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.

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

  William Rounseville Alger

  Life, Desire, Lines

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

  Gloria Naylor

  Hurt, Memories, Glasses

  Gloria Naylor (2005). “The Women of Brewster Place”, p.35, Penguin

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• Keep your words. This pain is no life." "You only feel pain because you're alive, boy!" the keeper thundered. "This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of the cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!

  Ted Dekker

  Running, Pain, Fall

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• Until quite recently dance in America was the ragged Cinderella of the arts . . .

  Shana Alexander

  Art, America

  Shana Alexander (2015). “Nutcracker: Money, Madness, Murder: A Family Album”, p.158, Open Road Media

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• He was drunk upon the average once a day, and penitent upon an equally fair calculation once a month; and when he was penitent, he was invariably in the very last stage of maudlin intoxication. He was a ragged, roving, roaring kind of fellow, with a burly form, a sharp wit, and a ready head, and could turn his hand to anything when he chose to do it.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Average

  Charles Dickens (1903). “The Works of Charles Dickens: Sketches by Boz : illustrative of every day life and everyday people. 1903”

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• In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Spiritual, Children, White

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.18, Beacon Press

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• It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.

  J. K. Rowling

  Fall, Age, Veils

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• And that was as far as he got before i heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice. It was my mother.

  Sarah Dessen

  Mother, Running, Voice

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “Dreamland”, p.216, Penguin

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• Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

  Dorothy Parker

  Friendship, Use, Fabric

  Dorothy Parker (2002). “Complete Stories”, p.259, Penguin

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• I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was 'Wow!

  Jack Kerouac

  Eye, Dark, Night

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.139, Penguin

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• Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

  Betty Smith

  Dream, Prayer, Liars

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

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• If I feel ragged, my prep team seems in worse condition, knocking back coffee and sharing brightly colored little pills. As far as I can tell, they never get up before noon unless there's some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.

  Suzanne Collins

  Team, Coffee, Hair

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)”, p.48, Scholastic Inc.

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• A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Rain, Clouds, Air

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.104, New Directions Publishing

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• I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin.

  Aaliyah

  Missing You, Running, Eye

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• Truth! why shall every wretch of letters Dare to speak truth against his betters! Let ragged virtue stand aloof, Nor mutter accents of reproof; Let ragged wit a mute become, When wealth and power would have her dumb.

  Charles Churchill

  Truth, Dumb, Letters

  Charles Churchill, James Hannay (1866). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill, with notes by W. Tooke. with a memoir by J.L. Hannay”, p.116

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• So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don't let her touch the ground and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag 'cause I'm mighty proud of the Ragged Old Flag.

  Johnny Cash

  Morning, Night, Flags

  Johnny Cash (2004). “Johnny Cash, the Songs”

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• There is probably no moment more appalling than that in which the tongue comes suddenly upon the ragged edge of a space from which the old familiar filling has disappeared.

  Robert Benchley

  Space, Tongue, Moments

  Robert Benchley (1946). “One Minute, Please”

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