Auster Quotes

1. "Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class."
Author: Annie Besant

2. "Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited in the night. We were waiting for the rescuing dawn - or for the Moors. Something, I know not what, lent this night a savor of Christmas. We told stories, we joked, we sang songs. In the air there was that slight fever that reigns over a gaily prepared feast. And yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches."
Author: Antoine De Saint Exupéry

3. "If the program goes off track again due to recession, this should not become a pretext for the imposition of more austerity measures."
Author: Antonis Samaras

4. "Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense."
Author: Arne Duncan

5. "When the stories were over, four or five of us walked out the home of our host. The surrounding land, in the persistent light of a far northern summer, was still visible for miles--striated, pitched massifs of the Brooks Range; the shy, willow-lined banks of the John River flowing south from Anaktuvuk Pass; and the flat tundra plain, opening with great affirmation to the north. The landscape seemed alive because of the stories. It was precisely these ocherous tones, the kind of willow, exactly this austerity that had informed the wolverine narratives. I felt exhilaration, and a deeper confirmation of what I had heard. The mundane task that awaited me I anticipated now with pleasure. The stories had renewed in me a sense of the purpose of my life."
Author: Barry López

6. "My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place."
Author: Bernard Tschumi

7. "The attitude of uncompromising heroism is attractive, and appeals especially to the dramatic instinct. But the purpose of the serious revolutionary is not personal heroism, nor martyrdom, but the creation of a happier world. Those who have the happiness of the world at heart will shrink from attitudes and the facile hysteria of "no parley with the enemy." They will not embark upon enterprises, however arduous and austere, which are likely to involve the martyrdom of their country and the discrediting of their ideals. It is by slower and less showy methods that the new world must be built [...] To find fault with those who urge these considerations, or to accuse them of faint-heartedness, is mere sentimental self-indulgence, sacrificing the good we can do to the satisfaction of our own emotions."
Author: Bertrand Russell

8. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Author: Bertrand Russell

9. "Bond investors want growth much like equity investors, and to the extent that too much austerity leads to recession or stagnation then credit spreads widen out - even if a country can print its own currency and write its own cheques."
Author: Bill Gross

10. "The U.K. and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity in the short term, is the way to produce real growth. It is not. You've got to spend money."
Author: Bill Gross

11. "His father, that austere, unfeeling and untutored man, had insisted his sons polish their boots every evening. Flett has learned to be grateful for this early discipline. It kept him breathing as a boy, provided a pulse, gave order to vast incomprehension. Later he found other ways."
Author: Carol Shields

12. "I have to say, though, it's a little strange doing both because Durant is very straight and stern and austere."
Author: Corbin Bernsen

13. "She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

14. "In Psalm 68 we are reminded that Yahweh is not an aloof, austere King who stands afar and is unconcerned for the needs of His people. Rather, He daily bears our burdens, providing us a way of escape from enemies and troubles."
Author: Darlene Zschech

15. "Not that there seems to be any appropriate place to bury someone, but these municipal cemeteries, or any cemetery at all for that matter, like the ones by the highway, or the ones in the middle of town, with all these bodies with their corresponding rocks - oh it's just too primitive and vulgar, isn't it? The hole, and the box, and the rock on the grass? And we glamorize this process, feel it fitting and dramatic, austerely beautiful, standing there by the hole as we lower the box. It's incredible. Barbaric and base."
Author: Dave Eggers

16. "It wasna a man,' said Andrew Kerr broadly. ‘T'was my aunty. I tellt ye. I'm no risking cauld steel in ma wame for a pittance, unless all that's mine is well lookit after—' ‘An old lady,' said Lord Grey with forbearance, ‘in curling papers and a palatial absence of teeth?' ‘My aunt Lizzie!' said Andrew Kerr. ‘She has just,' said Lord Grey austerely, ‘seriously injured one of my men.' ‘How?' The old savage looked interested. ‘From an upper window. The castle was burning, and he was climbing a ladder to offer the lady her freedom. She cracked his head with a chamberpot,' said Lord Grey distastefully, ‘and retired crying that she would have no need of a jurden in Heaven, as the good Lord had no doubt thought of more convenient methods after the seventh day, when He had had a good rest."
Author: Dorothy Dunnett

