Tin Cans Quotes

• We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

  Ethel Waters

  Mom, Kitchen, Bigs

  56 Copy quote

• For here
  Am I sitting in a tin can,
  Far above the world.
  Planet Earth is blue,
  And there's nothing I can do.

  David Bowie

  Blue, Sitting, World

  "Song: 'Space Oddity'". 1969.

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• My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

  Dolly Parton

  Two, Phones, Together

  4 Copy quote

• The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Civilization, Tin, Path

  Harry Persons Taber, Elbert Hubbard (1904). “The Philistine”

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• You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.

  Josephine Tey

  Tails, Denial, Pretending

  Josephine Tey (1998). “The Franchise Affair”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

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• He's just jealous. You know what they say. Empty tin cans make the most noise, and he's an empty tin can. This game is between the Bears and the Eagles, not Ditka and Ryan. We all know who would win that one. Ditka, hands down.

  Mike Ditka

  Jealous, Winning, Eagles

  7 Copy quote

• To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Tails, News, Publicity

  April 01, 1935 letter. "The Letters of T.E. Lawrence". Book edited by Malcolm Brown, 1938.

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• I've spent, I think, close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold.

  Charlie Sheen

  Thinking, Gold, Lasts

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• Why does a salmon rise? Why does a small boy cross the street just to kick a tin can?

  Lee Wulff

  Boys, Fishing, Salmon

  Lee Wulff (1958). “The Atlantic Salmon”

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• My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy.

  Brian Andreas

  Grandma, Italian, House

  17 Copy quote

• For here, am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do... Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still - and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much.

  David Bowie

  Travel, Thinking, Past

  Song: Space Oddity

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• I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.

  Jack Kerouac

  Country, Home, Fire

  Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.118, Penguin

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• The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.

  Mary Antin

  Father, Cooking, Meals

  Mary Antin (2013). “The Promised Land”, p.127, Courier Corporation

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• Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  New York, Blow, Cities

  31 Copy quote

• A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.

  Nhat Hanh

  Love, Summer, Flower

  6 Copy quote

• Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. ... The cunningest hunger is hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is the economy of nature, but with it all there is not sufficient account taken of the works of man. There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor.

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Nature, Taken, Men

  Mary Hunter Austin (2006). “Essential Mary Austin: A Selection of Mary Austin's Best Writing”, Heyday Books

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• A flower is a daisy chain, a graduation, a valentine; a flower is New Year's Eve and an orchid in your hair; a flower is a single geranium blooming in a tin can on a murky city fire-escape; an acre of roses at the Botanical Gardens; and the first gold crocus of spring! ... a flower is a birth, a wedding, a leaving of this life.

  Jean Hersey

  New Year, Spring, Valentine

  20 Copy quote

• I drove to Oxford with my van full of petrol and tin cans, as I didn't know there were service stations on the motorway. I pulled up on the hard shoulder and got my cans out. Then I filled up and set off again. That's how naive I was - so much not a cosmopolitan girl.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Girl, Oxford, Filled Up

  Source: www.newstatesman.com

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• There is cruelty in divorce. There is cruelty in forced or unfortunate marriage. We will continue to cry at weddings because we know how bittersweet, how fragile is the truth. We will always need legal divorce just as an emergency escape hatch is crucial in every submarine. No sense, however, in denying that after every divorce someone will be running like a cat, tin cans tied to its tail: spooked and slowed down.

  Anne Roiphe

  Running, Cat, Divorce

  5 Copy quote

• Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Loneliness, Eye, Night

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• Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion ?

  Frank Zappa

  Race, Guy, Atheism

  Concert address to audience at the Rockpile, Toronto, May 1969.

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• When human men hold an object that makes a powerful noise, or has moving parts, or spins around fast, or has a button they can push (which either screws or nails something) they become Gods in their own heads.They can do anything: they can eat through walls and bring buildings together to form mighty empires.They can build floating cities and flying tin cans.But they still can't make their own beds.

  Craig Stone

  Wall, Powerful, Moving

  4 Copy quote

• Problem is, you can’t accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just lickin’ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.” “But I love him.” “So love him.” “But I miss him.” “So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Dog, Baby, Real

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.158, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.

  Harper Lee

  Gun, Blue, Daddy

  "Fictional character: Atticus Finch". "To Kill a Mockingbird", www.imdb.com. 1962.

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