Gilded Quotes

1. "It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it."
Author: Aldo Leopold

2. "A gilded sound"
Author: Alessandro Baricco

3. "Let Sporus tremble — "What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?"Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings; Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,Yet Wit ne'er tastes, and Beauty ne'er enjoys,"
Author: Alexander Pope

4. "Kate saith the world is void of might.Kate saith the men are gilded flies.Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;Kate will not hear of lovers sighs.I would I were an armed knight,Far-famed for well-won enterprise,And wearing on my swarthy browsThe garland of new-wreathed empriseFor in a moment I would pierceThe blackest files of clanging fight,And strongly strike to left and right,In dreaming of my lady's eyes.O, Kate loves well the bold and fierce;But none are bold enough for Kate,She cannot find a fitting mate."
Author: Alfred Tennyson

5. "There was precious little nobility in the features of the High King's fleshy face. Like his body, his face was broad and heavy, with a wide stub of a nose, a thick brow, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look out at the world with suspicion and resentment. His hair and beard were just beginning to turn grey, but they were well combed and glistening with fresh oil perfumed... heavily... He was broad of shoulder and body, built like a squat turret, round and thick from neck to hips. He wore a sleeveless coat of gilded chain mail over his tunic... Over the mail was a harness of gleaming leather, with silver buckles and ornaments. A jewelled sword hung at his side. His sandals had gold tassels on their thongs."
Author: Ben Bova

6. "We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when we think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands of the fin-de-siecle gilded youths we see about us during the Christmas holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence,was surely never practiced by the scented, overbearing patricians of the Palatine, even in Rome's most decadent epoch. In all the wild orgy of wastefulness and luxury with which the nineteenth century reaches its close, the gilded youth has been surely the worst symptom."
Author: Booth Tarkington

7. "Gilded palace of Flying BurritosExcellent Nouveau Mexican CuisineWe all got to wear Swank-Ass Nudie SuitsI should have known it was a lousy pipe dreamOhhh, Ohhh, what an awesome jobOhhh, Ohhh, what do I do now??Ohh, Ohhhhh, it's like I've been robbedSpent the last of my paychequeAnd I'm feelin' pretty downnnnn!!"
Author: Bryan Lee O'Malley

8. "We guard our bodies until they are old and tasteless, when we could have fed ourselves to claw and fur, been literally reincarnated in the cells of a lion sleeping in the sun, the wall of muscle that is a bear crashing through a rotten log in search of ant eggs. Why not return again and again, glistening, gilded every time?"
Author: Craig Childs

9. "Prom was more about acting out some weird facsimile of adulthood: dress up like a tacky wedding party, hold hands and behave like a couple even if you've never dated, and observe the etiquette of Gilded Age debutantes thrust into modern celebrity: limos, red carpets and a constant stream of paparazzi, played by parents, teachers, and hired photo hacks."
Author: Dave Cullen

10. "We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power."
Author: Denis Kearney

11. "It was mad. It was inconceivable. Anthony began to detect in himself the symptoms of a disease he had sworn never to acquire--lovesickness--and thus berated himself for a clodpoll to so fall into the gilded trap."
Author: Dominique Frost

12. "Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting"
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

13. "On Sleep's soft lap the head without a crown Forgot the gilded trouble it had worn"
Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton

14. "I love bright words, words up and singing early;Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting."
Author: Elinor Wylie

15. "...and there is such honesty and innocence to her voice I want to hold her. The bedside lamplight is a rich golden color, and it is falling on her face in a way that makes it seem gilded. For a moment, L.D. looks to me like an angel. Another case of illusion only being the larger truth."
Author: Elizabeth Berg

16. "Stardom can be a gilded slavery."
Author: Helen Hayes

17. "Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays."
Author: Henry David Thoreau

18. "It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated."
Author: J. Maarten Troost

19. "But you see, that's the gilded prison of fashion. We're riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely."
Author: Janice Dickinson

20. "...and here's a secret for you - everything beautiful is sad...gilded with impermanence..."
Author: John Geddes

21. "The path is a ribbon of moonlight across a dusky sea.The wind sings a song that beckons us To that great and mighty tree.We are the Greenowls of Ambala, clad in raiments of moss,Sprigged with lichens and grassesThen gilded with silvery frost.Fair and square we play- for a sporting lot we are.We ride the boisterous Balefire gustsAnd we reach for every star."
Author: Kathryn Lasky

22. "So El Dorado is no' a man."In a soft tone, Lucia said, "She's La Dorada, the Gilded Woman. History had it wrong.Really wrong.""Makes sense.""What do you mean?""Say you were a conquistador, hunting for the Gilded One's gold, yet the native was clever enough to keep a tomb full of it hidden. A native—a woman native— somehow outwits you?" He shook his head. "Back in the day, I met a few gold-hungry conquistadors, and let's put it this way—the fragility of conquistador ego canna be overstated."
Author: Kresley Cole

