Straws Quotes - Page 3

• Hope is a straw hat hanging beside a window covered with frost.

  Margaret George

  Frost, Hats, Window

  Margaret George (2011). “Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles”, p.743, Pan Macmillan

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• A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

  O. Henry

  Blow, Air, Political

  "A Ruler of Men". Book by O. Henry, 1913.

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• I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.

  Joseph Conrad

  Love, Men, Despair

  "Chance". Book by Joseph Conrad, part I, ch. 6, 1913.

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• The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking that the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If it were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That's a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning.

  Herman Cain

  Party, Winning, Thinking

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• An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.

  William Cowper

  Tails, Way, Stuck

  William Cowper, Sir Humphrey Sumner Milford (1971). “Poetical works”

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• Sweep the garden, any size, said the roshi. Sweeping, sweeping alone as the garden grows large or small. Any song sung working the garden brings up from sand gravel soil through straw bamboo wood and less tangible elements Power song for the hands Healing song for the senses what can and cannot be perceived of the soul.

  Olga Broumas

  Song, Healing, Garden

  Olga Broumas (1999). “Rave: poems, 1975-1999”, Copper Canyon Pr

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• Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

  Alexander Pope

  Nature, Children, Law

  'An Essay on Man' Epistle 2 (1733) l. 275

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• We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.

  Martin Luther

  Dream, Kings, Real

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• I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.

  Jack Kerouac

  Cute, Eye, Hair

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• Harvey wasn't interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they'd been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.

  Clive Barker

  Crazy, Real, Angel

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• Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

  William Shakespeare

  Strong, Clothes, Justice

  William Shakespeare (2004). “The Great Comedies and Tragedies”, p.795, Wordsworth Editions

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• There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.

  Kenneth Grahame

  Sunshine, Simple, Long

  Kenneth Grahame (1908). “The Wind in the Willows”, p.206

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• You are absolutely beautiful," Anne said. "But if you see yourself, you'll want to pin your hair back like a shepherdess in a bad play." (Eleanor) "Are you saying that I normally look as if I'm tending sheep? With straw in my hair? As if I might yodel?

  Eloisa James

  Beautiful, Sheep, Hair

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• In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Clever, Stupid, Hero

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.155, Random House

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• When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading. He did not stir. They placed a straw hat on his head. No response. Only when they took away the wooden chair on which he was sitting did he, as he puts it, 'wake out of the book'.

  Anne Fadiman

  Children, Book, Reading

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.13, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Give that man a Pixy Stix," Haddie said. "A what?" Lucia asked. "Hold on." She left then returned a moment later with a handful of colorful straws, one of which she threw at Max like a dart. He caught it in midair. That impressed Haddie and she tossed him another, just to see if he could do it again. He fumbled that one.

  Ellen Potter

  Men, Giving, Max

  Ellen Potter (2010). “The Kneebone Boy”, p.128, Macmillan

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• Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine ― that is, activity ― which could solve it, is seen as odious. Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw. Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on. Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most unmanning. Eventually, it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing ― a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.

  Margaret George

  Cousin, Brother, Archery

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• There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision - possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life - and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've "had it" and "the last straw has broken the camel's back" and they're "pissed off and pooped out." Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Dream, Lying, Heart

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• You can't blame a match for a house made of straw, Alek.

  Scott Westerfeld

  House, Blame, Made

  Scott Westerfeld, Keith Thompson (2012). “Goliath”, p.219, Simon and Schuster

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• There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings though...well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters. And they invariably do.

  David Gemmell

  Strong, Kings, Men

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• The best is when we all go at once, like an army of interrelated popcorn zombies who laugh the same laughs and gasp the same gasps and aren’t so germ-phobic with each other that we won’t share a ginormous Coke with one straw. Family is useful like that.

  Rachel Cohn

  Army, Laughing, Zombie

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.41, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

  William Shatner

  Summer, Kids, East

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• …you guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Country, Wind, Heaven

  Daphne Du Maurier (1941). “Frenchman's creek”, Doubleday Book & Music Clubs

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• And he that strives to touch the stars
  Oft stumbles at a straw.

  Edmund Spenser

  Stars, Strive, Strife

  The Shepherd's Calendar "July" l. 99 (1579)

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• Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Hate, Gold, Want

  Carol Ann Duffy (2010). “Love Poems”, p.48, Pan Macmillan

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