Sedulia's Quotations

Liselotte on the cleanliness of the Sun King's court at Versailles

The Dutch understand cleanliness better than anyone in the world. Things are very different in France. There is one dirty thing at Court that I shall never get used to: the people stationed in the galleries in front of our rooms piss into all the corners. It is impossible to leave one's apartments without seeing somebody pissing.

      --Letter from Liselotte von der Pfalz, German sister-in-law of Louis XIV, Versailles, 23 July 1702. From Letters From Liselotte, translated by Maria Kroll

Audrey Hepburn, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman on miracles

Anyone who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.

  --Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) quoted in How to Be Lovely (2004), by Melissa Hellstern

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the commonplace.

  --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), in his essay "Nature"

As for me, I know of nothing else but miracles.

  --Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in "Miracles"

 

Intolerance of the Dutch

There are two kinds of people I can't stand. Those who are intolerant of other cultures, and the Dutch.

     --Michael Caine's character, Nigel Powers, in Austin Powers movie Goldmember.

Derek Walcott: Either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation

I'm just a red nigger who love the sea
I had a sound colonial education
I have Dutch, nigger and English in me
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.          

            --Derek Walcott (1930-) in The Schooner Boy