Quotes about boys
page 7

“Give me my powers back, Artemis, or I’ll take your daughter’s life. (Sin)
Damn boy, you have an unholy gift for pissing off people. Why don’t you tell her that dress makes her look fat while you’re at it? (Kat)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Life, People, Daughters

“Hell? Mr. Human Boy Person? Can you hear the Simi? Or are you dead? Hello? (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Hell, Personality, Dead

“And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Girl, Time, Help

“I gulped, then stepped over the threshold into the house where I'd lived as a boy. After eighteen long years of wandering, I had finally come home.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Home, Housing

“The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

World

“[At news that Nelson got himself a counsellor] Harry feels a jealous, resentful pang. His boy is being taken over. His fatherhood hasn't been good enough. They're calling in the professionals.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Feeling

“Do you like Kipling?"
"I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled.”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

The Guinness Book of World Records 1988 p. 203. http://www.unc.edu/~sstaff/images/kippled.jpg Holds the record as the world's most successful postcard, with a sale of about 6,000,000. Several earlier versions of the gag exist dating to the 19th century, according to the Quote Investigator blog. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/02/like-kipling/

“Listen boy
Don't want to see you let a good thing
Slip away.
You know I don't like watching
Anybody make the same mistakes
I made.
She's a real nice girl
And she's always there for you.
But a nice girl wouldn't tell you what you should do.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Tell Her About It.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

Girl

“Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Uncle Fred in the Springtime

Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)

God, Dogs, Soul, Business

“It is very sobering to realize just what the future holds for a boy of my age. On the other hand it is a practical challenge to a man’s courage and personal integrity. A man who talks but is afraid to act, who sacrifices principle to expediency whenever real danger threatens is not worthy to keep and enjoy what he has. He is not worthy of his background and heritage who kowtows to tyranny in order to cling to his temporary safety and comfort…I trust I will have the courage to act as I speak come what may. I will not be easy – but should, therefore, can be done.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his grandmother (April 29, 1941)

Age, Courage, Future, Personality

“His father thought he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, and the boy grow up stupid, his name could be easily changed to Simon.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

"The Wond'rous Wise Man", in Mother Goose in Prose (1897)
Short stories

Stupidity, Thinking, Change

“Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but can not steer their feet
Clear of the grave.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Hamatreya
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Flowers

“Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Art, Learning

“Often the boy was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable yearning to write down in books everything he saw, despite what anyone said—two hundred books as thick as the Book of Sermons, whole Bibles, whole chests full of books.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

Books

“Old-boy networks, alumni giving, affirmative action, sports, and diversity have pretty much put an end to classical meritocratic admissions. That decline of standards in admissions is perversely ironic, because at about the same time, a new campus ethos of grade inflation was predicated on the self-important notion that if you were smart enough to get into Princeton or Harvard, then Harvard and Princeton would make the necessary adjustments and concessions to make sure you graduated. The result of self-congratulation is that a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M. B. A.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Deflation of the Academic Brand (2018)

History, Sport, Time, Success

“Wally George: Tell me what is your band all about? I mean what is The Mentors all about?
El Duce: Well, I'll tell you son. It's like this, boy. We're heterosexuals. We wanna create more heterosexual music for the rest of the world. We're tired of sissie groups like Mötley Crüe and all this sissy stuff. We want rape rock!”

Eldon Hoke (1958–1997) Singer, musician

The Mentors on Hot seat, 1992.

World, Music

“On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's canon rattle. Then away, then away, then away to the fight! Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will and should your courage falter boys, remember Bunker Hill. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The stars and stripes forever! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! As our fathers crushed oppression deal with those who breathe Secession. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Though Beauregard and Wigfall. Their swords may whet. Just tell them Major Anderson. Has not surrendered yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Is Virginia, too, seceeding? Washington's remains unheeding? Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Unfold our country's banner. In triumph there and let the rebels desecrate that banner if they dare. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Volunteers, be up and doing. Still the good old path pursuing. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Your sires, who fought before you have led the way. Then follow in their footsteps and be as brave as they. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle then away, then away, then away to the fight. The star that lights our Union shall never set! Though fierce may be the conflict we'll gain the victory yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!”

