Lady (Northfield, #1))
It may be no more than an intriguing coincidence, but the area of Cro-Magnon’s cave paintings is also the area containing Europe’s oldest and most mysterious ethnic group, the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: The Fascinating History of the English Language)
Chef Ayden says you have something special. An 'affinity with the things that come from the dirt,' he says. A master of spices. And coming from Ayden that means a lot. He doesn't usually believe in natural inclinations. Only in working hard enough to make the hard work seem effortless. Is it true about you?" I know my eyebrows look about ready to parachute off my face. "You mean the bay-leaf thing?" "No more oil, that's good." She takes the bowl of marinated octopus from my hand, covers it with a red cloth, and puts it in the fridge. "The 'bay-leaf thing' is exactly what I mean. You're new to Spain. From what your teacher tells me, not many of you have had exposure to world cuisines. Yet, you know a variety of herb that looks and smells slightly different when found outside of this region. I'm sure you've probably seen it in other ways. You've probably mixed spices together no one told you would go together. Cut a vegetable in a certain way that you believe will render it more flavorful. You know things that no one has taught you, sí?" I shake my head no at her. 'Buela always said I had magic hands but I've never said it out loud about myself. And I don't know if I believed it was magic as much as I believed I'm a really good cook. But she is right; most of my experimenting is with spices. "My aunt Sarah sends me recipes that I practice with. And I watch a lot on Food Network. Do you have that channel here? It's really good. They have this show called Chopped-" Chef Amadí puts down the rag she was wiping down the counter with and takes my hands in hers. Studies my palms. "Chef Ayden tells me you have a gift. If you don't want to call it magic, fine. You have a gift and it's probably changed the lives of people around you. When you cook, you are giving people a gift. Remember that.
Elizabeth Acevedo (With the Fire on High)
So, about that one sentence of advice: Don’t feel behind. Two Roman historians recorded that when Julius Caesar was a young man he saw a statue of Alexander the Great in Spain and broke down in tears. “Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable,” he supposedly said. Pretty soon, that concern was a distant memory and Caesar was in charge of the Roman Republic—which he turned into a dictatorship before he was murdered by his own pals. It’s fair to say that like most youth athletes with highlight reels, he peaked early. Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so don’t let anyone else make you feel behind. You probably don’t even know where exactly you’re going, so feeling behind doesn’t help. Instead, as Herminia Ibarra suggested for the proactive pursuit of match quality, start planning experiments. Your personal version of Friday night or Saturday morning experiments, perhaps.
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
When one travels, one does so to learn: a change of place should mean a change of scenery. Imagine how you will look when people ask you: "How do they execute criminals in Rome?" and you have to answer: "I don't know." Then, they say that the condemned man is an infamous rogue, a maniac who took a gridiron and beat to death a good priest who had brought him up as his own son. Just think! When you kill a man of the cloth, you should at least use a more appropriate implement than a gridiron, especially when this priest could be your father. If you were travelling through Spain, you would go and see a bullfight, wouldn't you? Well, imagine that we are going to see a fight; imagine the Ancient Romans and their Circus, those wild-beast hunts in which they killed a hundred lions and a hundred men. Remember the eighty thousand spectators clapping their hands, the virtuous matrons who would take their unmarried daughters, and those delightful Vestal Virgins whose pure white hands would give a charming little sign with the thumb that meant: "Come on, don't be lazy! Finish him off, that man who is already three-quarters dead!
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
All Europe was watching Spain. The left-wing government elected last February had suffered an attempted military coup backed by Fascists and conservatives. The rebel general Franco had won support from the Catholic Church. The news had struck the rest of the continent like an earthquake. After Germany and Italy would Spain, too, fall under the curse of Fascism? “The revolt was botched, as you probably know, and it almost failed,” Billy went on. “But Hitler and Mussolini came to the rescue, and saved the insurrection by airlifting thousands of rebel troops from North Africa as reinforcements.” Lenny put in: “And the unions saved the government!” “That’s true,” Billy said. “The government was slow to react, but the trade unions led the way in organizing workers and arming them with weapons they seized from military arsenals, ships, gun shops, and anywhere else they could find them.” Granda said: “At least someone is fighting back. Until now the Fascists have had it all their own way. In the Rhineland and Abyssinia, they just walked in and took what they wanted. Thank God for the Spanish people, I say. They’ve got the guts to say no.
