Bursting Quotes - Page 2

• We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.

  Michel Foucault

  Struggle, Book, Ideas

  "Michel Foucault". Book by Didier Eribon translated by Betsy Wind, 1989.

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• Sex can no longer be the germ, the seed of fiction. Sex is an episode, most properly conveyed in an episodic manner, quickly, often ironically. It is a bursting forth of only one of the cells in the body of the omnipotent I, the one who hopes by concentration of tone and voice to utter the sound of reality.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Sex, Reality, Cells

  Elizabeth Hardwick (2011). “Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature”, p.205, New York Review of Books

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• Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed as the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight O'er the ramplarts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

  Francis Scott Key

  Stars, Twilight, Home

  "The Star-Spangled Banner" (song) st. 1 (1814)

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• REVOLUTION, n. A bursting of the boilers which usually takes place when the safety valve of public discussion is closed.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Safety, Revolution, Censorship

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• Dweller in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation, mark! Who in widow weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse?

  Robert Burns

  Weed, Dark, Years

  Robert Burns, James Currie, Gilbert Burns (1820). “The Works of Robert Burns;: With an Account of His Life, and a Criticism of His Writings, : to which are Prefixed, Some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry”, p.265

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• I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.

  Thomas Merton

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Atmosphere

  Thomas Merton (1988). “Encounter: Thomas Merton & D.T. Suzuki”

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• Well. Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

  Margaret Atwood

  Beautiful, Cat, Heart

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him....In his desperate ambition for power he discovered that his speeches, confused and pervaded with hate as they were, received wild acclaim by those whose situation and orientation resembled his own. He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career.

  Albert Einstein

  Hate, Confused, Ambition

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• [T]hro’ this Air, this Ocean, and this Earth, All Nature quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go? Around how wide? how deep extend below? Vast Chain of Being! which from God began, Ethereal Essence, Spirit, Substance, Man, Beast, Bird, Fish, Insect! what no Eye can see, No Glass can reach! from Infinite to Thee! From Thee to Nothing.... From Nature’s Chain whatever Link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.... All are but parts of one stupendous Whole: Whose Body Nature is, and God the Soul.

  Alexander Pope

  Nature, Ocean, Eye

  Alexander Pope, “Essay On Man”

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• Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Morning, Character, Bangs

  Jostein Gaarder (2003). “The Solitaire Mystery”, p.162, Macmillan

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• A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Song, Voice, Dwelling

  "St. Thomas's Introduction to his Exposition of the Psalms of David". Introduction, dhspriory.org.

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• if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

  Charles Bukowski

  Heart, Mind, Mouths

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: New Poems”, p.3, Zondervan

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• Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

  Beverley Nichols

  Laughter, Finding Yourself, Lunatic

  Beverley Nichols (2009). “Rhapsody in Green: The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols”, p.112, Timber Press

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• Love is like light and there are two kinds, the bursting fireworks of the moment and the solid, fixed stars that sometimes become obscured in the heavens, but are always there, year after year, for a lifetime.

  Ann Rinaldi

  Stars, Love Is, Light

  Ann Rinaldi (1998). “In My Father's House: And Related Readings”, McDougal Littel

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• I don't think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.

  Martha Graham

  Art, Thinking, Moments

  "Blood Memory".

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• Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.

  Henri Nouwen

  Pain, Spring, Flower

  Henri J.M. Nouwen (2017). “You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Convergent Books

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• If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

  Ray Bradbury

  Faith, Morning, Teaching

  "The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing". 2010.

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• Chaga is one of the weirdest mushrooms you may ever see. A fungal parasite found on birch trees, Chaga is a hardened, blackened, crusty formation that looks like a bursting tumor.

  Paul Stamets

  Mushrooms, Tree, Looks

  "Chaga, the Clinker Fungus: This Mushroom Looks Scary But Can Benefit Health" by Paul Stamets, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 25, 2012.

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• The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself, were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennessee Williams play, with their bursting unimportant, but spell-bindingly mad speeches.

  Lorrie Moore

  Character, Self, Play

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• If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while. ... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Morning, Flower, Intellectual

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal (2004). “Advice for a Young Investigator”, p.35, MIT Press

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• Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting crackers but also those of our friends, and often the boom of homemade cannon shot off by daring boys of 16 years, ready to lose a hand if it blew up.

  Paul Engle

  Workout, Boys, July

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• That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven...Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Summer, Powerful, Fall

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• . . . the first spring in five free from the rumour of guns across the Channel, a spring anxious to make up for the cold winter, life bursting out after four years of death. All of England raised her face to the sun. . .

  Laurie R. King

  Spring, Winter, Gun

  Laurie R. King (2014). “The Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen”, p.296, Macmillan

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• one thing about having a baby is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of- and then you do, you love him even more.

  Anne Lamott

  Baby, Way, Steps

  Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

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• She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far.... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Flower, Heart, Two

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