17. "The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there's something unchancy about a left-handed race.' ‘I'm right-handed,' offered Will Scott. ‘Aye.' ‘And six foot three in my hose.' ‘Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.' ‘I'm saving it,' he said austerely, ‘till I've the theme for it.' ‘Oh!' said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. ‘Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to?"
Author: Dorothy Dunnett

18. "In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile."
Author: Elinor Wylie

19. "In the U.S. the powerful critics of austerity such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich rightly identify the decline of 'labor' as a problem, and renewing trade unionism part of the solution. Our opportunity is to make the same case in the UK."
Author: Frances O'Grady

20. "Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever."
Author: Frances O'Grady

21. "Austerity need not be Europe's fate."
Author: Francois Hollande

22. "I entertain a private suspicion that physical sports were much more really effective and beneficent when they were not taken quite so seriously. One of the first essentials of sport being healthy is that it should be delightful; it is rapidly becoming a false religion with austerities and prostrations."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

23. "We are not jumping on the austerity bandwagon. A healthy economy is by far the most important thing for Social Democrats."
Author: Helle Thorning Schmidt

24. "I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano."
Author: John Mahoney

25. "A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour, or even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. [The duel]"
Author: Joseph Conrad

26. "The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

27. "In a clock the complex action of countless different wheels works its way out in the even, leisurely movement of hands measuring time; in a similar way the complex action of humanity in those 160,000 Russians and Frenchmen – all their passions, longings, regrets, humiliation and suffering, their rushes of pride, fear and enthusiasm – only worked its way out in defeat at the battle of Austerlitz, known as the battle of the three Emperors, the slow tick-tock of the age-old hands on the clock face of human history."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

28. "There was the honour and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within - and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums."
Author: Lydia Millet

29. "The reader, like his fellows, doubtless prefers action to reflection, and doubtless he is wholly in the right. So we shall get to it. However, I must advise that this book is written leisurely, with the leisureliness of a man no longer troubled by the flight of time; that is a work supinely philosophical, but of a philosophy wanting in uniformity, now austere, now playful, a thing that neither edifies nor destroys, neither inflames nor chills, and that is at once more of a pastime and less than a preachment."
Author: Machado De Assis

30. "How long your closet held a whiff of you,Long after hangers hung austere and bare.I would walk in and suddenly the trueSharp sweet sweat scent controlled the airAnd life was in that small still living breath.Where are you? since so much of you is here,Your unique odour quite ignoring death.My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dearAnd vital in my longing empty arms.But other clothes fill up the space, your space,And scent on scent send out strange false alarms.Not of your odour there is not a trace.But something unexpected still breaks throughThe goneness to the presentness of you."
Author: Madeleine L'Engle

31. "Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy's long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes."
Author: Mark Zandi

32. "Has the body a soul? No. The soul has a body. And well does that soul know when this body has served its purpose, and well does that soul do to lay it aside in high austerity, taking it off like a stained garment."
Author: Megory Anderson

33. "Never listen to a leftist who does not give away his fortune or does not live the exact lifestyle he wants others to follow. What the French call "the caviar left," la gauche caviar, or what Anglo-Saxons call champagne socialists, are people who advocate socialism, sometimes even communism, or some political system with sumptuary limitations, while overtly leading a lavish lifestyle, often financed by inheritance—not realizing the contradiction that they want others to avoid just such a lifestyle. It is not too different from the womanizing popes, such as John XII, or the Borgias. The contradiction can exceed the ludicrous as with French president François Mitterrand of France who, coming in on a socialist platform, emulated the pomp of French monarchs. Even more ironic, his traditional archenemy, the conservative General de Gaulle, led a life of old-style austerity and had his wife sew his socks."
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

34. "It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite."
Author: Nikos Kazantzakis