Ken Follett (Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2))
Social life was similarly affected by the teachings of the Koran. At a time when in Christian Europe an epidemic was regarded as a scourge of God to which man had but to submit meekly - at that time, and long before it, the Muslims followed the injunction of their Prophet which directed them to combat epidemics by segregating the infected towns and areas. And at a time when even the kings and nobles of Christendom regarding bathing as an almost indecent luxury, even the poorest of Muslim houses had at least one bathroom, while elaborate public baths were common in every Muslim city (in the ninth century, for instance, Córdoba had three hundred of them): and all this in response to the Prophet’s teaching that ‘Cleanliness is part of faith’. A Muslim did not come into conflict with the claims of spiritual life if he took pleasure in the beautiful things of material life, for, according to the Prophet, ‘God loves to see on His servants an evidence of His bounty’. In short, Islam gave a tremendous incentive to cultural achievements which constitute one of the proudest pages in the history of mankind; and it gave this incentive by saying Yes to the intellect and No to obscurantism, Yes to action and no to quietism, Yes to life and No to ascetism. Little wonder, then, that as soon as it emerged beyond the confines of Arabia, Islam won new adherents by leaps and bounds. Born and nurtured in the world-contempt of Pauline and Augustinian Christianity, the populations of Syria and North Africa, and a little layer of Visigothic Spain, saw themselves suddenly confronted with a teaching which denied the dogma of Original Sin and stressed the inborn dignity of earthly life: and so they rallied in ever-increasing numbers to the new creed that gave them to understand that man was God’s vicar on earth. This, and not a legendary ‘conversion at the point of the sword’, was the explanation of Islam’s amazing triumph in the glorious morning of its history. It was not the Muslims that had made Islam great: it was Islam that had made the Muslims great. But as soon as their faith became habit and ceased to be a programme of life, to be consciously pursued, the creative impulse that underlay their civilisation waned and gradually gave way to indolence, sterility and cultural decay.
Muhammad Asad (The Road to Mecca)
You own a sweet shop?” St. Just fell in step beside Westhaven, all bonhomie and good cheer. “Diversification of assets, Kettering calls it. Get your own sweet shop, why don’t you?” “My brother, a confectioner. Marriage has had such a positive impact on you, Westhaven. How long have you owned this fine establishment?” It was a fine establishment, which was to say, it was warm. The scents of chocolate and cinnamon thick in the air didn’t hurt, either. Westhaven waited silently while St. Just peered around the place with unabashed curiosity. There was a prodigious amount of pink in the decor, and ribbon bows and small baskets and tins artfully decorated. “You own a bordello for sweets,” St. Just observed in a carrying voice likely honed on the parade grounds of Spain. “It’s charming.” “Unlike you.” “You’re just cold and missing your countess. One must make allowances.” Mercifully, those allowances meant St. Just kept quiet while Westhaven purchased a quantity of marzipan. “You aren’t going to tell the troops to carry on, God Save the King, and all that?” St. Just asked as they left the shop. He reached over and stuffed his fingers into the bag of sweets Westhaven was carrying. “Help yourself, by all means.” “Can’t leave all the heavy lifting to my younger brothers.
Grace Burrowes (Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (The Duke's Daughters, #1; Windham, #4))
Who has not known you, O deep joys of wine? Whoever has had some remorse to appease, a memory to evoke, a sorrow to drown, a castle to build in Spain, in fact all men have invoked you, mysterious god concealed in the tendrils of the vine. Wine is like man himself: one never knows to what extent one may esteem or despise him, love or hate him, nor of what sublime actions or monstrous crimes he is capable. Let us not then be crueller towards wine than towards ourselves, let us treat him as an equal. Sometimes I think I can hear wine speak (he speaks with his soul, the spiritual voice heard only by the spirit) and he says: “Man, my beloved, I would pour out for you, in spite of my prison of glass and fetters of cork, a song full of brotherhood, a song full of joy, light and hope. I am no ingrate; I know that I owe you my life. I know what it cost you in toil, your back under the burning sun. You gave me life and I shall reward you for it. I am the soul of your country. I am half-lover, half-soldier. I shall light up your aged wife’s eyes, the old companion of your everyday cares and your oldest hopes. I shall soften her glance and drop into the pupil of her eye the lightning-flash of her youth. Our close reunion will create poetry. Between us we shall make a god. This is what wine sang in its mysterious language.