Fanny J. Crosby (1820–1915) American poet, lyricist and composer

Dixie For The Union http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/dixie/lyrics.html#union. 1860s

Way, Star, Courage, Light

“In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a fine Boy of 4 Years old, by the Smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation. This I mention for the Sake of Parents who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

On Immunization, Part III, p. 83.
The Autobiography (1818)

Way, Forgiveness, Parent

“In one experience I remember vividly, there was a rich range of shades. It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p. m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Nobel Prize Autobiographical Information http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html (2002).

Money, People, Fear, Home

“From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary (1988)

World, Literature, Learning, Training

“Aged 15 or 16, I found some of the priests sexually attractive, they had a way about them... a sexual allure which is a difficult thing to talk about because it's usually meant to be the opposite way round. Boys like me, aged 15 -- if one of them had... yeah, it would have been absolutely no problem for me aged 15. It didn't happen, but it wouldn't have been a problem.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

Austen was a woeful speller . . . http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/books-arts/austen-was-a-woeful-speller-26694366.html, Irish Independent (30 October 2010)

Age, Way, Problem

“The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html "The importance of going first" "Seth's Blog" (2012-07-18)

Personality

“Utilitarianism had found [ in Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype—the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 12

Men, Smile, Way, Help

“I'm a country boy. I hate New York. But that's where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Hate, Country

“… You will join with me now in repeating the prayer of the three martyrs whom we mourn - 'God save Ireland!' And all of you, men, women, and boys and girls that are to be men and women of holy Ireland, will ever keep the sentiment of that prayer in your heart of hearts.”

John Martin (1812–1875) (1812-1875) Irish nationalist activist

Women, Men, God, Girl

“Two days ago, I dreamt I married a 5-year-old boy. He treated me like a queen and was perfectly lovely. We took a driving trip for our honeymoon. Then it dawned on me: 'Oh my God! He doesn't have a driver's license! We could get arrested!”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

Love, God

“Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Source: The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), Ch. 1, p. 1 The Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=Rx9EAAAAYAAJ (1892)

School, Light, Time, Personality

“The marketing needs a better campaign based on the visitor's appetite and segment. If there are a lot of Middle East tourists traveling to Puncak to seek janda, I think that it's OK. The tourists would bring numerous benefits to the women and their offspring, as well as the country's entertainment community. If the janda get modest homes even if the tourists later leave them, then it's OK. The children resulting from these relationships will have good genes. There will be more television actors and actresses from these pretty boys and girls.”

Jusuf Kalla (1942) The tenth Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia

Quoted in "VP moots using women in Arab tourism push" http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20060629.@02, The Jakarta Post (2006-06-29).

Women, Children, Travel, Home

“The thing you have to understand about fighter pilots is they never quite grow past the stage of little boys buzzing past girls on their bicycles.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, CNN interview (1999)

Girl, Understanding, Past

“This- this- is liberty! genuine British liberty!- This instant about two thousand liberty boys are swearing and swaggering by with large sticks”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 67: 6 Jun 1780, to J___ S___ esq).

“One night in Boston I went out to dinner with my editor and his wife—this was my first editor, the beloved editor, and I was in awe of him; I still am in awe of him. The editor kissed me on the cheek as we parted and called me his “darling boy,” as if thereby investing me with the Order of Letters Genteel. It was among the happiest nights of my life; I was filled with sadness as I watched the two of them, the editor and his wife, walk away.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Life, Sadness, Kiss, Parting

“Tonight I’m gonna make you mine
Oh wait, that’s not supposed to be my line
I’m waiting on you to make your move
Boy I know that you think your smooth
Show me what you got cause I got a lot
Come on set your trap I want to get caught”

Michelle Lambert (1985) American singer-songwriter and violinist

"I'm Just a Girl" (2015)

Thinking, Waiting

“There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1775, p. 273
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

School, Learning

“His aunt drily remarked that, at this rate, he would soon get through all the sights; but she could not guess — having lived always in Washington — how little the sights of Washington had to do with its interest.

