Monuments Quotes

“Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn
And broils roots out the work of masonry,
Nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till judgement that yourself arise,
You in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.”
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets

“We repeat, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, the antiquary and the historian. They make us aware to what extent architecture is a primitive thing, demonstrating as they do, like the cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, or the gigantic Hindu pagodas, that architecture's greatest products are less individual than social creations; the offspring of nations in labour rather than the outpouring of men of genius; the deposit let behind by a nation; the accumulation of the centuries; the residue from the successive evaporations of human society; in short, a kind of formation. Each wave of time lays down its alluvium, each race deposits its own stratum on the monument, each individual contributes his stone. Thus do the beavers, and the bees; and thus does man.”
― Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (REEDIT)

“If I had the true colours to describe what I feel for you, I wouldn't waste time stringing beads of words... Instead I would run to kiss you and leave monuments on you:-
pyramids on your lips, the Taj Mahal on your skin, and the Eiffel tower in your heart.

NOTESEUM | A storm I chased”
― Daniel Derrick Mwesigye

“Ancient monuments are full of wisdom, for they have been filled with what they have seen and heard for hundreds of years!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“I've been here in Richmond for six years and I still don't get it. To me, having the principal Richmond monuments dedicated to the Lost Cause is like saying we're dedicated to no hope, no future. It's like having a monument to unrequited love.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“For all the splendor of their monuments, the builders have vanished.”
― Cait Stevenson, How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages

“I always thought that would be really neat if black people ever got control of the United States we would, of course, tear down some of the statues because we just don't like them...like all of Richmond would probably not have a statue standing.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking At The Harlem Renaissance Through Poems

“If we impose on a map of the earth a 'world grid' with Giza (not Greenwich) as its prime meridian, then hidden relationships become immediately apparent between sites that previously seemed to be on a random, unrelated longitudes. On such a grid, as we've just seen, Tiruvannamalai stands on longitude 48 degrees east, Angkor stands on longitude 72 degrees east and Sao Pa stands out like a sore thumb on longitude 90 degrees east -- all numbers that are significant in ancient myths, significant in astronomy (through the study of precession), and closely interrelated through the base-3 system.
So the 'outrageous hypothesis' which is being proposed here is that the world was mapped repeatedly over a long period at the end of the Ice Age -- to the standards of accuracy that would not again be achieved until the end of the eighteenth century. It is proposed that the same people who made the maps also established their grid materially, on the ground, by consecrating a physical network of sites around the world on longitudes that were significant to them. And it is proposed that this happened a very long time ago, before history began, but that later cultures put new monuments on top of the ancient sites which they continued to venerate as sacred, perhaps also inheriting some of the knowledge and religious ideas of the original navigators and builders.”
― Graham Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

“Make your monuments [worthy] of the god, This keeps alive their maker’s name,..”
― Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms

“The architect, the sculptor, are highly interested that men should look to their art—to their hand, for a continuance of their being; and, therefore, I should wish to see well-designed, well-executed monuments; not sown up and down by themselves at random, but erected all in a single spot, where they can promise themselves endurance. Inasmuch as even the good and the great are contented to surrender the privilege of resting in person in the churches, we may, at least, erect there or in some fair hall near the burying-place, either monuments or monumental writings.”
― Goethe, Les Affinités électives

“The holy well was before them. If it hadn't been marked as special, the place where the water came to the surface, fresh and clean and clear, would have been easily missed. But long ago, someone had built a stone border around it and added a vertical font with a woman's worn face on it. Water poured from her open mouth into the pool below. Little white moss flowers grew all around it.
A few yards away was a craggy standing stone. The stone was twice as tall as Merida and covered all over with carved spirals. On the first day of spring solstice, the sun lit up a perfect trail of light along the stone as it rose; quite magical. Merida used to ride Angus to the stone when she was first learning all the wilds of DunBroch; it was so impressive that it had taken her several visits to realize that the holy well, not the stone, was the reason this path was kept clear.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Bravely

“The most compelling evidence for the likelihood that the Great Pyramid was constructed by craftspeople with specialized knowledge and advanced techniques is the precision with which it was built. This precision reveals more about the true nature of its builders than any inscription or cartouche. There is no way to ignore the accuracy of this stonecutting, despite Egyptologists' interpretations of the inscriptions found in pyramids or temples in Egypt. After all, hieroglyphics, like any language, has the potential to be misunderstood.
After discussing much of the preceding information with the artisans at today's building sites, machine shops, and quarry mills, I became aware of the reason why we are still influenced by ideas that are not compatible with practical application. The artisans of today are too busy making a living to give serious thought to scholarly theories, and even when gross inequities are presented to them, they respond with a cynical shrug. When told that giant limestone casing stones, which were cut to within 1/100 of an inch, were cut with hammer and chisel, a typical response was a shake of the head.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt

“The engineering context of precision where precision is not necessary indicates the existence of sophisticated tools. These have not been found in the archaeological record, but the existence of them must be taken into account when we consider the mountain of circumstantial evidence to support their use.
In the case of the Serapeum, the list of tools and instruments that are necessary to create the granite boxes has grown. We can say with certainty that exact measuring instruments existed, for this work and the work at Luxor and Karnak could not have been accomplished without them. They are the most important and necessary tools for such work. The wooden squares, plumb bobs, and alignment instruments on display in the Luxor and Cairo Museums are incapable of giving even the most talented craftsman the information he needs to know that his work has achieved this kind of accuracy. Even if these boxes and monuments were crafted today with modern tools, such instruments are limited in what they can measure--and they most certainly cannot explain the precision and geometry [on display].”
― Christopher Dunn, Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs

“As I studied the e-mail from Glenn Milne, I knew just how ancient the U-shaped structure [found a few kilometers away from the Indian coast] really might be - at least 11,000 years old. That's 6000 years older than the first monumental architecture of ancient Egypt or of ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia - traditionally thought of as the oldest civilizations of antiquity. Certainly, no civilization known to history existed in southern India - or anywhere else - 11,000 years ago. Yet the U-shaped structure off the Tranquebar-Poompuhur coast invites us to consider the possibility that it was the work of a civilization that archaeologists have as yet failed to identify - one whose primary ruins could have been missed because they are submerged so deep beneath the sea.”
― Graham Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

“Endow your monuments according to your wealth.
Even one day gives to eternity,
An hour contributes to the future,
God recognizes him who works for him.”
― Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms

“And so on this rainbow day, with storms all around them, and blue sky above, they rode only as far as the valley. But from there, before they turned to go back, the monuments appeared close, and they loomed grandly with the background of purple bank and creamy cloud and shafts of golden lightning. They seemed like sentinels — guardians of a great and beautiful love born under their lofty heights, in the lonely silence of day, in the star-thrown shadow of night. They were like that love. And they held Lucy and Slone, calling every day, giving a nameless and tranquil content, binding them true to love, true to the sage and the open, true to that wild upland home.”
― Zane Grey, Wildfire

“Removing statues in many ways is about finding a more accurate history, a history that is more keeping with the best scholarship that we have out there. So for me, it is about making sure we don’t forget what those statues symbolize. It’s about pruning them, removing some, contextualizing others and recognizing that there is nothing wrong with a country recognizing that its identity is evolving over time. And as this identity evolves, so does what it remembers. So it does what it celebrates.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III

“One can tell a great deal about a country by what it remembers. By what graces the wall of its museums. And what monuments have privileged placement in parks or central traffic intersections. And what holidays and patriotic songs are the bane and balm to generations of school children. Yet one learns even more about a nation by what it forgets. What moments of evil, disappointment, and defeat are downplayed or eliminated from the national narratives. Often in the United States the issues of race and the centrality of African American culture are given short shrift in textbooks, popular chronicles, and national memories.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III, A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump

“To select only monuments supresses at one stroke the reality of the land and that of its people, it accounts for nothing of the present, that is, nothing historical, and as a consequence, the monuments themselves become undecipherable, therefore senseless. What is to be seen is thus constantly in the process of vanishing, and the Guide becomes, through an operation common to all mystifications, the very opposite of what it advertises, an agent of blindness.”
― Roland Barthes, Mythologies

“People value monuments above men, and signs above works.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

“In that way, they [monuments] are a reflection of the times in which they are erected as much as they are a reflection of the times they seek to commemorate. You can think of them, Alderman went on, as monuments to the power of the people who erect them, rather than as solely of the person depicted.”
― Connor Towne O'Neill, Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy

“Symbol-laden and technologically-driven histories of building were historically interwoven and conceptually compatible. National Socialism adopted just this convergence of the symbolic and the technological as a program, and this made it impossible ever after to pursue such a program.”
― Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History

“And yet, even the people who built the greatest marvels in the world could vanish without a trace. Those who dared to create monuments meant to last forever had still crumbled to dust. And in their silence, the pyramids proclaimed “You will crumble, too.”
― Cait Stevenson, How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages

“Monuments are never built on flimsy foundations nor weak grounds.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“Journalist Tony Horwitz describes its laser show as an unfortunate mix of Coca-Cola, the Beatles, the Atlanta Braves, and Elvis sining "Dixie," followed by the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Television ads end with the inclusive slogan, "Stone Mountain: A Different Day for Everyone." Eventually the desire for everyone's dollar may accomplish what the physical elements cannot: eradicating Stone Mountain as a Confederate-KKK Shrine.”
― James Loewen

“The historical witness is clear: as confederate symbols migrated from cemeteries and veterans’ parades, they became less about honoring the past and more about upholding white supremacy in the present. In fact, the relationship is inversely proportional. The further the distance from the cemetery and the past, the more nakedly obvious their role in asserting white supremacy becomes.”
― Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

“Displaying a monument that claims white people control America in an institution that is controlled by white people merely reinforces its message.”
― Erin L. Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments

“When there is no process, people lose hope that their voices will be heard. And then they take action, even if there's no legal route to do so. But this action might not be the one they really want to take. Perhaps they want to have a community-wide conversation about a monument or make some changes to it. Understanding and reconciliation can happen in many ways - but when authorities refuse to listen to calls for removal, some people will think they have no choice but to topple a monument.”
― Erin L. Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments

“Some of those who say they are worried about erasing history are really objecting to decisions about monuments being taken down by a small group of people, whether protesters or officials. Ideally, communities as a whole should decide, but you cannot impose this as a requirement without the existence of a real process for having these conversations. Today, what we are truly in danger of losing is not history but rather the chance to use monuments, whether fallen or still standing, as paths to get to a better future”
― Erin L. Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments

“Build no monuments to the living, for they may yet disgrace the stone.”
― Annonimus