Charles Baudelaire (On Wine and Hashish (Hesperus Classics))
What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods.” “And then they died.” “Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here.
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
If you, illustrious Prince (the words were addressed to the Duke of Wurtemberg) had informed your subjects that you were coming to visit them at an unnamed time, and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet you at your coming, what would you do if on arrival you should find that, instead of robing themselves in white, they had spent their time in violent debate about your person—some insisting that you were in France, others that you were in Spain; some declaring that you would come on horseback, others that you would come by chariot; some holding that you would come with great pomp and others that you would come without any train or following? And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? “He will come on horseback.” “No, he will not; it will be by chariot.” “You lie.” ”I do not; you are the liar.” “Take that”—a blow with the fist. “Take that” ”—a sword-thrust through the body. Prince, what would you think of such citizens? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life; but what occupies our thoughts? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after death”—of a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived. Sebastian Castellio
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West)
Experiments in limiting reproduction to the undesirable classes were unconsciously made in mediæval Europe under the guidance of the church. After the fall of Rome social conditions were such that all those who loved a studious and quiet life were compelled to seek refuge from the violence of the times in monastic institutions and upon such the church imposed the obligation of celibacy and thus deprived the world of offspring from these desirable classes. In the Middle Ages, through persecution resulting in actual death, life imprisonment and banishment, the free thinking, progressive and intellectual elements were persistently eliminated over large areas, leaving the perpetuation of the race to be carried on by the brutal, the servile and the stupid. It is now impossible to say to what extent the Roman Church by these methods has impaired the brain capacity of Europe, but in Spain alone, for a period of over three centuries from the years 1471 to 1781, the Inquisition condemned to the stake or imprisonment an average of 1,000 persons annually. During these three centuries no less than 32,000 were burned alive and 291,000 were condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties and 17,000 persons were burned in effigy, representing men who had died in prison or had fled the country. No better method of eliminating the genius producing strains of a nation could be devised and if such were its purpose the result was eminently satisfactory, as is demonstrated by the superstitious and unintelligent Spaniard of to-day. A similar elimination of brains and ability took place in northern Italy, in France and in the Low Countries, where hundreds of thousands of Huguenots were murdered or driven into exile.
Madison Grant (The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History)
A few days after that dinner, I catch up with my new friend Paul over coffee. He is telling me about a time when he cycled from the Netherlands to Spain – a many-months-long endeavour that he completed solo. I try to imagine myself in this scenario. ‘Were you lonely?’ I ask. Paul pauses, taken aback by the question. And this is the problem with Deep Talk. Not only do you have to be a bit vulnerable and a bit ballsy to ask the questions in the first place, but you’re also asking whoever you’re speaking with to be the same: open up, take your hand and embrace the depths. Paul furrows his brow. After a beat, he nods. ‘Yeah, I was,’ he says. ‘What did you do to combat it?’ ‘I wrote in my journal a lot,’ he tells me. ‘I went for walks. But I was still really lonely.’ He tells me that he’s good at talking to people but that in most of the places where he stopped along the way people were pretty guarded. When I play back this conversation in my head, I wonder how differently pre-sauna Jess would have handled it. Given that I don’t know Paul well, I would have probably asked about logistics, or how many miles he covered per day, or what kind of bike he rode. Maybe, at best, I’d have launched into a story about a bike seat I’d used in Beijing that was such a literal arse ache that I could barely walk for two weeks, followed by a monologue about the realities of life with thigh chaffing. I am so impressed by how open Paul is with me. He could have lied and told me, nah, he doesn’t get lonely, that he relished the time alone on the road, he was a lone wolf, a cowboy striking out into the sunset with nothing but his trusty metallic steed. One of the most vital parts of Deep Talk is that it has to be a two-way process – both parties have to be willing to share, to disclose, to be vulnerable. If you initiate it with someone but don’t give back, you’re likely just harassing innocent people to share extremely personal information. I realise I probably shouldn’t go around asking men about their loneliness and not share my own experience of it. Since we’re all in this together, I’ll tell you, too.