The boy could not have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and the heavy smells had more; the sense of atmosphere, almost new, had perhaps as much again; and the brooding indolence of a warm climate and a negro population hung in the atmosphere heavier than the catalpas. The impression was not simple, but the boy liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, Understanding, Nature, Sense

“I joined the Conservatives at Oxford. I didn't consider it a particularly important decision at the time. I was a young Indian boy at a university many in my country would have dreamed to go to, but very few would have fitted into. I became a Conservative, therefore to gain entry into this new elite world. I felt justified in my decision slightly later on when Harold Macmillian gave his Winds of Change speech in South Africa, a speech I thought was very brave. Later on the the 1980s I gave up my membership because of disagreements with the parties views, and I remain a Liberal Democrat voter to this day. Though, I don't see them as very much better.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Source: Interview in The Cherwell, Oxford University newspaper, 1997.

World, Dreams, Decision, Universe

“A great moral reformation will occur only as reformation takes place in the hearts, minds, and lives of each of us; as morality is reinstated as a priority in the homes of the country; and as men and women, boys and girls, realize that their lives are missing a critical moral component and determine to seek a life of virtue.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

Life, Women, Men, Home

“For already, sometime, I have been a boy and a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a silent fish in the sea.”

Empedocles (-490–-430 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

fr. 117
Variant translations:
Once on a time a youth was I, and I was a maiden/A bush, a bird, and a fish with scales that gleam in the ocean.
tr. Jane Ellen Harrison
Purifications
Source: Harrison, Jane Ellen. (1903). Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Princeton University Press. p. 590.

Girl, Bird, Fish, Sea

“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Three: Words Misunderstood, Ch. 10

Marriage, Girl, Idea

“If the student got little from his mates, he got little more from his masters. The four years passed at college were, for his purposes, wasted. Harvard College was a good school, but at bottom what the boy disliked most was any school at all. He did not want to be one in a hundred — one per cent of an education. He regarded himself as the only person for whom his education had value, and he wanted the whole of it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, School, Personality

“Sir, we are trying to work because we are having to take the examination in a very brief time from now, but the younger boys are not realizing the importance of our labours and they are creating veritable pandemoniums while we are immersed in our studies. To us who are their lawful and appointed superiors they are giving overmuch insolence, nor are they sufficiently overawed by our frequent threatenings. I would be taking it, sir, as inestimable favour if you would deliver harsh words and verbal punishing to them all, sir, especially the Malay boys, who are severely lacking in due respectfulness and incorrigible to discipline also.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Law, Study, Time

“Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/975693.Helen_Rowland
Other

Art, Lovers, Nature

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

“I would like to announce my retirement from international and domestic first-class cricket. It is 16 years since I played my first Test match for India and today I feel it is an time to move on. Once I was like every other boy in India, with a dream of playing for my country. Yet I could never have imagined a journey so long and so fulfilling.”

Rahul Dravid (1973) Indian cricketer

In press conference announcing retirement from Test cricket, quoted in " After 16 yrs, Rahul Wall Dravid retires from intl cricket "in Indian Express (Indianexpress.com) http://www.indianexpress.com/news/after-16-yrs-rahul-wall-dravid-retires-from-intl-cricket/921750/0

Dreams, Feeling, Imagination, Time

“She says “Do I know you?” I say “Well, no, not biblically,
But I've been waiting for you to come and talk to me.
I have been playing too many of those boy-girl games.”
She says, “Honey, you are safe here. This is a girl-girl thing.””

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

If It Isn't Her
Song lyrics

Girl, Game, Waiting

“Your Highness is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words. One of the heroes even wears the penis of a minotaur on a string around his neck. I hate it when that happens.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/your-highness-2011 of Your Highness (April 6, 2011) Reviews, One-star reviews

Love, Women, Hate, Feeling

“Prof Rao said he visited the Nobel prize-winning scientist’s (C. V. Raman} laboratory in Bengaluru first as an 11 year-old school boy. “He was the first to recognize my interest in science and has given me a lot of encouragement. He made me a member of the Indian Academy of Sciences when I was only 30. I can never be equal to him.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Quoted in "CNR Rao: Bharat finds a jewel in science".

