South Wales

"In those days, the blag slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of the hill. Not enough to mar the countryside nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers between the green"

(Philip Dunne screenplay based on 'How Green was my Valley' by Richard Llewellyn)

By noon 436 of the men who had descended the mine for the days work had been bought safely to the surface. Leaving 485 still below.

For these caught in the immediate theatre of the blast, there seemed little hope, for to  the horrer of the blast there had been added the terror of fire and no rescue party, however intrepid, and there was no lack of brave men ready to answer the call of the most forlorn hope-could live through that raging furnace.

(South Wales Daily News Wednesday October 15th 1913. Report of the  Senghenydd Colliery Disaster)

Brighton

Rose: "People change"

Ida: "I've never changed,it's like one of those sticks of rock. Bite one all the way down, you'll still read Brighton. Thats human nature."

(Brighton Rock. Graham Greene)

Ever since I was a young boy,

I've played the silver ball.

From Soho down to Brighton,

I must have played them all.

(Pinball Wizard. The Who)

Santorini

Anybody can become angry-that is easy, but to become angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way-that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

(Aristotle)

I am indepted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

(Alexander the Great)

Santorini

Kokkoretsi. The insides of the sheep-heart ,liver,lungs,kidneys,brains, sweetbreads, everything- are cut into small pieces, heavily seasoned with mountain herbs and lemons and threaded on to skewers. The intestines of the animal are cleaned and wound round and round the skewers, which are then grilled very slowly on a spit.

(Elizabeth David. Mediterranean Food)

One thing I know,that I know nothing. That is the source of my wisdom.

(Socrates)

Santorini

Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman.

(George Bernard Shaw)

'the highest point a man can attain is not knowledge, or virtue, or goodness, or victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: sacred awe!"

(Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba the Greek)

Santorini

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

(Homer. The Odyssey)

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

(Senator Robert F Kennedy)

Santorini

At first was the name! We have already said that this yellow plaything is called a "komboloi". Now listen carefully to the meaning of that word. It is a compound word. The main part is "kombo" and the suffix is "oi". Kombo is a knot, but according to an ancient Greek interpretation "kombo" means a knock, a sound heard when two hard objects of the same material clash. The suffix "oi" means a  line of similar objects. So a line of knots or beads strung on a thread that move and knock against one another give us the picture of a "komboloi"

(Aris Evangelinos) The Komboloi and its history.

You should see the landscape of Greece. It would break your heart.

(Lawrence Durrell)

London

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

(Samuel Johnson)

London, that great cesspool into which all loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. 

(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)