#sumptuous

Each spring for a period of weeks the imperial gardens were filled with prize tulips (Turkish, Dutch, Iranian), all of them shown to their best advantage. Tulips whose petals had flexed wide were held shut with fine threads hand-tied. Most of the bulbs had been grown in place, but these were supplemented by thousands of cut stems held in glass bottles; the scale of the display was further compounded by mirrors placed strategically around the garden. Each variety was marked with a label made from silver filigree. In place of every fourth flower a candle, its wick trimmed to tulip height, was set into the ground. Songbirds in gilded cages supplied the music, and hundreds of giant tortoises carrying candles on their backs lumbered through the gardens, further illuminating the display. All the guests were required to dress in colors that flattered those of the tulips. At the appointed moment a cannon sounded, the doors to the harem were flung open, and the sultan's mistresses stepped into the garden led by eunuchs bearing torches. The whole scene was repeated every night for as long as the tulips were in bloom, for as long as Sultan Ahmed managed to cling to his throne. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#spectacle #sumptuousness #music

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society. ↗

— Rowan Atkinson

#actually #arrogance #church #england #extraordinarily

I don't mean to be presumptuous that men don't feel this, I don't mean this, but I found that when my child was born, my first child, it felt like my heart broke. ↗

— Tea Leoni

#broke #child #feel #felt #first

There's one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and - I'm going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself - I think most respect me. ↗

— Joe Biden

#around #been #everybody #going #having

It's presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels. ↗

— Joe Biden

#how #know #presumptuous #say #somebody

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#i #knew #more #myself #never

Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds. ↗

— Hesiod

#bad man #city #deeds #even #man

Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert. ↗

— Johann Georg Hamann

#freedom #nothing #public #reason #sumptuous

Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle. ↗

— Joe Biden

#aisle #been #being #cross #democratic

I have sat at the sumptuous tables of power, but I have not run away with the silverware. ↗

— Diosdado Macapagal

#i #power #run #sat #sumptuous