Jessica Pan (Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously)
Only twice in literary history has there been a great period of tragedy, in the Athens of Pericles and in Elizabethan England. What these two periods had in common, two thousand years and more apart in time, that they expressed themselves in the same fashion, may give us some hint of the nature of tragedy, for far from being periods of darkness and defeat, each was a time when life was seen exalted, a time of thrilling and unfathomable possibilities. They held their heads high, those men who conquered at Marathon and Salamis, and those who fought Spain and saw the Great Armada sink. The world was a place of wonder; mankind was beauteous; life was lived on the crest of the wave. More than all, the poignant joy of heroism had stirred men’s hearts. Not stuff for tragedy, would you say? But on the crest of the wave one must feel either tragically or joyously; one cannot feel tamely. The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view. When humanity is seen as devoid of dignity and significance, trivial, mean, and sunk in dreary hopelessness, then the spirit of tragedy departs. “Sometime let gorgeous tragedy in sceptred pall come sweeping by.” At the opposite pole stands Gorki with The Lower Depths. Other poets may, the tragedian must, seek for the significance of life. An error strangely common is that this significance for tragic purposes depends, in some sort, upon outward circumstance, on pomp and feast and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry— Nothing of all that touches tragedy. The surface of life is comedy’s concern; tragedy is indifferent to it. We do not, to be sure, go to Main Street or to Zenith for tragedy, but the reason has nothing to do with their dull familiarity. There is no reason inherent in the house itself why Babbitt’s home in Zenith should not be the scene of a tragedy quite as well as the Castle of Elsinore. The only reason it is not is Babbitt himself. “That singular swing toward elevation” which Schopenhauer discerned in tragedy, does not take any of its impetus from outside things. The
Edith Hamilton (The Greek Way)
was lost and the other fortress was likewise lost. These two forts were besieged by seventy-five thousand Turkish regulars and more than four hundred thousand Moors and Arabs from all parts of Africa and, accompanying this vast force, was an abundance of munitions and engines of war and so many sappers that, with their bare hands, they could have covered the Goleta and the half-built fortress with just a handful of earth each. The Goleta, until then accounted to be impregnable, was the first to be lost, and it was not taken through any default of valor of its defenders who, in its defense did all they could do or ought to have done, but because experience had shown with what ease entrenchments might be dug in that desert sand. Though water had, at one time, been found sixteen inches below the surface, the Turks did not find any at a depth of two yards. And, therefore, filling many sacks full of sand, they raised their earthworks so high that they did surmount the walls of the fort and, thus, they could fire at the defenders from a superior height, so that it was impossible to mount a defense. “It was the general opinion that our troops should not have shut themselves up inside the Goleta, but should have waited in the open field to meet the adversary at the place of their disembarkation. But those who say this speak from a comfortable remove and with little experience in matters of this kind. For, if in the Goleta and the other fort there were scarce seven thousand soldiers, how could so few in number, be they ever so resolute, have sallied forth into the field and, at the same time, remained inside the fortifications against so great a number of enemies? And how is it possible not to lose a fort when it is not reinforced and resupplied, especially when it is besieged by so many determined enemies fighting on their own soil? But many were of the opinion, and so it seemed to me as well, that Heaven granted Spain a special favor by permitting the destruction of that source of iniquity, that monster of insatiable appetite, that devourer of innumerable sums of money spent there unprofitably without serving any end, other than to preserve the memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V, as if those stones of the Goleta were necessary to sustain his eternal fame, as it is and forever shall be. “The other fort was also lost, but the Turks were constrained to win it inch by inch, for the soldiers who defended it fought so manfully and so resolutely that they killed more than five and twenty thousand of the enemy over the course of two and twenty general assaults. Of the three hundred of our men who were taken prisoner, not one was left without a wound, a clear and manifest sign of their valor and strength,
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
I’m ashamed to say that getting behind the wheel of Dirk’s shiny Penismobile was actually a lot of fun.
Emmett Spain (Old Haunts: A London City Novel)
Was floozy the kind of job that required good references? Matt doubted it, but he refrained from saying so.
