Tiny Quotes - Page 25

• And behind their frail partitions Business women lie and soak, Seeing through the draughty skylight Flying clouds and railway smoke. Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones, Lap your loneliness in heat, All too soon the tiny breakfast, Trolley-bus and windy street!

  John Betjeman

  Loneliness, Lying, Clouds

  John Betjeman, “Business Girls”

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• While we only look at Nature it is fair to say that Autumn is the end of the year; but it is still more true that Autumn is the beginning of the year.... Autumn is the time when in fact the leaves bud. Leaves wither because winter begins; but they also wither because spring is already beginning, because new buds are being made, as tiny as percussion caps out of which the spring will crack.... It is only an optical illusion that my flowers die in autumn; for in reality they are born.

  Karel Capek

  Spring, Flower, Autumn

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• So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!

  Horace Mann

  Men, Class, Names

  Horace Mann (1867). “Thoughts”, p.61

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• The only and absolute perfect union of two is when a baby hangs suspended in its mother's womb, like a tiny madman in a padded cell, attached to her, feeling her blood and hormones, and moods play through its body, feeling her feelings.

  Diane Ackerman

  Mother, Baby, Cells

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.98, Vintage

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• Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

  Austin O'Malley

  Life, Lakes, Water

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• Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Optimism, Lines

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• You learn these little tricks for stage fighting, which are really tiny and you wouldn't think of them, but it makes all the difference in the world. I love it!

  David Giuntoli

  Fighting, Thinking, Differences

  Source: collider.com

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• People say modernism killed poetry for them: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't touch a popular musical oral tradition. Years ago, you memorized and read poetry; it was one of the things you were forced to learn. Now it has tiny role in school.

  Campbell McGrath

  School, Years, People

  "Campbell McGrath on Poetry, Walt Whitman and Schaefer Beer" by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, www.wsj.com. March 01, 2008.

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• We are paying teachers who are in charge of our human capital, arguably more important than our financial capital, a very tiny fraction of what Wall Streeters are paid.

  Robert Reich

  Teacher, Wall, Important

  "Robert Reich Sounds Off On How America Has Failed Its Students". Interview with Danny Feingold, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2015.

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• I was born on a tiny cot in southwestern Massachusetts during World War II. A sickly child, I turned to photography to overcome my loneliness and isolation.

  William Wegman

  Photography, Children, War

  Joan Simon, William Wegman (2006). “William Wegman: Funney/strange”, p.105, Yale University Press

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• Telephones in 2020 will be archaic, relics of a bygone era-like transistor radios are today. Telephony, which will be entirely IP-based by then, will be a standard communications chip on many devices. We'll probably carry some kind of screen-based reading device that will perform this function, though I assume when we want to communicate verbally, we'll do so through a tiny, earplug-based device.

  Josh Quittner

  Communication, Reading, Want

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• If I really like the smell of something - a piece of tar or my goddaughter's plastic doll - I put a tiny piece in a bottle with a label. I keep them in a fridge in my bathroom.

  Mika

  Smell, Dolls, Labels

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• Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.

  George Eliot

  Love, Flower, Blessed

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3798, Delphi Classics

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• Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.

  Willa Cather

  Sports, Mean, Toys

  Willa Cather (1970). “The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews, 1893-1902”, U of Nebraska Press

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• Winter's here, and you feel lousy: You're coughing and sneezing; your muscles ache; your nose is an active mucus volcano. These symptoms -- so familiar at this time of year -- can mean only one thing: Tiny fanged snails are eating your brain.

  Dave Barry

  Mean, Winter, Volcanoes

  "Waging Germ Warfare". www.miamiherald.com. December 27, 2009.

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• Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.

  Bill Bryson

  Moving, Animal, Past

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.269, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Researchers found a frog in new guinea that is so tiny, they believe it's the smallest vertebrate on the planet. It has the tiniest backbone of any living creature, except members of Congress.

  Jay Leno

  Believe, Frogs, Guinea

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• The little and the great are joined in one By God's great force. The wondrous golden sun Is linked unto the glow-worm's tiny spark; The eagle soars to heaven in his flight; And in those realms of space, all bathed in light, Soar none except the eagle and the lark.

  Emma Lazarus

  Space, Light, Eagles

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.41, Broadview Press

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• Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes; but beneath the statues there's no love, no love beneath the eyes set in crystal. Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst, in the tiny hut struggling against the flood; love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle, in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls, and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Teacher, Struggle, Eye

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• I very rarely read the responses to my Salon pieces, because (as you may have noticed) the trolls can be SO evil. So violent in their hostility to me and my work. OK, wait, wait, wait. That's a lie. I do read the responses--and get mesmerized, like cobra hypnosis. But I laugh (mostly) at the trolls, and think about what tiny little weenies they must have. (They seem to be mostly men.) And then ALL these smart, funny people leap to my defense, which is medicine, and fills me with love and thankfulness.

  Anne Lamott

  Smart, Lying, Men

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• We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.

  Anne Lamott

  Party, Dark, White

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• There is a note that comes into the human voice by which you may know real weariness. It comes when one has been trying with all his heart and soul to think his way along some difficult road of thought. Of a sudden he finds himself unable to go on. Something within him stops. A tiny explosion takes place. He bursts into words and talks, perhaps foolishly. Little side currents of his nature he didn't know were there run out and get themselves expressed. It is at such times that a man boasts, uses big words, makes a fool of himself in general.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Running, Real, Heart

  Sherwood Anderson (2016). “Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories”, p.14, Sherwood Anderson

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• I am a little thing, a tiny little thing on the vast prairies. I know nothing. My mouth is dirty. I cannot tell what I want. My feet are sunk in the black swampy land, but I am a lover. I love life. In the end love shall save me.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Dirty, Love Life, Land

  Sherwood Anderson (2006). “Mid-American Chants”, p.3, Quale Press

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• Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?

  Donald Barthelme

  Divorce, Thinking, Mud

  Donald Barthelme (1992). “The teachings of Don B.: satires, parodies, fables, illustrated stories, and plays of Donald Barthelme”

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• Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well.

  Philip K. Dick

  Truth, Men, Littles

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “A Scanner Darkly”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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