Hands Quotes - Page 27

• O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

  Jessica Mitford

  Funeral, Victory, Battle

  Jessica Mitford (2011). “The American Way of Death Revisited”, p.14, Vintage

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• When two working people decide to marry, their federal income tax is usually increased. As soon as one spouse earns at least 20 percent of a married couple's total income, the couple pays a 'marriage tax.' ... The United States is the only major industrialized nation in the free world in which the tax cost of the second [married] earner's entry into the work force is higher than that of the first. On one hand, our government's social policy is to help working women earn equal salaries to those of men, but on the other we have a tax structure that penalizes them when they do so.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Couple, Men, Two

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• The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.

  Deborah Tannen

  Power, Doors, Gestures

  Deborah Tannen (1986). “That's not what I meant!: how conversational style makes or breaks relationships”

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• When children ask you questions about gray hairs, and wrinkles in the face, and sighs that have no words, and smiles too bright to be carved upon the radiant face by the hands of hypocrisy--when they ask you about kneeling at the altar, speaking into the vacant air, and uttering words to an unseen and in an invisible Presence--when they interrogate you about your great psalms, and hymns, and anthem-bursts of thankfulness, what is your reply to these? Do not be ashamed of the history. Keep steadily along the line of fact. Say what happened to you, and magnify God in the hearing of the inquirer.

  Joseph Parker

  Children, Hymns, Wrinkles

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• It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger when all above us calm.

  Washington Allston

  Kings, Lying, Blow

  Washington ALLSTON, Richard Henry DANA (Author of “Two Years before the Mast.”.) (1850). “Lectures on Art, and Poems ... Edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr”, p.170

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• My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake; I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Cutting, Cake, Substance

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• So it is useless to evade reality, because it only makes it more virulent in the end. But instead, look steadfastly into the slit, pin-pointed, malignant eyes of reality: as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts. Take it by the scruff of the neck, and shake the evil intent out of it; till it rattles out harmlessly, like gall bladder stones, fossilized on the floor.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Eye, Reality, Evil

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• My mother used to say when we were children, 'When a boy gets a stick in his hand, his brains run out the other end of it.' Power is a stick in the hand, and I have never heard of anybody who wielded a very big stick of power whose brains did not run out the other end. As a nation, our brains are running out the other end of our power right now.

  Jane Jacobs

  Mother, Running, Children

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• A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder.

  Doris Grumbach

  Ladders, Fists, Grasping

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Coming into the End Zone: A Memoir”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

  Kathe Kollwitz

  Eye, Work Out, Painting

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• Death lays his icy hand on kings.

  James Shirley

  Death, Kings, Icy

  'The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses' (1659) act 1, sc. 3

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• There was a stately drama writ
  By the hand that peopled the earth and air,
  And set the stars in the infinite,
  And made night gorgeous and morning fair;
  And all that had sense to reason knew
  That bloody drama must be gone through.
  Some sat and watched how the action veered--
  Waited, profited, trembled, cheered--
  We saw not clearly nor understood,
  But yielding ourselves to the masterhand,
  Each in his part as best he could,
  We played it through as the author planned.

  Alan Seeger

  Morning, Stars, Drama

  Alan Seeger, “The Hosts”

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• Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike - brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

  Chief Joseph

  Country, Mother, Brother

  Lincoln Hall Speech in Washington D.C., January 14, 1879.

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• Doctors, by God; washing their hands, looking out windows, fiddling with dreadful things while you are stretched out on a table or half undressed on a chair.

  Carson McCullers

  Doctors, Half, Tables

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.72, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Passion, Fire, Ambitious

  Hester Lynch Piozzi, Penelope Pennington (2005). “The Intimate Letters of Piozzi and Pennington”, Nonsuch Pub

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• I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train.

  Harriet Martineau

  Inspiration, Sitting Down, Finding Myself

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.156, Broadview Press

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• Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

  John Tillotson

  Truth, Lying, Men

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• We are hungry for things that have touched human hands.

  Faith Popcorn

  Popcorn, Hungry, Humans

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• I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Writing, Blood, Two

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

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• Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Reason, Poor, Prophecy

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

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• ... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Couple, People, Letters

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• Just give the Italians a chance for drama and they take it with both hands.

  Ingrid Bergman

  Drama, Giving, Chance

  Ingrid Bergman, Alan Burgess (1981). “Ingrid Bergman, my story”

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• Is this something else our age does - on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are 'developed' and those who are not?

  Dervla Murphy

  Communication, Age, Doe

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.74, The Overlook Press

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• Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

  Countee Cullen

  Prayer, Wine, Dark

  Countee Cullen (2013). “Countee Cullen: Collected Poems: (American Poets Project #32)”, p.52, Library of America

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• The only way for a relationship to survive, I think, is to have no sex at all. After all, you marry for friendship, for companionship - and passion after a while ... pfffft. I mean, does it excite you when your left hand touches your right?

  Diane von Furstenberg

  Sex, Mean, Passion

  Diane Von Furstenberg, Evelyn Portrait (1976). “Diane Von Furstenberg's Book of Beauty: How to Become a More Attractive, Confident, and Sensual Woman”, Simon & Schuster

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