Quotes from Mark Kurlansky

The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. Julius

The true expression of nonviolence is compassion, which is not just a passive emotional response, but a rational stimulus to action.

No one ever escapes Gloucester. Kids go off to college and settle somewhere else. But they always come back. If Gloucester is all you know, every place else seems a little phony.

Active practitioners of nonviolence are always seen as a threat, a direct menace, to the state. The state maintains the right to kill as its exclusive and jealously guarded privilege. Nothing makes this more clear than capital punishment, which argues that killing is wrong and so the state must kill killers.

Literary Teas are constantly in a state of flux. The uninitiated gravitates toward the author, the author toward the editor or publisher, the publisher toward the reviewer, and the reviewer, in desperation, toward another drink.

Don't you sense the enormity of your mistake – you invade a country without understanding its music. – Norman Mailer

while every major language has a word for violence, there is no word to express the idea of nonviolence

Baby formula contains three salts: magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, and sodium chloride.

Revolutions are always easier to admire from across the border.

Anthimus's pronouncement on garum has echoed through Western cooking: "Nam liquamen ex omni parte prohibemus," We ban the use of garum from every culinary role.

In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value.

The Romans, Jones pointed out, called a man in love salax, in a salted state, which is the origin of the word salacious.

This is New York: skyscraper champion of the world where slickers and know-it-alls peddle gold bricks to each other and where the truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye. —BEN HECHT, Nothing Sacred, 1937

There has never been a year like 1968, and it is unlikely that there will ever be one again.

The finished paper is still 5 percent water.

His 1831 wood-block series, "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji," is the world's most famous work of ukiyo-e, and one of these prints in particular, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, is one of the most famous works of Japanese art.

Literary teas are constantly in a state of flux. The uninitiate gravitates toward the author, the author toward the editor or publisher, the publisher toward the reviewer, and the reviewer, in desperation, toward another drink. Since the general rule of conduct is to seek out those who can do one the most good, magazine editors and big-name reviewers enjoy much popularity.

The guardians of Celtic culture, the Druids, did not leave written records. So most of what we know of them is from Greek and Roman historians who described the Celts as huge and terrifying men in bright fabrics.

The Roman army required salt for its soldiers and for its horses and livestock. At times soldiers were even paid in salt, which was the origin of the word salary and the expression "worth his salt" or "earning his salt." In fact, the Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier. To

la violencia es real y la no violencia no lo es. Pero cuando la no violencia se hace real es una fuerza poderosa.

When my enemies seek my life, how can I do other than use my endeavor to destroy them in my own defense?" The

La no violencia, exactamente igual que la violencia, es una forma de persuadir, una técnica para el activismo político, un sistema para prevalecer. La

The big culprit is methane gas, which, although it does not get as much attention as carbon dioxide, is more than twenty times as destructive in terms of climate change.

El hinduismo y Gandhi insisten en que la no violencia no debe proceder jamás de la debilidad, sino de la fuerza, y que solo las personas más fuertes y disciplinadas pueden alcanzarla. Quienes