Wall Quotes - Page 3

• I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

  W. Eugene Smith

  Art, Museums, Looks

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• I am reminded, now, of Leonardo's advice to painters: You should fix your eyes, he says, on certain walls stained with damp. You will see in these the likenesses of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, extensive plains; and you will see there battles and strange figures engaged in violent actions. For in such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of church bells, in whose reverberations you may find every word imaginable.

  Ciaran Carson

  Eye, Church Bells, Rocks

  Ciaran Carson (2001). “Shamrock Tea”, Granta Books

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• I've learned of life this bitter truth
  Hope not between the crumbling walls Of mankind's gratitude to find repose,
  But rather,
  Build within thy own soul
  Fortresses!

  Georgia Douglas Johnson

  Gratitude, Soul, Crumbling

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• Now remember courage, go to the door,Open it and see whether coiled on the bedOr cringing by the wall, a savage beastMaybe with golden hair, with deep eyesLike a bearded spider on a sunlit floorWill snarl-and man can never be alone.

  Allen Tate

  Men, Hair, Doors

  Allen Tate, “The Wolves”

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• There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Children, Real, Rocks

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “The Dispossessed”, p.6, Harper Collins

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• My prophecy is but half his journey yet,
  For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,
  Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
  Must kiss their own feet.

  William Shakespeare

  Kissing, Journey, Feet

  William Shakespeare (1790). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: Timon of Athens. Troilus and Cressida. Cymbeline. King Lear. Vol. 8”, p.267

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• The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Liars, Students, Refreshing

  Frederick Rolfe (1931). “A History of the Borgias”

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• Stupidity is like bumping into a wall all the time. After a while you get tired of it and try to look the situation over and see if there’s a doorway somewhere. I think most people eventually do look for the doorway and stop bumping into the wall

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Stupid, Tired, Thinking

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• So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Strength, Strong, Weak Will

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble.

  James A. Baldwin

  Responsibility, Color, Justice

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• It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Crush, Men, Fingers

  "The Devil and the Good Lord". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 2, sc. 4, 1951.

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• You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

  John Buchan

  Life, Thinking, Civilization

  1916 The Power-House, ch.3,'Tells of a Midsummer Night'.

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• The educational aspect of art shows has become overbearing: some of exhibits can leave you bleary from trying to read the walls. Presumably a piece of art is timeless and it can say something to us. You are taking away the right of art to talk for itself.

  John Updike

  Art, Educational, Trying

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• The muted color scheme allows the occasional brighter yellow or red to pop out on the wall in a show, which I like.

  Marcel Dzama

  Color, Yellow, Red

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel?

  Gay Talese

  Girl, Baseball, Brother

  "The Yankees’ Field Of Screams" By Thomas B. Edsall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 17, 2009.

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• You yourself are to blame. This weeping and wailing and knocking your heads into corners [against brick walls, as it were] will not do you the least good.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Bricks, Blame, Wailing

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.4493, Manonmani Publishers

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• To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mirrors, Self, Voice

  Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I would bend over backward to be back on Grey's. Any day, I'll choose lying in bed with Katherine Heigl looking over me over getting thrown against walls by supernatural persons at 5 in the morning.

  Jeffrey Dean Morgan

  Morning, Lying, Bed

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• On a practical level, I'm uncomfortable at comedy clubs because there are so many shitty dude comics who have made my life miserable. If I go to a comedy club and I look around, I don't know which of the dudes lining the wall told me that I was too fat to get raped. It makes me nauseous. But that was a couple years ago, and meanwhile, comedy has changed a lot.

  Lindy West

  Couple, Comedy, Miserable

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• Israel's capital will never again be a divided city, a city with a wall at its center, a city in which two flags fly. This city, will, in its entirety, absorb immigrants, welcome pilgrims and be the eternal capital of Israel forever.

  Yitzhak Shamir

  Israel, Cities, Two

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• Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!"

  P. J. O'Rourke

  War, Heart, Thinking

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• There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

  Barbara Amiel

  Military, Latin, America

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• It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Weak Will, Justice, Tasks

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