Hands Quotes - Page 31

• I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Thinking, Essence

  Blaise Pascal (1825). “Thoughts on Religion, and Other Subjects”, p.5

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• With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.

  Berthold Auerbach

  World, Hats, Politeness

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• The owner of Mojo's was a suicide blonde, dyed by her own hand.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Suicide, Hair, Blonde

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• Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Sports, Art, Character

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• There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. The painless ones go around putting their hands on hot stoves, freezing their feet to the point of gangrene, scalding the lining of their throats with boiling coffee, because there is no warning anguish. Evolution does not favour them. So too perhaps with the fearless women, because there aren't very many of them around. ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Fear, Coffee

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.

  Edmund Burke

  Bites, Ingratitude

  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

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• Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.

  Edmund Burke

  Skills, Understanding, Tasks

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.1511, Delphi Classics

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• It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

  John Steinbeck

  Water, Black, Mind

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.116, Penguin

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• Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.

  Aeschylus

  Eye, Home, Justice

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• The art of flirtation is dying. A man and woman are either in love these days or just friends. In the realm of love, reticence and sophistication should go hand in hand, for one of the joys of life is discovery. Nowadays, instead of progressing from vous to tu, from Mister to Jim, it's 'darling' and 'come to my place' in the first hour.

  Marya Mannes

  Art, Men, Discovery

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• The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds
  Of peacefulness and kindness. Hand and heart
  Are one thing with the good, as thou should'st be.
  Do my words trouble thee? then treasure them,
  Pain overgot gives peace, as death doth Heaven.
  All things that speak of Heaven speak of peace.

  Philip James Bailey

  Peace, Pain, Kindness

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• No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

  Agnes Repplier

  Men, Desire, Needs

  Agnes Repplier (1936). “In Pursuit of Laughter ...”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

  Agnes Repplier

  Sweet, Order, Needs

  Agnes Repplier (1891). “Points of View”, Boston Houghton, Mifflin 1893.

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• True taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy.

  John Ruskin

  Reading, Feet, Shoes

  John Ruskin (1849). “Of ideas of beauty”, p.25

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• Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework.

  Rebecca West

  Civilization, Hatred, Doe

  Rebecca West (1982). “The young Rebecca: writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, Not Avail

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• Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

  Rebecca West

  War, Psychology, Left Hand

  Rebecca West (1952). “The meaning of treason”

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• When those of our army whose voices are likely to coo tell us that the day of sex antagonism is over and that henceforth we only have to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it.

  Rebecca West

  Sex, Believe, Army

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• The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the great white shark, two-thousand-pound killer of the seas, and of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way.

  Rachel Carson

  Stars, Ocean, Home

  Rachel Carson (2011). “Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson”, p.6, Beacon Press

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• I think with my right hand.

  Edmund Wilson

  Thinking

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• Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Strong, Strong Hands, Greater

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1926). “The Bent Twig”

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• In America, snobs who wouldn't be seen dead with a lottery ticket play the stock market. We like to gamble. Winning, we have closed our eyes, leapt across the yawning abyss, and landed knee-deep in daisies. Even losing has a certain gloomy glamour: the gods of chance are worthy opponents; we have engaged them in hand-to-hand combat and though we lost, at least we shrank not from the contest.

  Barbara Holland

  Eye, Winning, Yawning

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• Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.

  Etty Hillesum

  God, Trying, Stories

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.640, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• advance money is really a delusion, that is to say, I get no more until it is paid out in sales, but still, living from hand to mouth and day to day as I do, a nickel in the hand is more useful than the same nickel next year. What do I know about next year? I've never been there. I don't know any one who has.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Future, Years, Mouths

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.370, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

  Patricia Hampl

  Humble, Poetry, Fit

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• Silence, that inspired dealer, takes the day's deck, the life, all in a crazy heap, lays it out, and plays its flawless hand of solitaire, every card in place. Scoops them up, and does it all over again.

  Patricia Hampl

  Crazy, Play, Silence

  Patricia Hampl (1993). “Virgin Time”

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