Pens Quotes - Page 14

• But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury's, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.

  Alan Bennett

  Men, Play, Two

  Alan Bennett (2007). “Writing Home”, p.570, Picador

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• But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
  
  Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows;
  
  And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
  
  Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
  
  Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
  
  "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.

  Philip Sidney

  Children, Writing, Heart

  'Astrophel and Stella' (1591) sonnet 1

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• Perhaps the final hour is come I have left no testament Only a pen, for my mother I am no hero in an age without heroes I just want to be a man.

  Bei Dao

  Mother, Hero, Men

  Bei Dao (1983). “Notes from the City of the Sun: Poems”

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• Take time to be quiet. This is something that we don't do enough in this busy world of ours. We rush, rush, rush, and we are constantly listening to noise all around us. The human heart was meant for times of quiet, to peer deep within. It is when we do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams! Schedule some quiet "dream time" this week. No other people. No cell phone. No computer. Just you, a pad, a pen, and your thoughts.

  Jim Rohn

  Dream, Heart, Phones

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• But the body fails us and the mirror knows, and we no longer insist that the gray hush be carried off its surface by the cloth, for we have run to fat, and wrinkles encircle the eyes and notch the neck where the skin wattles, and the flesh of the arms hangs loose like an overlarge sleeve, veins thicken like ropes and empurple the body as though they had been drawn there by a pen, freckles darken, liver spots appear, the hairah, the hair is exhausted and gray and lusterless, in weary rolls like cornered lint.

  William H. Gass

  Running, Eye, Mirrors

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• In 2012, the far-right Golden Dawn won 21 seats in Greece's parliamentary election, the right-wing Jobbik gained ground in my native Hungary, and the National Front's Marine Le Pen received strong backing in France's presidential election. Growing support for similar forces across Europe points to an inescapable conclusion: the continent's prolonged financial crisis is creating a crisis of values that is now threatening the European Union itself.

  George Soros

  Strong, Money, Marine

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• Whatever action we are doing, we should be sure to keep the thought of God alive within. Whenever we sit or get up, we should prostrate in that place. It is good to cultivate the habit of considering our pen, books, clothes, vessels, and the tools of our job as imbued with divine presence and use them with care and respect. This will help keep the thought of God alive throughout our body, mind and atmosphere.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Jobs, Book, Clothes

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• I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Moving, Science, Thinking

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• There is a raging tiger inside every man whom God put on this earth. Every man worthy of the respect of his children spends his life building inside himself a cage to pen that tiger in.

  Murray Kempton

  Children, Men, Earth

  Murray Kempton (1972). “America comes of middle age: columns, 1950-1962”

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• Noise pollution is a relative thing. In a city, it's a jet plane taking off. In a monastery, it's a pen that scratches.

  Robert Orben

  Cities, Scratches, Jet Planes

  Robert Orben (2012). “2500 Jokes to Start 'Em Laughing”, p.266, Doubleday

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• Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day?

  Thomas Carlyle

  Writing, One Day, Authenticity

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “Works”, p.63

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• The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.

  Washington Irving

  Heart, Mind, Criticism

  Washington Irving (1999). “Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories”, p.64, Penguin

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• I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Daughter, Father, Son

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.81

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• The painter puts brush to canvas, and the poet puts pen to paper. The poet has the easier task, for his pen does not alter his rhyme.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Poetry, Doe

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• It is my mission to help in the breaking down of classes, and to make all men feel as if they were brethren of the same family, sharing the same rights, the same capabilities, and the same responsibilities. While my hand can hold a pen, I will use it to this end; and while my brain can earn a dollar, I will devote it to this end.

  Lydia M. Child

  Responsibility, Equality, Men

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• I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

  Helmut Newton

  Wings, People, Lasts

  "Photo". Book by Graphis Incorporated, 2005.

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• In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, a lack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?

  Aubrey Beardsley

  Book, Garden, Tears

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• Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

  John le Carre

  Writing, Thinking, Hands

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• I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Men, Vex, Want

  'Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue' (1842) st. 6

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• As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Art, Book, Writing

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 52, 1799.

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• Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be -- to me in all events -- a terrible thing without books.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Book, Blessing, Events

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• Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.

  Alex Ebert

  Tools, Clumsy

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• If he [the Artist] were to take up the pen it would be...to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order...to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Fighting, Artist, Men

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• To sit at one's table on a sunny morning, with four clear hours of uninterruptible security, plenty of nice white paper, and a Squeezer pen - that is true happiness.

  Winston Churchill

  Morning, Nice, White

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• The smell of factory farms . . . many notice these places only when the odours reach their homes, affecting their own quality of life. We create these animals for our profit and pleasure, playing with their genes, violating their dignity as living creatures, forcing them to lie and live in their own urine and excrement, turning pens into penitentiaries and frustrating their every desire except what is needed to keep them breathing and breeding. And then we complain about the smell.

  Matthew Scully

  Lying, Home, Animal

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