School, Science

“She stood there bright as the sun on that California coast.
He was a Midwestern boy on his own.
She looked at him with those soft eyes, so innocent and blue.
He knew right then he was too far from home.
He was too far from home.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Hollywood Nights.
Song lyrics, Stranger in Town (1978)

Home, Sun

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Men, Age, World, Faith

“The only thing as bad as bad comedy is bad action. Bad Boys II has plenty of both. In fact, those two things are all it has, unless you count the small helping of bad drama. When it comes to this movie, the word "bad" initially seems highly appropriate. But Bad Boys II isn't just bad — it's a catastrophic violation of every aspect of cinema that I as a film critic hold dear. It seems to have been constructed with terms like "unwatchable" and "godawful" as its slogans. There are motion picture failures every year — the resumes of Hollywood players are littered with them. But, when something this big — a would-be blockbuster with recognizable names in the cast and crew — collapses in such a spectacular fashion, it's worth taking note. Think of how many starving children could have been fed with the money that was poured into [director] Michael Bay's latest sinkhole.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=293 of Bad Boys II (2002). Half-star reviews

Money, Children, Fashion, Failure

“Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse – both boys and girls – but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet.”

Rahul Bose (1967) Indian actor

Times of India, September 26, 2009, " Rahul Bose: We are all hypocrites http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Rahul-Bose-We-are-all-hypocrites-/articleshow/5056023.cms"

Children, Sex, Feeling, Girl

“The greatest danger to the British Empire and to the British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it is not in the 'Yellow Peril' nor the 'Black Peril' nor any danger in the wide circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilized poverty, the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase of vulgar, joyless luxury—here are the enemies of Britain. Beware lest they shatter the foundations of her power.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 139-140
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, Youth, Law

“You think of those kids out there. I say kids. I have seen them. They are the greatest. You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, I mean storming around about this issue — I mean you name it — get rid of the war; there will be another one. Out there we've got kids who are just doing their duty. I have seen them. They stand tall, and they are proud. I am sure they are scared. I was when I was there. But when it really comes down to it, they stand up and, boy, you have to talk up to those men. And they are going to do fine; we've got to stand back of them.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Informal conversation with one of a group of employees who had gathered in a corridor to greet him at the Pentagon (May 1, 1970), reported in The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970, p. 417, footnote 1.
1970s

Men, War, People, Books

“Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He'll go to the opening of a market to receive an award. He'd get an award from Thom McCan for wearing their shoes. It's pathetic. It's a bottomless pit. A barrel that has no floor. He must be a man who has an ever-crumbling estimation of himself. He's constantly filling himself up. He's like a junkie – an applause junkie. What happens to those people when they can't get up and do their shtick, God only knows. Bob Hope, Christ, instead of growing old gracefully or doing something with his money, be helpful, all he does is he has an anniversary with the President looking on. It's sad. He gets on an airplane every two minutes always going someplace. It didn't bother him at all to work the Vietnam War. Oh, he took that in his stride. He did his World War II and Korean War act. "Our boys" and all that. He’s a pathetic guy.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Money, God, War, People

“He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

Girl

“And you can't part a boy from his father,
You can't part a boy from his dad,
You can't part a Scotchman from money
No matter how many he's had.
You can't part the skin of a sausage
Or a dad from his fond son and heir,
And you can't part the hair on a bald-headed man
For there'll be no parting there.”

Billy Bennett (1887–1942) British comedian

"Daddy", line 33

Money, Parting

“"Wal'r, my boy," replied the Captain, "in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, 'May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!'”

Charles Dickens book Dombey and Son

When found, make a note of."
Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 15

“No one would listen to me when I tried to protest that foxhunting was cruel. And as a young boy it was hard to argue with my elders about being disrespectful, but it seemed to me that if you didn't want foxes to get into your henhouse, then you needed to build an enclosure that was foxproof. It seemed totally unjust to set foxhounds to kill foxes because human beings were too lazy to take proper care of their chickens. Whenever I tried to speak to anyone about it, I was told to mind my manners, what did I know? I was just a child. It was years before I was vindicated and foxhunting was banned in England and Wales. During the debate that raged beforehand, I was involved in researching the effect hunting had on the fox. The prohunting lobby said that they only caught old and sick animals, but that was simply not true. I examined foxes that had been caught and among them were carcasses of eighteen-month-old foxes - animals in the prime of life - too young to know how to save themselves. Another myth was that the lead dog brought down the fox and it was all over in seconds with a single bite. The truth was they ran the fox to exhaustion until its brain boiled and swelled, its lungs bled, and the fox drowned in its own blood. They were often dead before the hounds even touched them. It was the most horrific death.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

