Towers Quotes - Page 3

• You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.

  Khalil Gibran

  Self, Foundation, Giants

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.

  Jodi Picoult

  Writing, Ivory Tower, Three

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• But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before; though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left God not for gods, they say, but for no gods; and this has never happened before. That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, and the money, and power, and what they call life, or race, or dialect.The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms upturned in an age which advances progressively backwards?

  T. S. Eliot

  Religious, Men, Race

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.144, Faber & Faber

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• We have had the stone age; we have had the iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and sky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's visions. Towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out of their hearts.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Heart, Men, Swings

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1913). “Crowds: A Study of the Genius of Democracy and of the Fears, Desires, and Expectations of the People”

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• Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

  James Russell Lowell

  Past, Looks, Longing

  James Russell Lowell (1864). “Fireside Travels”, p.294

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• Sta come torre ferma, che non crolla
  Giammai la cima per soffiar de' venti.
  Be steadfast as a tower that doth not bend its stately summit to the tempest's shock.

  Dante Alighieri

  Courage, Tempest, Torres

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• The narrow path had opened up suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.

  J. K. Rowling

  Lakes, Sky, Black

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• Another day, another dollar, another war, another tower Went up where the homeless had their home.

  Jewel

  War, Home, Justice

  Song: Who Will Save Your Soul, Album: Pieces Of You, 1995

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• If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.

  Khalil Gibran

  Dream, Song, Memories

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Ivory Tower, Important, Shapes

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

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• There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Faith, Stars, Heart

  J. R. R. Tolkien (1980). “The Lord of the Rings: The return of the King”

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• There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.

  Herman Melville

  Climbing, Mountain, Egotistical

  "Moby Dick".

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• He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

  Franz Kafka

  Morning, Reflection, Light

  Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold (1981). “The Metamorphosis”, Bantam Classics

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• Moira sacrificed all that she had and all the richness of life that still lay in front of her in order to save just one more person. Moira was killed when the south tower collapsed ... Today, we choose to remember and share the joy Moira brought to all of us, and we vow that she will always live in our hearts.

  James Smith

  Heart, Richness Of Life, Order

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• Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back! Stand beside me, Athena, fire me with daring, fierce as the day we ripped Troy's glittering crown of towers down. Stand by me - furious now as then, my bright-eyed one - and I would fight three hundred men, great goddess, with you to brace me, comrade-in-arms in battle!

  Homer

  Fighting, Men, Fire

  Homer (1997). “The Odyssey”, p.452, Penguin

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• Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown?

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Elderly, Air

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.139, Virginia Woolf

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• What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Dream, Block, Heart

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.90, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour.

  Randy Savage

  Sweet, Sour, Macho

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Crazy, Hair

  Leonard Cohen (2008). “The Lyrics of Leonard Cohen: Enhanced Edition”, p.251, Omnibus Press

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• I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Song, Circles, Years

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1996). “Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.'

  Bill O'Reilly

  Country, Military, Blow

  "The Radio Factor", November 8, 2005.

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• Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.

  Henri Nouwen

  Artist, Broken, People

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• Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.

  Max Muller

  Opposites, House, Church

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• You can’t divorce Margo the person from Margo the body. You can’t see one without seeing the other. You looked at Margo’s eyes and you saw both their blueness and their Margo-ness. In the end, you could not say that Margo Roth Spiegelman was fat, or that she was skinny, any more than you can say that the Eiffel Tower is or is not lonely. Margo’s beauty was a kind of sealed vessel of perfection – uncracked and uncrackable.

  John Green

  Lonely, Divorce, Eye

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.50, A&C Black

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• The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.

  Penelope Lively

  Block, Grief, Eye

  Penelope Lively (2007). “Moon Tiger”, p.58, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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