Humming Quotes - Page 2

• Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
  Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
  News from the humming city comes to it
  It sound of funeral or of marriage bells.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Summer, Garden, Cities

  Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Baron, Alfred Lord Tennyson (2014). “Fifty Poems”, p.102, Cambridge University Press

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• How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people, every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.

  Chief Seattle

  Brother, Horse, Memories

  "Flow: For Love of Water". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2008.

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• Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

  Daniel Keyes

  Mother, Past, Hands

  Daniel Keyes (2007). “Flowers for Algernon”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.

  Albert Ayler

  Music, Bebop, Jazz

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• To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

  Laurence Sterne

  Song, Book, Writing

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.137

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• Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers - a living prismatic gem.... it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.

  William Henry Hudson

  Flower, Moving, Bird

  William Henry Hudson (2010). “Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest”, p.111, The Floating Press

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• Today it takes no great stretch of the imagination to envisage the earth as an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions - a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny.

  John Foley

  Faith, Inspiration, Destiny

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• As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Wise, Laughter

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• A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie’s knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the “disgrace of the young.” She would not miss this place.

  Libba Bray

  Real, Blue, Giving

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• When April winds
  Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
  Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,
  Opened in airs of June her multitude
  Of golden chalices to humming-birds
  And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.

  William C. Bryant

  Flower, June, Air

  "The Fountain". Poem by William C. Bryant, 1839.

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• All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.

  A. A. Gill

  Philosophy, War, Men

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• Marvin started his ironical humming again. Zaphod hit him and he shut up.

  Douglas Adams

  Shut Up, Marvin

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.96, Pan Macmillan

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• I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.

  Margaret Atwood

  Ignorance, Dark, Thinking

  Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

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• [Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.

  Anne Carson

  Mother, Hurt, Government

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• For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Song, Knowing, Silence

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• Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Skulls, Space

  "Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies". Book by Hilary Mantel, 2015.

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• I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves.

  Suzanne Collins

  Orange, Hallucinations, Shallow

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.262, Scholastic Inc.

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• It was almost noon when the plane touched down at the Triad airport on the outskirts of Greensboro. There was a hire car waiting for me; I waved my notepad at the dashboard to transmit my profile, then waited as the seating and controls rearranged themselves slightly, piezoelectric actuators humming. As I started to reverse out of the parking bay, the stereo began a soothing improvisation, flashing up a deadpan title: Music for Leaving Airports 11 June 2008.

  Greg Egan

  June, Airports, Car

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• If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

  Kina Grannis

  Song, Writing, Guitar

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• Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Rose, Bird

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.34, Northwestern University Press

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• And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

  Knut Hamsun

  Song, Air, Voice

  Knut Hamsun (2015). “Hunger”, p.40, Xist Publishing

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• Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Wall, Distance, Rocks

  Rebecca Solnit (2006). “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, p.68, Penguin

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• We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

  Neal Stephenson

  Smart, Urban Legends, Self

  "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

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• Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

  Douglas Adams

  Hated, Humans, Marvin

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.79, Pan Macmillan

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• I am a black woman the music of my song some sweet arpeggio of tears is written in a minor key and I can be heard humming in the night Can be heard humming in the night

  Mari Evans

  Music, Song, Sweet

  Mari Evans (2007). “Continuum: New and Selected Poems”

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