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
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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"
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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.
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It starts with something small and then it becomes everything.
--From "Vincent in Brixton," play by Nicholas Wright about Van Gogh
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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
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