Quotes About Monuments

even the Pyramids and other "great works" were as ephemeral as a castle of sand on the beach at Brighton.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

Even the death of friends will inspire us as much as their lives…. Their memories will be encrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our friends have no place in the graveyard.

Harald said, 'In England, in the south, there is a circle of great stones, about which men say the same thing. It was there before the Romans came, and it will be there when Odin decides to crumble the world in his two great hands. There are some such monuments which are meant to teach man that he is but a little thing, with a life hardly longer than that of a spring fly.

But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy

The definition of truth is an endless, complex pursuit, and good men and women have suffered the pain of both controversy and error. Intellectual, emotional, and political roadblocks may slow up people like Cyril for a time. But their lives taken as a whole are monuments to honesty and courage.

Japan's most important archaeological monuments—the 158 gigantic kofun tombs constructed between A.D. 300 and 686, and thought to contain the remains of ancestral emperors and their families—are still the property of the Imperial Household Agency. Excavation of the tombs is forbidden because it would constitute desecration—and it might also shed undesired light on where Japan's imperial family really came from (e.g., perhaps Korea?).

Aesthetically, London is just beautiful; it's a gorgeous city. The architecture, monuments, the parks, the small streets - it's an incredible place to be.

Washington in the summer is a never-ending stream of tour groups and packs of students, here to swarm the monuments, stroll the National Mall, and learn about our nation's history and government.

The Greeks, the Italians, and the Indians, from whom we get our ideas, erect monuments to ideas; we erect ours to men, and of such monuments we have an oversupply.

Coloured marble, pompous avenues, urban planning: what were these, if not the prerogatives of kings? No one, in a free republic, could be permitted such sinister grandstanding. This was why, in the last feverish decade before the crossing of the Rubicon, the sudden appearance in Rome of a rash of grandiose monuments had served as portents of the Republic's ruin.

Fixed Fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of Man. —George S. Patton, Jr. Not quite so much as fixed ideas are. —Patricio Carrera Mortal Danger is an effective antidote to fixed ideas. —Erwin Rommel

I've been here in Richmond for six years and I still don't get it. To me, having the principal Richmond monuments dedicated to the Lost Cause is like saying we're dedicated to no hope, no future. It's like having a monument to unrequited love.

Art is created in a state of delirium. Anyting else is the restoration of monuments. Collectors are artist that do not have a home. they have to make one for themselves.

The green spaces in Pyongyang were immense and many in number, but not as immense as the monuments.

the monuments of dead commanders and shot-torn regiments are of different years. An earthly palimpsest of tragedy!

The monuments of dead monarchs draw together, as if their bones were counselling each other; and the prophetic pavements beneath them, those stones of onyx, porphyry, green serpentine and glass, advise us through their inscriptions how many years the world will last.

People are quick to make monuments of anything they live long enough to control.

People who worship only themselves get a slick, polished look -- like monuments. Too bad they had to go so soon.

Hoagland's book, The Monuments of Mars.

But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every monument to dust. The only thing that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting.

People value monuments above men, and signs above works.

You must not go into the burial places, and look about only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, the Generals, the Judges, the Honourables, the Governors, or even of the village nobles called Esquires, that mark the springs of our successes and the sources of our distinctions. These are rather effects than causes; the spinning-wheels have done a great deal more than these.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.