Josh Lanyon (Snowball in Hell (Doyle and Spain, #1))
I must again thank Angela for her kind words regarding my novel. It is very rewarding, as an author, to get praise from readers, who after all, are the best critics. The Major and Miner was always planned, in my mind, to be the first part of a trilogy and so it has turned out to be, having finished the second and half way through the third. In between, I've written an unrelated novel/thriller centered around where I live in Spain. I'm afraid you will have to have a word with my publisher to ask why this and part two hasn't been printed. It portrays the same character who 'escapes' to America. He's up to his old tricks and is confronted by a political problem. Can't say more. Thanks for all your interest. David Spear
David Spear (The Major and Miner)
The guard can go to the Rialto and tell the rettori. The councilmen look into crimes such as this. They could send an avogadore to investigate.” Falco spun around to face her again. “Who is she? You don’t know. Who killed her? You don’t know. Even if the guard stopped drinking and playing dice long enough to row over to tell the rettori, I doubt the magistrate will be concerned. They only care about crimes that upset the merchants or that scare away tourists. They won’t care about a robbed tomb out here on San Domenico, or about the murder of an unknown courtesan.” “Maybe you’re afraid they’ll think you killed her.” Cass lifted her chin, forcing herself to meet Falco’s eyes, searching them for signs of evil. She saw none. And yet, there had to be a reason he was so opposed to reporting a murder. Falco folded his arms. “And what will they think about you, trolling the graveyard, unchaperoned, with a stranger? A commoner, no less. What will your parents say when the soldiers drag you home? Won’t they be shocked to find out what late-night company their lovely daughter has been keeping?” “My parents are dead,” Cass said simply. She didn’t say it to make him feel guilty. It just came out of her mouth instinctively. She’d probably said it a hundred times, so often that the words themselves felt dead to her, meaningless. Falco softened. “Your guardians, then. They won’t believe that we weren’t…” He trailed off. “It’ll be the talk of the city by daybreak.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “Fun thought, though, eh? A girl like you with me?” His soft touch made Cass warm and cold at the same time. He was right. Aunt Agnese would lock Cass inside the villa if she found out where Cass had spent the evening. And if she found out Cass was consorting with a commoner? Well, that would be very bad, possibly exiled-to-a-nunnery-in-Spain bad.
Fiona Paul (Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1))
The novel is set in Germany and the main characters are German. There is nothing of significance to say about England twenty years after its surrender. Except, that is, that it is part of a European Union: In the West, twelve nations – Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland – had been corralled by Germany, under the Treaty of Rome, into a European trading bloc. German was the official second language in all schools. People drove German cars, listened to German radios, watched German televisions, worked in German-owned factories, moaned about the behaviour of German tourists in German-dominated holiday resorts, while German teams won every international sporting competition except cricket, which only the English played.8
Fintan O'Toole (Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain)
A good example of a really large-scale anarchist revolution—in fact the best example to my knowledge—is the Spanish revolution in 1936, in which over most of Republican Spain there was a quite inspiring anarchist revolution that involved both industry and agriculture over substantial areas, developed in a way which to the outside looks spontaneous. Though in fact if you look at the roots of it, you discover that it was based on some three generations of experiment and thought and work which extended anarchist ideas to very large parts of the population in this largely pre-industrial—though not totally pre-industrial—society. And that again was, by both human measures and indeed anyone's economic measures, quite successful. That is, production continued effectively; workers in farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their affairs without coercion from above, contrary to what lots of socialists, communists, liberals and others wanted to believe, and in fact you can't tell what would have happened. That anarchist revolution was simply destroyed by force, but during the period in which it was alive I think it was a highly successful and, as I say, in many ways a very inspiring testimony to the ability of poor working people to organize and manage their own affairs, extremely successfully, without coercion and control. How relevant the Spanish experience is to an advanced industrial society. one might question in detail.
Noam Chomsky (Chomsky On Anarchism)
When we were first together, when you first brought me here to this beautiful place, you used to say you were glad you found a napoletana, remember? You said the northerners were sane and orderly and hardworking and maybe more honest, but that without the south, Italy would have too many brains and not enough heart. It would be like Europe having only Germany and Austria - no Spain, no France, no Italy. It would be a world of scientists without singers. I thought it was romantic. What happened to the man who said those things?
