Railing Quotes
To realize this towering imperative vision in all its integral possibilities... I lived days of anxiety, torture, and delight alike, trembling all over with emotion as those railing[s] in the midst of the bridge vibrating at the continuous passage of the trains. I appealed for help to the soaring verse of Walt Whitman and to the fiery Poe's plasticity. Upon the swarming darkness of the night, I rung all the bells of alarm with the blaze of electricity scattered in lightnings down the oblique cables, the dynamic pillars of my composition, and to render more pungent the mystery of the metallic apparition, through the green and red glare of the signals I excavated here and there caves as subterranean passages to infernal recesses.
Joseph Stella
If we're looking for a rationale other than "Loughner was nuts," I think the more relevant facts about him are that he was an atheist who detested religion and religious people, made lots of references to satanic New Age "conscience dreaming" (sic) and was involved in the occult.
When a fellow participant on a UFO website wrote a lengthy response to Loughner's question about "what is wrong or right with the current date?" which included the subordinate clause, "a day in Christ is as a thousand years," Loughner fixated on that one line, railing, "I won't listen to that fictitious crap without the author. This is laughable to notice a gospel or writing related to Christ."
Ann Coulter
There are a great many obscene minds, yet more railing and satirical, but very few fastidious ones. A man must have good manners, be very polite, and even have a great deal of originality to be able to jest gracefully and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles; to jest in such a manner and to make something out of nothing is to create.
Jean de La Bruyère
‘It was reported to the Emperor (Aurangzeb) that in the Temple of Keshava Rai at Mathura, there was a stone railing presented by ‘Bishukoh' (one without dignity i.e. Prince Dara, Aurangzeb's elder brother). On hearing it, the Emperor observed, "In the religion of the Musalmans, it is improper even to look at a Temple and this Bishukoh had installed this kathra (barrier railing). Such an act is totally unbecoming of a Musalman. This railing should be removed (forthwith).”.
Aurangzeb
The Emperor learning that in the temple of Keshav Rai at Mathura there was a stone railing presented by Dara Shukoh, remarked, 'In the Muslim faith it is a sin even to look at a temple, and this Dara had restored a railing in a temple. This fact is not creditable to the Muhammadans. Remove the railing.' By his order Abdun Nabi Khan (the faujdar of Mathura) removed it (1666).
Aurangzeb
Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it... Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps... A greyish white sky over everything...
Vincent van Gogh
Look these bastards in the eyes, and if anyone attacks you, already decide who will be the one to disconnect the railing where you are, and beat the hell out of them, the no-good bastards! And if you don't have a gun, every one of them has one gun, two guns, maybe three guns. In self-defense, if they attack you, take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them! In self-defense. Giuliani is known for taking his police and sending them off in riots. If any one of these bastards riots here today, you take their nightstick the way they did brother Abner Louima and ram it up their behind and jam it down their damn throats!
Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-hearted attempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.
Margaret Mead
Be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions; and although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed so to do only to inform your conscience and inform your children and families, not to make Scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.
Henry VIII of England
One of the most fascinating parts of their story is the Game Change authors' insistence that John McCain – he of the clenched fists and frequent outbursts, the infamous temper – never publicly repudiated Sarah Palin. McCain's advisors, staff and friends, yes. They complained long and hard and nastily about her in ensuing years. But never the senator, Heilemann and Halperin write. And now, as the nation says farewell to one of the most fascinating politicians in history, a question remains: Will all of John McCain's railing against Donald Trump ever make up for the fact that it might have been the senator's own desperation to win in 2008 that led the nation to this point? Only time will tell.
John McCain
Burchill divides up the chosen people into Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of an antisemite. Hilariously, she sets herself up as the Jewishness Police, railing against Jews who are not Jewish enough; and one of those, it turns out, is her local rabbi, Elli Tikvah Sarah. Burchill rails against the rabbi for, in this order: ignoring a bottle of champagne Burchill gave her in favour of elderflower wine made by the rabbi's girlfriend; "canoodling" with said girlfriend ("a Sapphic free-for-all", sneers the heretofore not exactly prudish Burchill), and advocating a dialogue with Islam.
Burchill doesn't include this in the book but, according to Rabbi Sarah, Burchill emailed the synagogue's congregants railing that "your rabbi respects PIG ISLAM". Aww, being used as a launchpad for a British columnist's racism – we're living in the Promised Land now, fellow Jews!
Julie Burchill
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures ... But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered ... and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
Denis Diderot
