All Quotes

"“Without the prior pacification of Italy, it could happen that as soon as I leave to succor you, Venice, Florence, Ferrara and Francesco Sforza will ally together, pull all their resources and invite the French to support them… Since I will need to take with me to Germany the army besieging Florence, we need a swift decision by His Holiness in this matter.”"

"“Since our Lord, who gave Fernando to us, wished to have him back, we must bend to His will and thank Him and beg Him to protect what is left. With great affection, my lady, I beg you to do this and to forget and leave behind all pain and grief.”"

"“These heretics have been so obstinate that no policy has worked or sufficed to get them to recognise their errors… I can see that if there were a way of forcing them we could justly move against them, but that is not the case now, nor do I currently have the means, because I am tired, alone and without help and there are so many of them that great force would be needed to overcome them. The true remedy is to convene a general council.”"

"“…Begging Your Holiness as earnestly as I can that you convene a general council with the urgency that the situation demands and that for optimal effect Your Holiness should write to other princes and potentates explaining why. Namely the need to create a united front against the expected Turkish attack and to prevent the heresies that have recently appeared from spreading further.”"

"“I want to be trusted, and will not bargain with my subjects.”"

"“I found great enmities, personal passions, leagues and alliances among [my] officials, constantly turning everyone against the rest. Therefore, to see and ascertain the truth, I followed up the accusations against my fiscal officers made by their adversaries, and I examined their accounts from 1520 to 1530, that is for 10 years, to see if they had robbed me as some claimed. But, although some matters were not as satisfactory as they should have been, I found no fault… If there is a fault here, the principal cause is that everyone desires so many privileges to limit my sovereignty so that we would almost become colleagues and I would no longer be in charge. ”"

"“I was writing to my wife when your letter arrived, and now I want to look at her portrait myself, seeing the great beauty it contains. I am such a devoted husband that other beautiful women now do nothing for me.”"

"“It has brought me the greatest sorrow you can imagine, because he was the most handsome little boy for his age that you could find. I feel his death even more than the loss of my own son [Fernando] because he was older and I knew him better and treated him as my own son. Nevertheless we must accept the will of God. May God forgive me, but I wish He had taken Christian instead of his son.”"

"I speak in Latin/Spanish (depending on the source) to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse."

"I will not blush like my predecessor Sigismund."

"But like everybody else, as Hollier says, I live in a muddle of eras, and some of my ideas belong to today, and some to an ancient past, and some to periods of time that seem more relevant to my parents than to me. If I could sort them and control them I might know better where I stand, but when I most want to be contemporary the Past keeps pushing in, and when I long for the Past … the Present cannot be pushed away."

"Oh, I knew what was wrong with me, right enough; I wanted to be an intellectual, to escape from everything Mamusia and the generations of Kalderash behind her meant, and I knew I could do it only by the uttermost violence to myself."

"Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound."

"“I came not to send peace unto the earth, but a sword,” said Jesus Christ. God is wonderful and awful in His counsels. Let us have a care, lest in our endeavors to arrest discords, we be bound to fight against the holy word of God and bring down upon our heads a frightful deluge of inextricable dangers, present disaster, and everlasting desolations. . . . Let us have a care lest the reign of the young and noble prince, the Emperor Charles, on whom, next to God, we build so many hopes, should not only commence, but continue and terminate its course under the most fatal auspices. I might cite examples drawn from the oracles of God. I might speak of Pharaohs, of kings of Babylon, or of Israel, who were never more contributing to their own ruin that when, by measures in appearances most prudent, they thought to establish their authority! “God removeth the mountains and they know not” (Job ix, 5). In speaking thus, I do not suppose that such noble princes have need of my poor judgment; but I wish to acquit myself of a duty whose fulfillment my native Germany has a right to expect from her children. And so, commending myself to your august majesty, and your most serene highnesses, I beseech you in all humility, not to permit the hatred of my enemies to rain upon me an indignation I have not deserved. I have done."

"Too much cleanliness is an enemy to creation, to speculative thought."

"Will you respect me enough not to snoop through my papers?" "Perhaps not as much as that. I like to know what's going on."

"Autumn, to me the most congenial of seasons: the University, to me the most congenial of lives."

"As I walked down the avenue of maples that leads toward the University Bookstore I was as happy as I suppose it is in my nature to be; my nature tends toward happiness, or toward enthusiastic industry, which for me is the same thing."

"McVarish always reminds me of the fairy-tale about the girl out of whose mouth a toad leapt whenever she spoke. He could say more nasty things in ordinary conversation than anybody I have ever known, and he could make poor innocents like Ellerman accept them as wit."

"However much science and educational theory and advanced thinking you pump into a college or a university, it always retains a strong hint of its medieval origins, and the fact that Spook was a New World college in a New World university made surprisingly little difference."

"I'm getting on with the work that will eventually make me a Doctor of Philosophy." "Ah, that blessed degree that stamps us for life as creatures of guaranteed intellectual worth."

"What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you — that impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit till at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he look peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old."

"Reggie: OK, there's no way we can let Otto play in the game tomorrow."

"Twister and Sam: Right."

"Reggie: It's bad for him."

"Sam: No, it's gotta be something believable. Like, "Global Warming Has Caused Giant Monkeys To Overtake Ocean Shores"."

"Twister: Giant monkeys?! (screams & runs away)"

"Reggie: Let me handle this. OK?"

"Otto: What's up?"

"Reggie: The big game. They're rescheduling it!"

"Otto: No way! When's it gonna be?"

"Reggie: Um...they haven't told us. But it's definitely not gonna be tommorrow! No, sir, NOT tomorrow!"

"Otto: That stinks!"

"Reggie: Tell me about it! Ooh! OY!"

"Reggie: Well, Otto's out of the picture. But we still have a problem."

"Twister: The monkeys. OOOHHH!"

"Reggie: We still need someone to fill in for Otto."

"Sam: You got somebody in mind?"

"Reggie: I do but you're not gonna like it."

"Otto: Lars? I'm calling a time out!"

"Twister: Dude?"

"Otto: What's with Lars? You replaced me with that giant monkey?"

"Twister: Oh-oh."

"Reggie: OH! There are no giant monkeys!"

"Otto: But Lars?!"

"Twister: Believe me. It wasn't my idea."

"Otto: You gotta let me play. I'm better than that dork."

"Lars: What did you call me?"

"Otto: Why do you wanna play with these kiddies here? I thought you were too cool for us."

"Lars: You're right. I'm outta here. Later MUCH!"