Roland Merullo (The Delight of Being Ordinary: A Road Trip with the Pope and the Dalai Lama)
Day an' night they set in a room with a checker-board on th' end iv a flour bar'l, an' study problems iv th' navy. At night Mack dhrops in. 'Well, boys,' says he, 'how goes th' battle?' he says. 'Gloryous,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Two more moves, an' we'll be in th' king row.' 'Ah,' says Mack, 'this is too good to be thrue,' he says. 'In but a few brief minyits th' dhrinks'll be on Spain,' he says. 'Have ye anny plans f'r Sampson's fleet?' he says. 'Where is it?' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'I dinnaw,' says Mack. 'Good,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Where's th' Spanish fleet?' says they. 'Bombardin' Boston, at Cadiz, in San June de Matzoon, sighted near th' gas-house be our special correspondint, copyright, 1898, be Mike O'Toole.' 'A sthrong position,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Undoubtedly, th' fleet is headed south to attack and seize Armour's glue facthory. Ordher Sampson to sail north as fast as he can, an' lay in a supply iv ice. Th' summer's comin' on. Insthruct Schley to put on all steam, an' thin put it off again, an' call us up be telephone. R-rush eighty-three millyon throops an' four mules to Tampa, to Mobile, to Chickenmaha, to Coney Island, to Ireland, to th' divvle, an' r-rush thim back again. Don't r-rush thim. Ordher Sampson to pick up th' cable at Lincoln Par-rk, an' run into th' bar-rn. Is th' balloon corpse r-ready? It is? Thin don't sind it up. Sind it up. Have th' Mulligan Gyards co-op'rate with Gomez, an' tell him to cut away his whiskers. They've got tangled in th' riggin'. We need yellow-fever throops. Have ye anny yellow fever in th' house? Give it to twinty thousand three hundherd men, an' sind thim afther Gov'nor Tanner. Teddy Rosenfelt's r-rough r-riders ar-re downstairs, havin' their uniforms pressed. Ordher thim to th' goluf links at wanst. They must be no indecision. Where's Richard Harding Davis? On th' bridge iv the New York? Tur-rn th' bridge. Seize Gin'ral Miles' uniform. We must strengthen th' gold resarve. Where's th' Gussie? Runnin' off to Cuba with wan hundherd men an' ar-rms, iv coorse. Oh, war is a dhreadful thing. It's ye'er move, Claude,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. "An
Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War)
So in essence, they, meaning the government with the help of capitalists and media interests, have fanned the flames of neo-liberal groups that say they support Marx and Socialism, when in fact they couldn't be further from it. Political and Capital interests hoped the people would be so disgusted by the idea of socialism, that they would trade the idea of government by the people, for more bureaucracy. The same was done to liberals. By making Trump into such a disgusting figure, they will hate his followers, turning to the government and the corporations that support them, in stamping him out of the Presidency and society if they could. Setting two politically polarized groups against each other will drive them each into the arms of someone who will fix society for them: the demigod of their choosing. Thus, the fighting will rage on, with fallible humans and their agendas at the helm.
Kara D. Spain
Jane Says" Jane says I'm done with Sergio He treat me like a rag-doll She hides The television Says I don't owe him nothing, But if he come back again Tell him, wait right here for me Or Try again tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow She get mad and she start to cry She take a swing man She can't hit She don't mean no harm She just don't know (Don't know, don't know) What else to do about it Jane says Have you seen my wig around? I feel naked without it She knows They all want her to go But that's O.K. man She don't like them anyway Jane says I'm going away to Spain When I get my money saved I'm gonna start tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow Jane goes To the store at 8:00 She walks up on St. Andrew's She waits And gets her dinner there She pulls her dinner From her pocket Jane says I ain't never been in love I don't know what it is She only knows if someone wants her I wonder if they want me I only know they want me She gets mad And she starts to cry She takes a swing man She can't hit! She don't mean no harm She just don't know (Don't know, don't know) What else to do about it Jane says Jane says Jane's Addiction, Jane's Addiction (1987)
Jane's Addiction (Best of Jane's Addiction)
You have a saying in Spain: If all is lost, we may as well jump in the river.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte (The Club Dumas)
The idea of racial categorization is an old one, but it is not an ancient one. We know that the Roman playwright Terence observed, “I am human, therefore nothing human is alien to me.” And we know that Imperial Rome was a dizzyingly cosmopolitan milieu, men and women speaking all manner of tongues, worshipping all manner of gods, displaying all manner of skin tones moving through it. And yet it’s worth lingering a moment longer on the fact that Terence did not proclaim, as he might have, “I am Roman, therefore nothing Roman is alien to me.” It has become a commonplace to acknowledge the following point, but it bears repeating anyway: the idea of distinct human races, as we understand it today, only stretches back to Enlightenment Europe, which is to say to the eighteenth century. I have stayed in inns in Germany and eaten at taverns in Spain that have been continuously operating longer than this calamitous thought.
Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race)
Toughness is about accurately reading these signals—knowing what your body is saying and being able to decide whether or not to respond. It’s not that we have to give in to every craving, every signal. Some might be wrong. Others (e.g., the urge to eat sweets) may be a remnant from a past when calories were much harder to come by. Reading your feelings and emotions helps give you the ability to choose whether to give them attention, simply let them pass by, or utilize them for motivation. When testing how individuals work in high-pressure situations, researchers out of Spain found that people could use the anxiety that came along with pressure to their advantage. They could persist longer at a task, reach a higher level of achievement on an academic test, and even have greater job satisfaction. All thanks to the feeling of anxiety.
Steve Magness (Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness)
Diego Duran14 thought that the priesthood among the Mexicans was to a great extent hereditary, much like the right of primogeniture among the people of Spain. Speaking of the five assistants who held down the human victim at the moment of sacrifice, he says: Los nombres de los cinco eran Chachalmeca, que en nuestra Lengua quiere tanto decir como Levita ó ministro de cosa divina ó sagrada. Era esta dignidad entre ellos muy suprema y en mucha tenida, la cual se heredaba de hijos á padres como cosa de mayorazgo, sucediendo los hijos á los Padres en aquella sangrienta Dignidad endemoniada y cruel.
John G. Bourke (The Medicine-Men of the Apache: Illustrated Edition)
The idea of racial categorization is an old one, but it is not an ancient one. We know that the Roman playwright Terence observed, “I am human, therefore nothing human is alien to me.” And we know that Imperial Rome was a dizzyingly cosmopolitan milieu, men and women speaking all manner of tongues, worshipping all manner of gods, displaying all manner of skin tones moving through it. And yet it’s worth lingering a moment longer on the fact that Terence did not proclaim, as he might have, “I am Roman, therefore nothing Roman is alien to me.” It has become a commonplace to acknowledge the following point, but it bears repeating anyway: the idea of distinct human races, as we understand it today, only stretches back to Enlightenment Europe, which is to say to the eighteenth century. I have stayed in inns in Germany and eaten at taverns in Spain that have been continuously operating longer than this calamitous thought. With the publication of Systema Naturae, in 1735, Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist and “father of modern taxonomy,” fatefully split mankind into four color-coded strands, Europaeus albus, Americanus rubescens, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus niger; later, the German naturalist, “father of anthropology,” and coiner of that confused and confusing term “Caucasian,”# Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, would have us be five, the aforementioned “Caucasian” (white), “Mongolian” (yellow), “Malayan” (brown), “Ethiopian” (black), and “American” (red), though to his credit he deemphasized hierarchical thinking. The divisions have always been somewhat arbitrary and imprecise, and have fluctuated many times since. What these scientists were attempting, however inadequately, was simply to describe the real physical differences that they observed in the world around them.
Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race)
EUSEBIUS [Chronicles, Anno 2083] (beginning October, A.D. 67), says, "Nero, to his other crimes, added the persecution of Christians: under him the apostles Peter and Paul consummated their martyrdom at Rome." So JEROME [On Illustrious Men], "In the fourteenth year of Nero, Paul was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake, on the same day as Peter, and was buried on the Ostian Road, in the thirty-seventh year after the death of our Lord." ALFORD reasonably conjectures the Pastoral Epistles were written near this date. The interval was possibly filled up (so CLEMENT OF ROME states that Paul preached as far as "to the extremity of the west") by a journey to Spain (Rom 15:24, 28), according to his own original intention. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture (about A.D. 170) also alleges Paul's journey into Spain. So EUSEBIUS, CHRYSOSTOM, and JEROME. Be that as it may, he seems shortly before his second imprisonment to have visited Ephesus, where a new body of elders governed the Church (Acts 20:25), say in the latter end of A.D. 66, or beginning of 67. Supposing him thirty at his conversion, he would now be upwards of sixty, and older in constitution than in years, through continual hardship. Even four years before he called himself "Paul the aged" (Philemon 1:9).
