Ragged Quotes

• The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.

  e. e. cummings

  Sweet, Feet, Soul

  e. e. cummings (2014). “100 Selected Poems”, p.29, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire.

  William Rounseville Alger

  Life, Desire, Lines

  94 Copy quote

• Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

  Herman Melville

  Literature, Edges

  Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.312, OUP Oxford

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.

  Walt Whitman

  Life, Women, Cities

  Walt Whitman “Annotated LEAVES OF GRASS with English Grammar Exercises: by Walt Whitman (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

  T. S. Eliot

  Should Have, Sea, Pairs

  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 73 (1917)

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

  Mark Twain

  Loyalty, Country, Real

  Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.100, Createspace Independent Pub

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd sleep and forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever.

  Jack Kerouac

  Sleep, Forever, Forget

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.179, Penguin

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dirty, Wine, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.15, Courier Corporation

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is one kind of charity common enough among us... It is that patchwork philanthropy which clothes the ragged, feeds the poor, and heals the sick. I am far from decrying the noble spirit which seeks to help a poor or suffering fellow being... [However] what advances a nation or a community is not so much to prop up its weakest and most helpless members, but to lift up the best and the most gifted, so as to make them of the greatest service to the country.

  Jamsetji Tata

  Country, Clothes, Sick

  68 Copy quote

• The truth is, "What is a journalist?" is one of those questions for which there is no proper answer. The prehistory of modern journalism shows it has been a ragged and confusing trade all the way through.

  Andrew Marr

  Modern Journalism, Confusing, Way

  3 Copy quote

• God, the Master Weaver. He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes his reach.

  Max Lucado

  God, Christian, Religious

  Max Lucado (2013). “You'll Get Through This: Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times”, p.7, Thomas Nelson Inc

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was sure that he was not the cause of the abrupt silence. His passage through the canyon had not previously disturbed either birds or cicadas. Something was out there. An intruder of which the ordinary forest creatures clearly did not approve. He took a deep breath and held it again, straining to hear the slightest movement in the woods. This time he detected the rustle of brush, a snapping twig, the soft crunch of dry leaves-and the unnervingly peculiar, heavy, ragged breathing of something big.

  Dean Koontz

  Breathing, Silence, Bird

  6 Copy quote

• Cursing themselves in ragged dreamsfire has singed the edges of,they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with.Shimmering fans work against the heat& smell of gunpowder, making moneyfloat from hand to hand. The next momenta rocket pushes a white fistthrough night sky, & they scatter like birds& fall into the shape their liveshave become.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Fall, Night, White

  0 Copy quote

• There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Pain, Grief

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “The Power of Emerson's Wisdom”

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity.

  Brennan Manning

  Religious, Children, Party

  11 Copy quote

• If you want to run the show, God will let you. If you want to pull all the strings, that's up to you. If you want to insist that what you are doing is the way it should be done, even when you are not getting anywhere, go right ahead. God will let you run yourself ragged, if you choose to do so. Unfortunately, you may not always be aware that you are in God's way. . . . God has no need to prove to you what God can do.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Running, Needs, Up To You

  2 Copy quote

• Our lips met hungrily, and his clever artistic hands wrapped around my hips. A sudden buzz from my regular cell phone startled me from the kissing. "Don't," said Adrian, his eyes ablaze and breathing ragged. "What if there's a crisis at school?" I asked. "What if Angeline 'accidentally' stole one of the campus buses and drove it into the library?" "Why would she do that?" "Are you saying she wouldn't?" He sighed. "Go check it.

  Richelle Mead

  Clever, School, Eye

  0 Copy quote

• You awaken your True spirit by way of the broken heart: ragged, vulnerable, fierce and finally compassionate. Chris trod this rough way and shows honestly how it can be done.

  Jack Kornfield

  Heart, Broken, Done

  6 Copy quote

• I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

  Mother Jones

  Mother, Children, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Depression is a death within, a knowledge - terrifying - that you cannot resurrect yourself. Depression is loss of the vision that lets leaves breathe and fall, that lets the air smell of seed and soil. And there must be rage, yes I think there is rage toward such a severing, such a ragged-deep rupture with the world.

  Lauren Slater

  Fall, Loss, Thinking

  Lauren Slater (2012). “Welcome to My Country”, p.129, Anchor

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.

  Cornel West

  Addiction, Seductive, Black History

  16 Copy quote

• I pull back, gasping for breath. Reeling. His breath is ragged, and I place my hands on his cheeks to steady him. "Is this okay?" I whisper. "Are you okay?" His reply is anguished. Honest. "I love you."

  Stephanie Perkins

  Love, Hands, Honest

  Stephanie Perkins (2014). “Lola and the Boy Next Door”, p.191, Usborne Publishing Ltd

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man is an island, but the water is deep
  And the shore on the other side is ragged and steep
  To look for perfection is a lonely old ride
  It takes a whole lot of courage and a whole lot of pride
  When you look for independence and you get what you want
  How come you look back, thinking what have I done?
  But time and again, it dawns on me
  It's the price we pay for liberty
  I should have know, we all need a place to call home

  Joey Tempest

  Song, Lonely, Home

  9 Copy quote

• Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!

  Alexander Blok

  Fun, War, Gun

  11 Copy quote

• Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Beautiful, Humble, Humor

  0 Copy quote