Salvage Quotes

• We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

  Guy Gavriel Kay

  Despair, Matter, Gates

  Guy Gavriel Kay (2001). “Summer Tree, The: Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry”, p.126, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sound man is good at salvage, at seeing nothing is lost

  Laozi

  Business, Men, Sound

  8 Copy quote

• You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.

  Kelly Link

  Life, Firsts, Buried

  Kelly Link (2009). “Pretty Monsters”, p.7, Canongate Books

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

  Louise Erdrich

  Prayer, Eye, Men

  62 Copy quote

• Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage.

  Henry Ford

  Waste, Wasting Time, Lean Manufacturing

  Henry Ford (2006). “The Great To-Day and Greater Future”, p.142, Cosimo, Inc.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer.

  Rosalynn Carter

  Dream, Needs, World

  21 Copy quote

• Millions of people have wrecked their lives in angry turmoil, because they refused to accept the worst; refused to try to improve upon it; refused to salvage what they could from the wreck. Instead of trying to reconstruct their fortunes, they engaged in a bitter and "violent contest with experience"- and ended up victims of that brooding fixation known as melancholia.

  Dale Carnegie

  Acceptance, People, Trying

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to stop worrying & start living”, p.27, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

  George Orwell

  Independent, Civilization, Evil

  14 Copy quote

• Look at Obama - he is now [2015] trying to help us environmentally but he should have done it eight years ago. He's trying to salvage his legacy and trying to do something good but we needed for him to show leadership from day one.

  Patti Smith

  Eight, Should Have, Years

  Source: www.macleans.ca

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think what people really want is fiction that in some tiny way makes their life more meaningful and makes the world seem like a richer place. The world is awfully short on joy and richness, and I think to some extent it’s the fiction writer’s job to salvage some of that and to give it to us in ways that we can believe in.

  Wells Tower

  Meaningful, Jobs, Believe

  "Wells Tower, Fiction Writer, Is Looking for Joy". Interview with Leon Neyfakh, observer.com. March 23, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For 'King Cole's American Salvage,' I rode around in the wrecker with a local driver and watched him deal with customers and hook up the cars. I watched the guy who tore apart the cars in the junkyard. I also wrote poems about those guys. I loved hanging around the yard.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Love, Kings, Car

  4 Copy quote

• Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Thinking, Futility Of Life, Evil

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “The Beautiful and Damned: American Literature”, p.287, VM eBooks

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

  John Irving

  Writing, Giving, Cooking

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

  Norman Borlaug

  Regret, Past, Men

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

  Hermann Hesse

  Flower, Fall, Heart

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel”, p.157, Macmillan

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted material.

  Henry Ford

  Doe, Waste, Wasting Time

  Henry Ford (2006). “The Great To-Day and Greater Future”, p.142, Cosimo, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

  Susan Sontag

  Becoming One, Ironic, World

  On Photography "Melancholy Objects" (1977)

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must not only protect the country side and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities ... Once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature, his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Country, Men, Cities

  11 Copy quote

• Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Ruins, Boards, Vinyl

  Source: www.raisethehammer.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's as if women are in a totally rigged race. A lot of men are driving souped-up, low-slung racing cars and we're running as fast as we can in tennis shoes we managed to salvage from a local garage sale.

  Naomi Weisstein

  Running, Men, Race

  4 Copy quote

• The great challenge of the '90s... is to salvage and improve the UN and to develop it into an agency capable of meeting the wide range of serious problems that are inherent in a world that has become a single geographic unit.

  Norman Cousins

  Agency, Challenges, World

  4 Copy quote

• The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  People, Soul, Aftermath

  4 Copy quote

• Given the realities of the U.S. criminal justice system, the prosecution may be unable to salvage this case. But just because that system fails victims on the regular doesn't mean we have to, too. French commentators are already calling for DSK to jump back into the country's presidential race and ride a wave of sympathy into office. Really, the stakes are greater than even that political prize. If we accept the narrative that only perfect women are raped, we risk sacrificing justice not only for this woman, but for victims of sexual assault everywhere. After all, nobody's perfect.

  Jaclyn Friedman

  Country, Mean, Sacrifice

  4 Copy quote

• I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Michigan, Firsts, Bones

  6 Copy quote

• We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct. And let us go beyond mere salvage to begin the restoration of natural environments, in order to enlarge wild populations and stanch the hemorrhaging of biological wealth. There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.

  E. O. Wilson

  Race, Order, Diversity

  13 Copy quote