Foreigner Quotes - page 3
Indeed I am ill-starred, for even if he dies I have no hope of happiness; with Jason dead, I should taste real misery. Away with modesty, farewell to my good name! Saved from all harm by me, let him go where he pleases, and let me die. On the very day of his success I could hang myself from a rafter or take a deadly poison. Yet even so my death would never save me from their wicked tongues. My fate would be the talk of every city in the world; and here the Colchian women would bandy my name about and drag it in mud – the girl who fancied a foreigner enough to die for him, disgraced her parents and her home, went off her head for love. What infamy would not be mine? Ah, how I grieve now for the folly of my passion! Better to die here in my room this very night, passing from life unnoticed, unreproached, than to carry through this horrible, this despicable scheme.
Apollonius of Rhodes
The Great Mogol is a foreigner in Hindustan, a descendent of Tamerlane, chief of those Mogols from Tartary who, about the year 1401, overran and conquered the Indies. Consequently he finds himself in a hostile country, or nearly so; a country containing hundreds of Gentiles to one Mogol or even to one Mahometan. To maintain himself in such a country... he is under the necessity of keeping up numerous armies, even in the time of peace.
François Bernier
The wealth of the country was robbed and wasted in the interest of imperialism and the foreigner. In fact, everything in this country was exploited for the foreigner. The son of the people was living in miserable conditions. He was humiliated and insulted. Had we been patient for a time, it would have only been for the greatest explosion, as our people exploded with the Army in one day and destroyed the idols who were following the foreigners.
Abd al-Karim Qasim
Brothers! The Army and the people have merged into a single entity. They have become a source of strength which is worrying the foreigners. The foreigner, along with imperialism, therefore began to resort to other means to split up our ranks so as to overcome us. But these attempts on the part of the imperialists to split up our ranks have gone long ago. Imperialism now tries to split up our ranks by calling for narrow parties and restricted groupings. The purpose of this is to play one against the other, while the foreigners and the imperialists will sit as spectators. But we shall thrust a stone in the mouth of imperialism. We shall overcome imperialism and we shall close this gap in its face. The parochial groupings and party affiliation at this time are of no benefit to the country... the purpose of this is to create disunity and weaken our strength and play one against the other. We are in a period of transition. We have resolved to protect the gains of our Revolution at any rate.
Abd al-Karim Qasim
I was in the enormous and almost deserted square in front of the Great People's Study House-all open spaces in Pyongyang remain deserted unless filled with parades of hundreds of thousands of human automata-when a young Korean slid surreptitiously up to me and asked, "Do you speak English?"
An electric moment: for in North Korea, unsupervised contact between a Korean and a foreigner is utterly unthinkable, as unthinkable as shouting, "Down with Big Brother!"
"Yes," I replied.
"I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only pleasure of my life."
It was the most searing communication I have ever received in my life. We parted immediately afterward and of course will never meet again. For him, Dickens and Shakespeare (which the regime permitted him to read with quite other ends in view) guaranteed the possibility not just of freedom but of truly human life itself.
Anthony Daniels (psychiatrist)
