Pedestrians Quotes - Page 3

There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.

Cornelia Otis Skinner

Cities, Gourmet, Flavor

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Hate-on-the-highway is an institution occupying a high place in our modern civilization....The godawful glares that drivers exchange as they pass each other, the mutual hatred between motorist and pedestrian, these manifestations seem to constitute the ultimate in righteous wrath.

H. Allen Smith

Hate, Wrath, Civilization

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Do not ride in cars: they are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents. Do not stay at home: 17% of all accidents occur in the home. Do not walk on the streets or pavements: 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians. Do not travel by air, rail, or water: 16% of accidents happen on these. Only .001% of all deaths occur in worship services in church, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders. Hence the safest place for you to be at any time is at church!

Mark Leslie

Christian, Home, Air

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The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Nature, Writing, Reality

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Everything in Louisiana is about layers. There are layers of race, layers of class, layers of survival, layers of death, and layers of rebirth. To live with these layers is to be a true Louisianian. This state has a depth that is simultaneously beyond words and yet as natural as breathing. How can a place be both other-worldly and completely pedestrian is beyond me; however, Louisiana manages to do it. Louisiana is spooky that way.

Don Lemon

Race, Breathing, Class

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Icon of Prague, the medieval bridge crossed the Vltava between Old Town and the Little Quarter. Gothic bridge towers rose on both sides, and the whole span — pedestrian-only — was lined by monumental statues of saints.

Laini Taylor

Bridges, Icons, Rose

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A pedestrian seems in this country to be a sort of beast of passage - stared at, pitied, suspected and shunned by everyone who meets him ... Every passing coachman called out to me: "Do you want to ride on the outside?" If I met only a farm worker on a horse he would say to me companionably "Warm walking sir," and when I passed through a village the old women in their bewilderment would let out a "God Almighty!

Karl Philipp Moritz

Country, Horse, Village

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In the holy solipsism of the young Now I can't walk thru a city street w/out eying each single pedestrian. I feel thier vibe thru my skin, the hair on my neck --- it rises.

Jim Morrison

Hair, Cities, Skins

Jim Morrison (1989). “Wilderness”, Vintage

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...It would be possible to make much more progress than has been made if the NCI knew its job better, knew how to make discoveries...The NCI really does not know how to make discoveries....So long as the NCI is not willing to follow up ideas that seem good to people who have had experience making discoveries, the work of the NCI is going to be pedestrian.

Linus Pauling

Jobs, Dark, Discovery

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To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art.

Horace Kephart

Art, Light, Utensils

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Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another.

Geoff Nicholson

Writing, Thinking, Literary Theory

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Traffic growled and snarled, rising at times to a machine-gun rata-tat-tat, while pedestrians were scuttling about with that desperate ratlike urgency characteristic of all big American cities, but which reaches its ultimate in New York.

Fritz Leiber

New York, Gun, Cities

Fritz Leiber, Fred Gambino (1979). “Ship of Shadows”

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Toronto's likable, but it could be a lot more, as I think Montreal is, lovable. What we need more than anything, I think, is a great pedestrian promenade. Pick a busy streetscape, close it to cars forever, and it will fill with people enjoying nothing more than the pleasure of their own company.

Andy Barrie

Thinking, Car, People

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I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.

John Burroughs

Angel, Dark, Men

John Burroughs (1875). “Winter Sunshine”, p.34

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Ah...so many pedestrians, so little time...

Robin Williams

Littles, Little Time

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A collison is what happens when two motorists go after the same pedestrian.

Bob Newhart

Two, Happens

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I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.

John Burroughs

Country, Art, Thinking

John Burroughs, Charlotte Zoë Walker (2001). “The Art of Seeing Things: Essays”, p.47, Syracuse University Press

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Obviously, this isn't my normal life, traveling to cities and talking to journalists. It's fun. It's really fun. I get to stay in a cool hotel and eat good food and meet cool people, but that's not my normal life. It's pretty pedestrian. I have coffee in the morning, I go for a run, and then I write for as long as I possibly can.

James Ponsoldt

Running, Morning, Fun

Source: collider.com

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The argument that women who become pregnant have in some sense consented to the pregnancy belies realityand others who are the inevitable losers in the contraceptive lottery no more 'consent' to pregnancy than pedestrians 'consent' to being struck by drunk drivers.'

Dawn Johnsen

Pregnancy, Drunk, Loser

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You know, the fact that every morning you get a script in your mailbox, that's going to stop. All these little pedestrian, mundane things. And the cash.

Paul Reiser

Morning, Cash, Littles

"No longer 'Mad About You'" by Paul Vercammen, www.cnn.com. May 24, 1999.

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Pedestrian's rights - because we live in California, I've got to address this issue. I don't know where on the fence I am about that. I suppose if I'm walking, I'm all for it, but if I'm driving, that's a whole other can of worms.

Janeane Garofalo

Issues, Rights, California

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What's impossible not to notice, though - it's all around us - is the diminution of American prose: How pedestrian it has become. Pick up any short story and listen to its voice, the tedious easy vernacular that mistakes transcription for realism. This would display an understandable pragmatism if it were a pandering to common-denominator readers; but it is, in fact, a kind of hifalultin literary ideology, the less-is-more Hemingway legacy put through an up-to-the-minute industrial blender.

Cynthia Ozick

Mistake, Voice, Less Is More

"What Fools Have Never Heard of Cynthia Ozick?". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. July 16, 2016.

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This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-wor thy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.

Shauna Niequist

Dream, Prayer, Adventure

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The things I care about are the most pedestrian things in the world. I care about good ice cream and being a good dad and a decent husband.

Michael Ian Black

Dad, Husband, Ice Cream

"The Best-Laid Plans of Michael Ian Black". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 27, 2012.

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However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view,intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.

Mary Blakely

Mother, Mean, Son

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