Wall Quotes - Page 16

• Be sensitive to your mistakes. Put it on the wall for a couple of weeks. It may be that you can learn more from the study of your own work than from others.

  John French Sloan

  Couple, Mistake, May

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• I try to find a compositional structure in the subject itself, in nature... I rely on the angle where the wall meets the floor as a constant reference point, and against that I oppose the movements of the model's limbs.

  Philip Pearlstein

  Trying, Movement, Structure

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• Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Cells, Next, Succeed

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• A plague of snow, fluffy and dry before it hardens and grips the trees, the walls, and the cars parked haphazardly everywhere. When I walk to the little market a few blocks away, it feels like a test of endurance.

  Henri Cole

  Block, Car, Snow

  "A Plague of Snow" by Henri Cole, www.newyorker.com. February 18, 2015.

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• Sometimes the longer you are inside a prison, the harder it is to fathom what is possible beyond its walls.

  Suki Kim

  Sometimes, Prison, Fathom

  Suki Kim (2014). “Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite”, p.44, Crown

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• From the walls of Baidi high in the coloured dawn To Jiangling by night-fall is three hundred miles, Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.

  Li Bai

  Fall, Night, Mountain

  Li Po, “Through The Yangzi Gorges”

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• Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

  George Eliot

  Truth, Paradise, Plant

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola”, p.105

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• Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

  Jonathan Swift

  Ears, Tongue

  'A Pastoral Dialogue between Richmond Lodge and Marble Hill' (1727) l. 8

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• It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.

  Willa Cather

  Failure, Cutting, Distraction

  Willa Cather (2016). “The First Willa Cather MEGAPACK®: 50 Classic Short Works”, p.134, Wildside Press LLC

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• When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Real, Community, Church

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.103

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• I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.

  Erma Bombeck

  Children, Cat, Hands

  Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.119, Open Road Media

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• My Brother starv'd between two Walls,His Children's Cry my Soul appalls

  William Blake

  Brother, Children, Two

  William Blake (2000). “The Selected Poems of William Blake”, p.135, Wordsworth Editions

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• I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Night, Light, Might

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.2

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• For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall has scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room, And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, The silence and the gloom.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Warrior, Dark, Night

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (185?). “The Poetical Works of Henry W. Longfellow”, p.471

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• All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Fate, Deeds, Ornaments

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.136, Library of America

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• I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Sleep, Dust, Phrases

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Complete in One Volume”, p.50

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• In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face the face of one long dead Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Night, Light, Long

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.2399, Delphi Classics

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• A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing “We Shall Overcome”? Just tell me. You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you’re too busy swinging.

  Malcolm X

  Hate, Singing, Arms

  "Message to Grassroots" by Malcolm X, teachingamericanhistory.org. November 10, 1963.

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• Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.

  Robert Orben

  Prophet, Profit, Streets

  Robert Orben (2012). “2500 Jokes to Start 'Em Laughing”, p.381, Doubleday

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• What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]

  Leo Rosten

  Green

  "The Joys of Yiddish". Book by Leo Rosten, 1968.

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• All this talk of using tax policy to 'assess social costs'...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.

  David Brin

  Ideas, Dumb, Cost

  David Brin (2009). “Earth”, p.265, Spectra

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• My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance.

  Amy Lowell

  Passion, Heart, Wings

  Amy Lowell (1955). “Complete poetical works: With an introd. by Louis Untermeyer”

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• Guarded within the old red wall's embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight.

  Amy Lowell

  Gay, Soldier, Red

  Amy Lowell (2009). “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed”, p.174, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

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• Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.

  Robertson Davies

  Laughter, Voice, Oasis

  "Lew Fields". 1941.

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