#lands

'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too. ↗

— Wesley Morris

#adam #adam sandler #better #between #brooks

For years, walking round London, I had been aware of the actual land, lying concealed but not entirely changed or destroyed, beneath the surface of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century city. It has been said that 'God made the country and man made the town', but that is not true: the town is simply disguised countryside. Main roads, some older than history itself, still bend to avoid long-dried marshes, or veer off at an angle where the wall of a manor house once stood. Hills and valleys still remain; rivers, even though entombed in sewer pipes, still cause trouble in the foundations of neighbouring buildings and become a local focus for winter mists. Garden walls follow the line of hedgerows; the very street-patterns have been determined by the holdings of individual farmers and landlords, parcels of land some of which can be traced back to the Norman Conquest. The situation of specific buildings - pubs, churches, institutions - often dates from long distant decisions and actions on the part of men whose names have vanished from any record. ↗

— Gillian Tindall

#landscape #local-history #london #dating

..I find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's "Landslide," especially the lyric: "I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox. ↗

— Mindy Kaling

#fleetwood-mac #humor #landslide #mindy-kaling #music

what it is...is a place where I can return to myself. It's enough of a scramble to get to...that the energy expended is significant, and it translates into a change in my body chemistry and my psychological chemistry and my heart chemistry... ↗

— Jay Salter

#hiking #nature #refuge #utah #change

If we don't take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights. ↗

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#could #effective #extreme #measures #netherlands

We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists, and increased our knowledge of the lands of ice in the South. ↗

— Roald Amundsen

#always #first #gratitude #ice #increased

I stress the uniqueness of the Australian landscape and its metaphysical and mythic content. ↗

— Arthur Boyd

#content #i #landscape #metaphysical #mythic

German militarism and Nazism have devastated twice in our generation the lands of German neighbors. ↗

— James F. Byrnes

#generation #german #lands #militarism #neighbors

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#landscape #nature #page- #dreams

Why do most people write poems about nature? For the same reason that every community center is propped up with industrious, self painted landscapes: you have no need of any imagination to simply describe what is around you, and the amateur naturally thinks an idyllic picture is best, not the dirty city around him. What makes van de Waarsenburg special is that he crams a hundred idyllic scenes into a single poem, as if he does not trust a single boathouse would be poetic enough for the reader. ↗

— Martinus Hendrikus Benders

#poetry #van-de-waarsenburg #imagination