People From London

"Conflict defines nations. Enemies justify armies. Wars glorify generals. Without his great enemy to give him purpose and meaning, he will be significantly diminished. He will have to come to terms with us."

"The truth is always the truth."

"‘I don’t think he’d ever have made a strong king. He was weak as water. Can you imagine him smiting the enemy? Destroying them in battle? Having the guts to execute the opposition?’ ‘Perhaps it’s time we had a king who didn’t do that. Perhaps it’s time we had a king who had other values on his mind,’ I said, playing nervously with my dagger to calm the growing anxiety inside me. ‘Like what?’ ‘Reform of corruption. Civil order to prevent the abuses of power. Justice.’"

"Do intellect and morality count for nothing in the way the future unfolds? [...] Greed is our king, and corruption is his servant."

"There is truth in what you say. Truth is a dangerous muse. One dies for the truth."

"A little distance had opened between us, almost unnoticed, rarely acknowledged. We made love infrequently. The couch was for sleep at the end of exhausting days. I confided in her less often. Perhaps that is the fate of all marriages."

"But words are imperfect, and our system of writing, for all its great glories, has its limitations in terms of its ability to describe creation in all its manifest and hidden glories ... So we would have to invent another way of describing things."

"‘Perhaps our childhoods are buried inside all of us. Perhaps they set the pattern for our futures,’ I suggested. ‘In that case I am doomed by mine,’ she said without self-pity. ‘Perhaps not, for you are aware of it,’ I said."

"Order is the priority of power."

"Once wine was the means to artificial happiness; now things are much more sophisticated, and what was one of the great secrets of medicine has become the only bliss many find in this life."

"In these dark times people prefer to look away from everything they would rather not see."

"‘Perhaps it is the human imagination that is the monster,’ he said. ‘I believe no animal suffers from the torments of the imagination. Only man…’ ‘The imagination is capable of enacting the very best in us, and the very worst,’ agreed Hor, ‘and I know what mine would like to do to some people.’ ‘Your verse is torment enough,’ quipped the architect. ‘And that is why civilized life, morality, ethics and so on, matter. We are half-enlightened, and half-monstrous,’ said Nakht assertively. ‘We must build our civility upon reason and mutual benefit.’ Sobek raised his cup. ‘I salute your reason. I wish it every success.’"

"And you must never speak of what I have just told you. For this is a great secret. And great secrets bring with them great responsibilities."

"Cruelty, rage, grief — and something others carelessly name evil — can reduce the strange collation of profanity and beauty which makes up each of us to an inanimate lump of decaying meat."

"Fear is a powerful enemy, but a useful friend."

"Even words are not perhaps safe in these times."

"‘I am against change. It is overrated. It improves nothing,’ said Hor. ‘Come now, that is an absurd opinion, and goes against all sense. It is merely a sign of age, for as we get older, so we believe the world gets worse, manners decline, standards of ethics and knowledge are eroded—’ said Nakht."

"It would be another day ruled by this world’s new gods: gold and power."

"Give me the taste of truth any day."

"‘There is no such thing as a cheerful poem [...] Happiness writes in water, not ink.’"

"I dislike talk of the Gods, who taunt us with their promises, and whose disappointments we must always accept."

"Fear, that unknowable and all-powerful enemy, has invaded us all, like a secret army of shadows."

"‘Everything you say always sounds exactly right, my friend. You have the gift of turning confusion into an epigram.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, but it is a kind of tyranny with me, for I am far too neat for my own good. And life, as we know, is mostly chaos.’"

"You are like one of your bees, going from flower to flower, sampling the nectar of this and that."

"For a world with so much sun we live in a dark place, in a dark time."

"This world and the Otherworld are full of curiosities and mysteries. It would take many lifetimes to understand them all. And disappointingly, it seems to me we only have one."

"Rhetoric is a dangerous art. It is the manipulation of the difference, one might say the distance, between truth and image [...] And in our times, that distance has become the means by which power is exercised [...] Rhetoric has been a force for persuasion since man began to speak, and to convince his enemy that he was indeed his friend."

"The tale survives of two men Who fell in love "at first sight"; Who shared everything In unbounded intimacy Including the pillow And the red embroidered coverlet Which had been in the family For generations. Whether they had bad days, Domestic arguments Or inappropriate dreams We do not know – No doubt such burrs Were worked away by time Polishing its story; How they found each other And lived together all their lives, And died on the same day, And were buried by the grieving town On Mount Luofo's peak With their pillow and red coverlet; And a pine tree grew Out of the grave Like the character for longevity And true love.Such is the legend. I like to think of them, Pan Zhang and Wang Zhangxian, In the crowd of well-wishers Waiting in the April sunshine, Yes, under white cherry trees In full bloom, for us Here and now, on this day Early in the century, In our very best suits and ties, With our new rings Growing warm on our fingers Like keepsakes of light Saved from the stars."