Robert Jamieson (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary on the Whole Bible (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump))
But there’s the world snarling away, Hammond getting his leg blown off in Spain, and you can’t stay private. It’s…it’s intolerable.” “People have had to put up with it since forever. Nobody’s exempt from history. If our turn comes…well, it was ever thus. Anyway, it may not. Hitler’s a loudmouth. I prefer to think he’ll back off, like some people are saying.
Penelope Lively (Consequences)
Of Rome's wealth in the Middle Ages de Rosa says: "The cardinals had huge palaces with countless servants. One papal aide reported that he never went to see a cardinal without finding him counting his gold coins. The Curia was made up of men who had bought office and were desperate to recoup their enormous outlay. . . . For every benefice of see, abbey and parish, for every indulgence there was a set fee. The pallium, the two-inch-wide woollen band with crosses embroidered on it . . . paid for by every bishop. . . brought in. . . hundreds of millions of gold florins to the papal coffers. . . . [T]he Councilof Basle in 1432 was to call it 'the most usurious contrivance ever invented. . . . '" De Rosa continues:       Dispensations were another source of papal revenue. Extremely severe, even impossible, laws were passed so that the Curia could grow rich by selling dispensations . . . [such as] from fasting during Lent. . . . Marriage in particular was a rich source of income. Consanguinity was alleged to hold between couples who had never dreamed they were related. Dispensations from consanguinity in order to marry amounted to a million gold florins a year.26 An Eyewitness Account from Spain D. Antonio
Dave Hunt (A Woman Rides the Beast)
We have been cast down from our glory and have nothing to reply when they say daily unto us, “Every other people has its kingdom, but of yours there is no memorial on the earth.
Jeffrey Gorsky (Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain)
Wait, you mean she’s trying to get you and me together? No, she can’t be serious.” “I’m afraid so. Once she and Dad return from their trip to Spain I’ll break the tragic news that sadly you and I were not to be.” “You can say that again. Never. Not in a million years.” Ward’s dark brows rose. “My mother believes I’m a catch.” “A flaw common to many fond mothers, I’m sure.
Laura Moore (Once Tempted (Silver Creek, #1))
The Blood-Libel Cult This blood-libel accusation may be the longest lasting anti-Jewish blood libel in history. It was not until 1544 that a popular account was published, the Memoria muy veradero de la passion y martirio, que el glorioso martir, innocent nino llamado Cristobal, padescio . . . en esta villa de la guardia (Very true account of the passion and martyrdom of the glorious martyr, the innocent child called Cristobal, that was suffered in this town of La Guardia), by Licenidado Vegas, the apostolic notary of the town of La Guardia. This account describes the tortures that the child suffered in imitation of the passion of Christ, saying that the child received 6,200 lashes but complained only of the last one thousand, since they were more than Christ had received.18
Jeffrey Gorsky (Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain)
Sephardic poems: The mind is flawed, the way to wisdom blocked; The body alone is seen, the soul is hid, And those who seek the world find only ill; The servant rises up and kills his lord, And serving girls attack their mistresses. Sons are raising hands against their parent’s will. My friend, from what I’ve seen of life I’d say The best that one can hope is to go mad. However long you live you suffer toil, And in the end you suffer rot and worms. Then finally the clay goes back to clay; At last the soul ascends to join the Soul.
Jeffrey Gorsky (Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain)
Pontius Pilate in Jesus’s death, instead placing blame on the Jews. The fairness of Pilate and his Roman administration that is displayed in the Christian Bible is not supported by the nonbiblical historical accounts. As Elaine Pagels has noted in The Origin of Satan: “Even Josephus, despite his Roman sympathies, says that the governor displayed contempt for his Jewish subjects, illegally appropriated funds from the Temple treasury, and brutally suppressed unruly crowds. The Jewish Greek historian Philo describes Pilate as a man of ‘ruthless, stubborn and cruel disposition,’ famous for, among other things, ordering ‘frequent executions without trial.
Jeffrey Gorsky (Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain)
She’d visited the Continent five times on vacation and twice on business trips with Alfred, so about a dozen times altogether, and to friends planning tours of Spain or France she now liked to say, with a sigh, that she’d had her fill of the place.
Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections)
Write the best thing you can, whatever it is. It is deeply moving to read a letter from Spain or somewhere that says they read my book and fell in love with my daughter. Or that a book I wrote changed their life. It is amazing to be on the receiving end of that. Don't deny yourself that.
Dan Alatorre