Wall Quotes - Page 29

• 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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• But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Army, Ruins, Weight

  Lewis H. Lapham (1997). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, p.186, Verso

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• If you will observe, it doesn't take
  A man of giant mould to make
  A giant shadow on the wall;
  And he who in our daily sight
  Seems but a figure mean and small,
  Outlined in Fame's illusive light,
  May stalk, a silhouette sublime,
  Across the canvas of his time.

  John Townsend Trowbridge

  Mean, Men, Light

  "Authors' Night". Poem by John Townsend Trowbridge,

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• There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt

  Bob Dylan

  Loneliness, Solitude, Age

  Bob Dylan (2014). “The Lyrics: Since 1962”, p.460, Simon and Schuster

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• What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn't fit into a story, what doesn't have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy.

  Donna Tartt

  Loneliness, Yellow, Joy

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• Baby bye Here's a fly, Let us watch him. you and I, How he crawls Up the walls Yet he never falls.

  Theodore Tilton

  Baby, Fall, Bye

  THEODORE TILTON (1867). “THE SEXTON'S TALE, AND OTHER POEMS”, p.163

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• Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.

  William James

  Cost, Alive, Chrysalis

  William James (1977). “A Pluralistic Universe”, p.94, Harvard University Press

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• And just about the time I feel like screaming and finding me a wall to punch right through, I look up and I just can't help smiling, it's you.

  Bob Seger

  Honesty, Looks, Helping

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• But oh, to him I loved      Who loved me not at all,I owe the little open gate      That led thru heaven's wall.

  Sara Teasdale

  Heaven, Littles, Gates

  Sara Teasdale (1915). “Rivers to the Sea”

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• The window-lights, myriads and myriads,Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.

  Sara Teasdale

  Flower, Light, Climbing

  Sara Teasdale (1920). “Flame and Shadow”, p.115, Рипол Классик

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• Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.

  Isaac Asimov

  Men, Insecurity, Might

  Isaac Asimov (2004). “Second Foundation”, p.100, Spectra

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• A man dies and goes to heaven. He is being shown around by an angel. Everything is just so sweet and gentle, the total golden tender presence of God everywhere, a pond over there, a beautiful field there, and some hills for people who like to hike, and this expansiveness in every direction of sky and light and physical beauty. And there is this section separated from the rest; it has beautiful high walls. The man who's just come to heaven says, "What's over there?" The angel says, "That's for the fundamentalists. They don't consider it heaven if anyone else got in.

  Anne Lamott

  Beautiful, Sweet, Angel

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• All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

  Stephen Spender

  Running, Rain, Tears

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.165, Faber & Faber

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• Old women can see through walls.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Old Woman

  "The House of Bernarda Alba" by Federico Garcia Lorca, Act II, (l. 597), 1936.

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• There's a place in the world for the angry young man
  With his working class ties and his radical plans
  He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl
  He's always at home with his back to the wall
  And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost
  And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross
  And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

  Billy Joel

  Struggle, Home, Men

  "Prelude". Song by Billy Joel, 1976.

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• The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.

  Hans Hofmann

  Ideas, Space, Squares

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.60, MIT Press

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• Ultimately there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. We will rise or we will fall together as one nation.

  Barack Obama

  Fall, Together, Lines

  "President Obama Pitches Financial Reform". "NBC Nightly News" with Brian Williams, archives.nbclearn.com. April 22, 2010.

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• What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?

  Joshua Reynolds

  Wells, Chosen, Collections

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• Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept. We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.

  Alan Lightman

  Beautiful, Strong, Feelings

  "Our Lonely Home in Nature". Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.nytimes.com. May 2, 2014.

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• Don't you feel a change a coming From another side of time, Breaking down the walls of silence, Lifting shadows from your mind.

  Cat Stevens

  Silence, Mind, Shadow

  Song: Changes IV, Album: Teaser and the Firecat, 1971

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• I don't approve of what Wall Street and the wealthy have done to this country, but they are the very ones buying my paintings.

  Scott Kahn

  Country, Done, Buying

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• The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights.

  Jean Chretien

  Art, Light, Games

  "Straight From The Heart". Book by Jean Chretien, 1985.

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• There's thieves among us Painting the walls All kinds of lies , and lies I never told it all

  Zooey Deschanel

  Lying, Thieves, Painting

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• I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Talking, Years, People

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2009). “The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846”, p.23, The Floating Press

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• Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exiting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taken here - is - away from the easel - into some sort, some kind of wall, wall painting.

  Jackson Pollock

  New York, Taken, Alive

  "Interview by William Wright". as quoted in "Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics", ed. Clifford Ross, 1990, p.144, Summer 1950.

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