"For as I grow older, life seems to me simply an endless succession of problems to be solved, rather than hours to be enjoyed."

"Maybe I’ve finally learned the bitter truth that I can’t beat them, even if I’ll never join them. But I’m not going to lose the one thing I can still call my own: my life. And you should wise up and do the same, especially with a new child on the way."

"My old friend. I know you see the reality of the streets, and the miseries of the people, and that is a valuable perspective. But remember the world of the wealthy, the priests and the nobles also suffers from dangerous tribulations. The two are not mutually exclusive."

"Be careful, Rahotep, I know these writers, they say “borrow” when they mean “steal.” You will soon read your words coming back to you on some privately circulated scroll of new verse."

"I fancy all distinctively poetical language ought to be banned and the poetry come out of the quality of the idea and the intensity or passion with which it is expressed."

"As I understand it, art is one of the chief organs of what, for want of a better word, I must call the spiritual life."

"In Art we know nothing for certain."

"There is no difference between landscapes and other subjects: in general in painting I try to express the emotions that the contemplation of the form produces in me."

"Only those who have experienced the elation and despair which comes from the attempt to express their feelings about vision in oil paint will know that it is impossible to speak with complete impartiality about art."

"A work of art is a work of art, and nothing else, personal considerations count for nothing."

"My paintings do no more than give an idea of my wanderings in search of a guiding principle in art"

"It was inevitable that artists should turn around and question the validity of the fundamental assumption that art aimed at representation; and the moment the question was fairly posed it became clear the pseudo scientific assumption that fidelity to appearance was the measure of art had no logical foundation."

"Art is an expression and stimulus to the imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life. Art appreciates emotion in and for itself. The artist, is the most constantly observant of his surroundings and the least affected by their intrinsic aesthetic value. As he contemplates a particular field of vision the aesthetically chaotic and accidental conjunction of forms and colours begin to crystallize into a harmony."

"It is the subjects which might be imitated by pieces of paper of varying depth of color laid one over the other, which are the subjects that will give more readily the greater satisfaction."

"In selecting our subject then we have two things to consider. First, is it as good as the conditions will let it be - that is, have we chosen the point of view which, with the present conditions, shows at its best pictorially, and secondly, if taken from this point now, are the alterations we would like, weather or light, to make for us of such a kind that we can introduce them for ourselves when printing, and, if so, what are those alterations."

"Size, the mere number of square inches, of a picture, counts for nothing. A small picture may be quite as satisfying as a large; for remember that, as compared with the size of the mountain itself, the difference between a picture of it, thirty inches long, and one of six inches, is less than trifling."

"If the reader now asks what do I think of this paper or that process, of this brand of plates or of that ? Is intensification or reduction to be resorted to ? Are enlargements as good as direct work ? I have but one answer to all, and that is that only those methods are good which will give you a satisfactory realization of the idea you have in mind. Any paper or process which will do this is good. If an enlargement from a small negative seems to give a fairly satisfactory expression of the idea intended, and the smaller direct print fails, there is your answer; and neither the writer or any one else has any knowledge which can give you a better."

"The practice of Pictorial Photography cannot be taught by a Kindergarten system; the mere comparison with typical examples must be accompanied with a right understanding of underlying principles and theory."

"I have sometimes felt that writers on the artistic aspect of photography have too often, like the reformers of religious creeds, led their followers into a condition of disbelief and unrest, and then left them to find out for themselves how to live up to new and vague beliefs, so many writers on Pictorial Photography have told us what to avoid without saying why, and have then told us what to do without showing how."

"It must not be supposed that it is always necessary to present our landscapes with an attractive and well-defined arrangement of clouds; on the contrary, it will often happen that the effect of a scene is best emphasized by a mere grey tint representing a covered sky or even a blue, cloudless sky; but this is a very different thing to rendering it as a white blank."

"A good negative is one thing, but a negative that will enable us to get a good picture is another."

"… what the photographer has to be urged, persuaded and argued with, to do, are often matters which the artist never needs to think about, because it would be unnatural to him not to act in unconscious obedience thereto."