Dry Quotes - Page 30

• Assoon as I stepped out of my mother's womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

  Quentin Crisp

  Mother, Children, Mistake

  1968 The Naked Civil Servant, ch.2.

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• The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.

  John Steinbeck

  Eye, Sound, Ribs

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.8, Penguin

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• Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark but he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge; the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered: "With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Sweet, Heart, Dark

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1958). “the Odyssey a Modern Sequel”

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• I like to pour my wines for people. I watch their eyes, I can see what they'll like. Most people say they don't like dry wine because they haven't had a dry wine that's clean and fruity, instead of a big, oaky thing.

  Pat Paulsen

  Wine, Eye, People

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• Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.

  Anton Chekhov

  Creativity, Men, Animal

  "Uncle Vanya". Act I. Play by Anton Chekhov, 1897.

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• First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the "wilderness of upper Egypt" to "wander in dry places." Thirst drives man mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence--lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

  Thomas Merton

  Country, Men, Egypt

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.21, Macmillan

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• A few little flowers will spring up briefly in the dry gulley through which torrents of water pass occasionally. But it is steady streams that bring thick and needed crops. In the agriculture of the soul that has to do with nurturing attributes, flash floods are no substitute for regular irrigation.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Spring, Flower, Agriculture

  "Notwithstanding My Weakness". Book by Neal A. Maxwell, pg. 7, 1981.

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• The collision of a great man with a great idea strikes fire in dry flax.

  Austin O'Malley

  Men, Fire, Ideas

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• Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

  Chinua Achebe

  Morning, Men, Yield

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• Even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health.

  Chinua Achebe

  Rain, Heart, Village

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.24, Heinemann

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• People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.

  Woody Allen

  Running, Morning, Writing

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.

  Teresa Amabile

  Creativity, Thinking, Skills

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• A plague of snow, fluffy and dry before it hardens and grips the trees, the walls, and the cars parked haphazardly everywhere. When I walk to the little market a few blocks away, it feels like a test of endurance.

  Henri Cole

  Wall, Block, Car

  "A Plague of Snow" by Henri Cole, www.newyorker.com. February 18, 2015.

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• Maybe it's better like this, better that everything should go up in a blaze of dry grass and that people should begin again.

  Cesare Pavese

  People, Grass, Should

  "The Moon and the Bonfire". Book by Cesare Pavese. Chapter XXVI, p. 148, 1950.

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• I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It's a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.

  Bill Bryson

  Rain, Weather, Mail

  1995 Notes from a Small Island.

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• The tear, down childhood's cheek that flows, Is like the dewdrop on the rose; When next the summer breeze comes by And waves the bush, the flower is dry.

  Walter Scott

  Summer, Flower, Rose

  Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott (1841). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart”, p.319

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• Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.

  Lin Yutang

  Running, Laughter, Voice

  Lin Yutang, (2013). “Between Tears and Laughter”, p.13, Read Books Ltd

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• I do not like poems that resemble hay compressed into a geometrically perfect cube. I like it when the hay, unkempt, uncombed, with dry berries mixed in it, thrown together gaily and freely, bounces along atop some truck-and more, if there are some lovely and healthy lasses atop the hay-and better yet if the branches catch at the hay, and some of it tumbles to the road.

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko

  Perfect, Healthy, Lovely

  New York Times, February 2, 1986.

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• When on the breath of Autumn's breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill!

  Mary Howitt

  Autumn, White, Joy

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• I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.

  Woody Allen

  Running, Block, Talking

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• Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.

  Plato

  Sweet, Opposites, Desire

  Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.122, Booklassic

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• One [method] is by a Watch to keep time exactly. But, by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a watch hath not yet been made.

  Isaac Newton

  Differences, Different, Watches

  David Brewster, Isaac Newton (1855). “Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton”, p.260

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• You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat

  Frederic Chopin

  Writing, Hungry, Fats

  Frederic Chopin (2013). “Chopin's Letters”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry, The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I.

  Celia Thaxter

  Running, Beach, Hands

  Celia Thaxter (1874). “Poems”, p.32

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• I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.

  Tim Allen

  Life, Kids, Thinking

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