35. "National historical myths are a way of giving identity and more authenticity to a people. Exodus flattered the Jews half a millennium after it allegedly took place by making them feel like heroic refugees from slavery, and righteous conquerors of a land corrupted by paganism, wealth, and sex. The Illiad made the politicians, merchants, sailors, farmers, and schoolteachers of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. into the heirs of austere, remorseless, honorable, courageous warriors, a race of demigods. Contrast this with the real Athenians of ca. 375 B.C. -- their bellies full of fishcakes, their throats bloated with cheap resined wine, their far-flung sharp commercial deals a laughable, reverse mirror-image of the noble warriors of the Trojan War era."
Author: Norman F. Cantor

36. "I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

37. "Come se nel cuore della natura di uno scrittore ci fosse la purezza. Il cielo aiuti un simile scrittore! Come se Joyce non avesse annusato oscenamente le mutande di Nora. Come se nell'anima di Dostoevskij non avesse mai bisbigliato Svidrigailov. Nel cuore della natura di uno scrittore c'è il capriccio. Curiosità, fissazioni, isolamento, veleno, feticismo, austerità, leggerezza, perplessità, infantilismo eccetera. Il naso nella cucitura di un indumento intimo: ecco la natura dello scrittore. L'impurità."
Author: Philip Roth

38. "Strive now to unite in yourself all the virtues of these different examples. Have the purity of virgins, the austerity of anchorites, the zeal of pastors and bishops, and the constancy of martyrs."
Author: Pierre Abélard

39. "Know that the eradication of the identification with the body is charity, spiritual austerity and ritual sacrifice; it is virtue, divine union and devotion; it is heaven, wealth, peace and truth; it is grace; it is the state of divine silence; it is the deathless death; it is jnana, renunciation, final liberation and bliss."
Author: Ramana Maharshi

40. "The election before us will be the Austerlitz of American politics."
Author: Roscoe Conkling

41. "For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies."
Author: Sue Miller

42. "The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person."
Author: Terry Pratchett

43. "Ein Optimist ist ein Mensch, der ein Dutzend Austern bestellt, in der Hoffnung, sie mit der Perle, die er darin findet, bezahlen zu können."
Author: Theodor Fontane

44. "A Cathedral Façade at MidnightAlong the sculptures of the western wallI watched the moonlight creeping:It moved as if it hardly moved at allInch by inch thinly peepingRound on the pious figures of freestone, broughtAnd poised there when the Universe was wroughtTo serve its centre, Earth, in mankind's thought.The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm,Then edged on slowly, slightly,To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere formWas blanched its whole length brightlyOf prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state,That dead men's tools had striven to simulate;And the stiff images stood irradiate.A frail moan from the martyred saints there setMid others of the erectionAgainst the breeze, seemed sighings of regretAt the ancient faith's rejectionUnder the sure, unhasting, steady stressOf Reason's movement, making meaningless."
Author: Thomas Hardy

45. "What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion ---"
Author: Thomas Mann

46. "The consumption of petroleum should be conserved. We need to adopt some austerity measures. The people should cooperate with us."
Author: Veerappa Moily

47. "Next morning, his nose still in the dreambag of a deep pillow contributed to his otherwise austere bed by sweet Blanche (with whom, by the parlour-game rules of sleep, he had been holding hands in a heart-breaking nightmare– or perhaps it was just her cheap perfume), the boy was at once aware of the happiness knocking to be let in. He deliberately endeavored to prolong the glow of its incognito by dwelling on the last vestiges of jasmine and tears in a silly dream..."
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

48. "In the warmer months of the year one or other of those nocturnal insects quite often strays indoors from the small garden behind my house. When I get up early in the morning, I find them clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner. Sometimes, seeing one of these moths that have met their end in my house, I wonder what kind of fear and pain they feel while they are lost."
Author: W.G. Sebald

49. "Had I realized at the time that for Austerlitz certain moments had no beginning or end, while on the other hand his whole life had sometimes seemed to him a blank point without duration, I would probably have waited more patiently."
Author: W.G. Sebald

50. "If words had cost money, Tom couldn't have used them more sparingly. The adjectives were purely descriptive, relating to form and colour, and were used to present the objects under consideration, not the young explorer's emotions. Yet through this austerity one felt the kindling imagination, the ardour and excitement of the boy, like the vibration in a voice when the speaker strives to conceal his emotion by using only the conventional phrases."
Author: Willa Cather

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