Nancy > Nancy's Quotes

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  • #1
    John Milton
    “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”
    John Milton, Areopagitica

  • #2
    “Come! into the open, friend! admittedly only a little is gleaming today
    down and narrowly the heaven is enclosing us.
    Neither the mountains have yet risen of the forest
    the peak as wished and empty the air is resting of singing
    It’s dull today, the ways and lanes are slumbering and nearly it may
    seem to me to be as in the leaden time.
    Nevertheless the wish succeeds, true believers don’t have doubts about One
    hour and to the pleasure the day must furthermore be dedicated.”
    Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin

  • #3
    Edwin Markham
    “They drew a line that shut me out,
    Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout!
    But love and I had the wit to win
    We drew a circle and brought them in.”
    Edwin Markham

  • #4
    Edwin Markham
    “He drew a circle that shut me out-
    Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
    But love and I had the wit to win:
    We drew a circle and took him In!”
    Edwin Markham

  • #5
    Edwin Markham
    “For all your years prepare,
    And meet them ever alike;
    When you are the anvil, bear--
    When you are the hammer, strike.

    Edwin Markham

  • #6
    Adrienne Rich
    “My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
    so much has been destroyed
    I have to cast my lot with those
    who age after age, perversely,
    with no extraordinary power,
    reconstitute the world.”
    Adrienne Rich

  • #7
    Marvin Bell
    “Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.”
    Marvin Bell

  • #8
    Arundhati Roy
    “But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.

    He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

    So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.”
    Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

  • #9
    Toni Morrison
    “In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams.”
    Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

  • #10
    E.B. White
    “Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it.”
    E.B. White, Stuart Little

  • #11
    E.B. White
    “He wiped his face with his handkerchief, for he was quite warm from the exertion of being Chairman of the World. It had taken more running and leaping and sliding than he had imagined.”
    E.B. White, Stuart Little

  • #12
    E.B. White
    “There’s something about north,” he said, “something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion.”
    “That’s the way I look at it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days.”
    E.B. White, Stuart Little

  • #13
    E.B. White
    “Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.”
    E.B. White, Stuart Little

  • #14
    E.B. White
    “Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.”
    E.B. White, Stuart Little

  • #15
    Audrey Hepburn
    “I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.”
    Audrey Hepburn

  • #16
    Antonio Machado
    “El ojo que ves no es ojo porque tú lo veas, es ojo porque te ve.”
    Antonio Machado, Antología Poética

  • #17
    William Faulkner
    “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
    William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

  • #18
    Samuel Johnson
    “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
    Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

  • #19
    Julio Cortázar
    “Y así, de feuille en aiguille, pienso en esos estados excepcionales en que por un instante se adivinan las hojas y las lámparas invisibles, se las siente en un aire que está fuera del espacio. Es muy simple, toda exaltación o depresión me empuja a un estado propicio a
    lo llamaré paravisiones
    es decir (lo malo es eso, decirlo)
    una aptitud instantánea para salirme, para de pronto desde fuera aprehenderme, o de dentro pero en otro plano,
    como si fuera alguien que me está mirando
    (mejor todavía —porque en realidad, no me veo— : como alguien que me está viviendo).
    No dura nada, dos pasos a la calle, el tiempo de respirar profundamente (a veces al despertarse dura un poco más, pero entonces es fabuloso)
    y en ese instante sé lo que soy porque estoy exactamente sabiendo lo que no soy (eso que ignoraré luego astutamente). Pero no hay palabras para una materia palabra y visión pura, como un bloque de evidencia. Imposible objetivar, precisar ese defectividad que aprehendí en el instante y que era clara ausencia o claro error o clara insuficencia pero
    sin saber de qué, qué.
    Otra manera de tratar de decirlo: Cuando es eso, ya no estoy mirando hacia el mundo, de mí a lo otro, sino que por un segundo soy el mundo, el plano de fuera, lo demás mirándome. Me veo como pueden verme los otros. Es inapreciable: por eso dura apenas. Mido mi defectividad, advierto todo lo que por ausencia o defecto no nos vemos nunca. Veo lo que no soy. Por ejemplo (esto lo armo de vuelta, pero sale de ahí): hay enormes zonas a las que no he llegado nunca, y lo que no se ha conocido es lo que se es. Ansiedad por echar a correr, entrar en una casa, en esa tienda, saltar a un tren, devorar todo Jouhandeau, saber alemán, conocer Aurangabad... Ejemplos localizados y lamentables pero que pueden dar una idea. (¿una idea?)
    Otra manera de querer decirlo: Lo defectivo se siente más como una pobreza intuitiva que como una mera falta de experiencia.”
    Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch



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