23. "Heat in her birds of prey fingertips, smoke of gilded flowers in her aureate gorging hair."
Author: Laura Gentile

24. "I'm not your gilded prince with the gilded chairs, Letty," Geoff said simply. "I couldn't be if I tried.""I wouldn't want you to be." Letty's voice felt rusty. "I'm not particularly bold or dashing or heroic. I'm happier at my desk than in a black cloak. And I've never entirely mastered all the steps of the quadrille." He looked soberly down at her. "But what I am is yours, if you'll still have me."
Author: Lauren Willig

25. "Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

26. "As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air."
Author: Maggie Stiefvater

27. "The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying."
Author: Mark Twain

28. "The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers."
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov

29. "What is a throne? — a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state— I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public—people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France."
Author: Napoleon

30. "Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail 'round the high-pooped galleys... Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be."
Author: Oscar Wilde

31. "Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life."
Author: Oscar Wilde

32. "He realised that comfortable surroundings, indeed the gilded surroundings of his own life until then, and all the things that went with that, don't tend to produce happiness or fulfilment without some sense of love to go with them."
Author: Paul Torday

33. "Pushing himself off the bed in a violent thrust, his lats widen like wings down his sides, where his waistcoat is open halfway to his waist to accommodate muscular builds, he indicates the gilded cage with outstretched arms. Showing off his supreme musculature, he says, "We have forever Phoebe."
Author: Poppet

34. "For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda."
Author: Ron Fournier

35. "...it's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of."
Author: Sarah Vowell

36. "Here in the city she had gilded her nails. They shone. And she had put on a velvet dress, this soft red one, which was heavy. The buttons were in the form of seashells."
Author: Saul Bellow

37. "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius... and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
Author: Shakespeare

38. "…My present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States: it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gilded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own, their votes. And who benefits most? The lawyers. (Chapter 4)"
Author: Shirley Chisholm

39. "The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies' Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club."
Author: Sinclair Lewis

40. "Sovegna vos.Here are the years that walk between, bearingAway the fiddles and the flutes, restoringOne who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearingWhite light folded, sheathed about her, folded.The new years walk, restoringThrough a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoringWith a new verse the ancient rhyme. RedeemThe time. RedeemThe unread vision in the higher dreamWhile jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse."
Author: T.S. Eliot

41. "Richard rubbed his temples. He had a headache from lack of sleep. "Don't you understand? This isn't about conquering lands and taking things from others; this is about fighting oppression."The general rested a boot on the gilded rung of a chair and hooked a thumb behind his wide belt. "I don't see much difference. From my experience, the Master Rahl always thinks he knows best, and always wants to rule the world. You are your father's son. War is war. Reasons make no difference to us; we fight because we are told to, same as those on the other side. Reasons mean little to a man swinging his sword, trying to keep his head."
Author: Terry Goodkind

42. "The sin I have committed is the sin of adoption. I have adopted a different set of beliefs from the beliefs I was raised to obey. But this definition of sin over time has become my joy. I do have other gods before me, many, and none are a white elderly man sitting on a gilded throne in heaven. Pronghorn antelope holds authority for me, like a priest."
Author: Terry Tempest Williams

43. "In that day every trial borne in patience will be pleasing and the voice of iniquity will be stilled; the devout will be glad; the irreligious will mourn; and the mortified body will rejoice far more than if it had been pampered with every pleasure. Then the cheap garment will shine with splendor and the rich one become faded and worn; the poor cottage will be more praised than the gilded palace. In that day persevering patience will count more than all the power in this world; simple obedience will be exalted above all worldly cleverness; a good and clean conscience will gladden the heart of man far more than the philosophy of the learned; and contempt for riches will be of more weight than every treasure on earth."
Author: Thomas à Kempis

44. "This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school."
Author: Thomas Dekker

45. "The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies."
Author: Wallace Stevens

46. "MortalityOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,He passes from life to his rest in the grave.The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,Be scattered around, and together be laid;And the young and the old, the low and the high,Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroudOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
Author: William Knox

47. "No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laughAt gilded butterflies, and hear poor roguesTalk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;And take upon's the mystery of things,As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,That ebb and flow by the moon."
Author: William Shakespeare

48. "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmityShall you pace forth; your praise shall still find roomEven in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom.So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."
Author: William Shakespeare

49. "We will all laugh at gilded butterflies."
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel downAnd ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laughAt gilded butterflies, and hear poor roguesTalk of court news, and we'll talk with them too—Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out—And take upon 's the mystery of thingsAs if we were God's spies."
Author: William Shakespeare

Gilded Quotes Pictures