Go For The Gold Quotes

“The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament ... Its gold is as distinct a value to the eye as the nugget gold is in the pocket.”

— Helen Hunt Jackson

“You doan go diggin' for gold in an outhouse.”

— Sandra Hill

“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.”

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Often, after extinguishing the oil lamp in our house on stilts, we would lie on our beds and smoke in the dark. Book titles poured from our lips, the mysterious and exotic names evoking unknown worlds. It was like Tibetan incense, where you need only say the name, Zang Xiang, to smell the subtle, refined fragrance and to see the joss sticks sweating beads of scented moisture which, in the lamplight, resemble drops of liquid gold.”

— Dai Sijie

“He would never admit it, but he did have a heart of gold under all that crud.
Solid, hard, impenetrable gold, but still gold, nonetheless.”

— Jessiqua Wittman

“A long, white banner spread out, lifting on the air. Rand could only stare. The whole thing seemed of a piece, neither woven, nor dyed, nor painted. A figure like a serpent, scaled in scarlet and gold, ran the entire length, but it had scaled legs, and feet with five long, golden claws on each, and a great head with a golden mane and eyes like the sun. The stirring of the banner made it seem to move, scales glittering like precious metals and gems, alive, and he almost thought he could hear it roar defiance.”

— Robert Jordan

“I love you, Ginesse. Don't you see? You are my Zerzura. You are my undiscovered country, both my heart's destination and journey. Gold and temples, jewels and gems don't hold one bit of your enticement. You are my Solomon's mine, my uncharted empire. You are the only home I need to know, the only journey I want to take, the only treasure I would die to claim. You are exotic and familiar, opiate and tonic, hard conscience and sweet temptation. And now I have no more words to give you, Ginesse. I only have my heart, and you already own that.”

— Connie Brockway

“I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
(John Dos Passos, 1957, from the speech he delivered upon accepting the Gold Medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters)”

— John Dos Passos

“Go for the gold: better one great column and some undistinguished ones than constant mediocrity.”

— Allan Sloan

“But he must have richly dyed purple clothes, woven with gold thread and decorated with multicoloured patterns: it is his fault, not nature's, if he feels poor.”

— Seneca

“Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.”

— Samuel Johnson

“I graduated a the top of my class in the '84 Olympic Games; I won a gold medal.”

— Scott Hamilton

“The dawn came up entirely gold, with no hint of pink or purple. The sky was a rinsed blue, like an old shirt washed a thousand times.”

— Lee Child

“When I decided to go for four gold medals I planned it out over a few years. It was in four different events and there was a lot to it.”

— Carl Lewis

“A day of dappled seaborne clouds.
The phrase and the day and the scene harmonised in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the greyfringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language manycoloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?”

— James Joyce

“WITH the approach of autumn, a layer of long golden fur grows over their bodies. Golden in the purest sense of the word, with not the least intrusion of another hue. Theirs is a gold that comes into this world as gold and exists in this world as gold. Poised between all heaven and earth, they stand steeped in gold.”

— Haruki Murakami

“I am too rich already, for my eyes mint gold.
- Coloured Money”

— Mervyn Peake

“I work with gold that holds our past and diamonds that see the future and rubies that long for love. It's just a way of telling a story.”

— Waris Ahluwalia

“Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“My records don't go platinum or gold. I think they go cedar.”

— Dave Sitek

“Barristan Semly was not a bookish man, but he had often glanced through the pages of the White Book, where the deeds of his predecessors had been recorded. Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men - quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failing that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their hands. The worst ...
The worst were those who played the game of thrones.”

— George R.R. Martin

“We may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy.”

— Aravind Adiga

“There weren't really any new immigrants in Miller's Valley at all. You could tell by their last names that people who lived in the area were originally from Germany or Poland or some of the Slavic countries, but they'd been Americans long enough to have flat vowels and made-up minds. When I got older I realized that the majority of people in Miller's Valley were the most discontented kind of Americans, working people whose situations hadn't risen or fallen over generations, but who still carried a little bit of those streets-paved-with-gold illusions and so were always annoyed that the streets were paved with tar. If they were paved at all.”

— Anna Quindlen

“Anyone who loves books the way Homer does, loves libraries, too. It doesn't matter if the library has fancy red leather chairs and gold-plated shelves that reach to a vaulted ceiling, or if the library has splintery wooden benches and shelves made of old milk crates. it's the scent that sets the book lover at ease. It's better than grandma's perfume, or freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, or even toast. It's a scent derived from paper, mildew, dust, and human endeavors.”

— Suzanne Selfors

“O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”

— Plato

“Mostly, though, he looked at the girl, with her red hair and bare white arms. There was something about the whiteness of those arms that made them seem more naked than the bare arms of other women in church. A lot of red heads had freckles, but she looked as if she had been carved from a block of soap ... She was very pretty, about his age, her hair braided into a silky rope the colour of black cherries. She was fingering a delicate gold cross around her throat, and she turned it just so, into the sunlight, and it shone, became a cruciform flame. She lingered on the gesture, making it a kind of confession, then turned the cross away.”

— Joe Hill

“I don't need to put jewels on to make myself feel important. I'd rather drop them for the benefit of less fortunate people. I don't need to put gold on my body, and I'm not criticizing people who do, but for me, I'd rather be around my family and see them be happy because that's worth more to me than gold.”

— Immortal Technique

“Girls playing sports is not about winning gold medals. It's about self-esteem, learning to compete and learning how hard you have to work in order to achieve your goals.”

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

“Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world; and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones.”

— William Whewell

“The modern mind dislikes gold because it blurts out unpleasant truths.”

— Joseph A. Schumpeter

“Do you really believe that in the late 1800s Paddy Hannan would have walked 600 miles in the hot sun from Perth to Kalgoorlie to discover gold if he had to pay the Wayne Swan resource super tax?”

— Clive Palmer

“The real yellow peril: Gold.”

— Mark Twain

“As the yellow gold is tried in fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity.”

— Ovid

“America is a country where the Olympics and the divorce lawyers both have the same slogan - Go for the Gold.”

— Bob Hope

“There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”

— C.S. Lewis

“Potential is a priceless treasure, like gold. All of us have gold hidden within, but we have to dig to get it out.”

— Joyce Meyer

“The more you are afflicted, the more you ought to rejoice, because in the fire of tribulation the soul will become pure gold, worthy to be placed and to shine in the heavenly palace.”

— Pio Of Pietrelcina

“The ultimate asset bubble is gold.”

— George Soros

“Love is not a feeling to pass away
Like the balmy breath of a Summer's day ...
Love is not a passion of earthly mould
As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold”

— Charles Dickens

“Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism.”

— Ludwig Von Mises

“With the rose the butterfly's deep in love,
A thousand times hovering round;
But round himself, all tender like gold,
The sun's sweet ray is hovering found.”

— Heinrich Heine

“Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold.”

— William Osler

“In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.”

— Henry David Thoreau