The Man who lives with Wolves (2010)

Life, Death, Truth, Dogs

“Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn evening. The Field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither’d leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent;—hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

St. 1
Rugby Chapel (1867)

Autumn

“George W. Bush: How's your boy?
Webb: I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President
Bush: That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?
Webb: That's between me and my boy, Mr. President.”

Jim Webb (1946) American politician, military officer and author

In Following His Own Script, Webb May Test Senate's Limits, Washington Post, November 29, 2006, Michael D. Shear http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801582.html,

“The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

Larry Craig (1945) American politician

about President Clinton, Meet the Press, January 24, 1999 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Vs5570pKw

People, Thinking

“The guns spell money's ultimate reason
In letters of lead on the spring hillside.
But the boy lying dead under the olive trees
Was too young and too silly
To have been notable to their important eye.
He was a better target for a kiss.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)

Money, Spring, Lying, Kiss

“And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

可憐光彩生門戸
遂令天下父母心
不重生男重生女
"A Song of Unending Sorrow"

Girl, Happiness

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School, Way, Nature, Effort

“I’ve tried to make myself comfortable with most of the fretboard as possible. I like pentatonic scales because I’ve always been a big Tony Iommi fan. I play along with those a lot. I grew up playing a lot of heavy metal; I’m probably better at that than playing Fall Out Boy.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

“After six years of working on low-budget independent films of the too-weird-to-watch variety, being asked by DreamWorks to come and play with the big boys, it was like finding an unicorn in your sock drawer.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Sienna Guillory Interview http://community.livejournal.com/siennagfan/20449.html#cutid1. Vanity Fair. December 2001. Guillory speaks about her role in The Time Machine.

“A waste is a nine-year-old boy playing catch with the roof of his garage who already understands that his existence makes for the perfect insult- gay. "You're so gay" a. k. a. stupid a. k. a. dumb a. k. a. wrong. Do you have any idea how gross it feels to hide inside the pile of lies it takes to make you, Sweet Angel, comfortable?”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

A Waste
Poetry

Stupidity, Angels, Feeling, Idea

“All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Harlem Ghetto" in Commentary (February 1948); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Girl

“Well, there’s always this human instinct about that, even from a very, very young age. I agreed that we are born with a sort of innate sexuality. But by like age 11, girls were talking about what they had and hadn’t done. I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet, so it always made me feel insecure, like I was never gonna be good or ready or know what to do — I didn’t even have boobs.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

A Very Revealing Conversation With Rihanna http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html?_r=0 (2015)

Age, Feeling, Girl, Kiss

“Mrs. Pidgeon: That little girl whose mother is in the, um, "threesome." Why do you say she's confused about her gender? She seems perfectly normal to me.
Sparrow: Mom, she's a boy.
Mrs. Pidgeon: Oh. Well then, I'm not quite so worried about that revealing top. I was going to speak to her mother.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

"Replicants," supplement in Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life Forms TWOF (2003).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Girl, Moms

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life, People, Books, Age

“Bless your soul, you've got you're head in the clouds,
You made a fool out of you,
And, boy, she's bringing you down,
She made your heart melt,
But you're cold to the core,
Now rumour has it she ain't got your love anymore.”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Rumour Has It, written by Adele and Ryan Tedder
Song lyrics, 21 (2011)

Love, Fools, Soul, Heart

“It seemed there was no democracy among children – always an aristocracy based on strength, intellect and seniority. But seniority counted most, because a boy of ten is bound to be stronger and cleverer than a boy of nine, having spent an extra year in the world, at a time when each year is like a precious deposit in a newly opened bank account. Among boys of the same age, there would be a silent tussle, a clean, honourable contest. Once a leader emerged, however, no elections were held.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)

Children, Age, World, Democracy

“That was the best break of my life, hooking up with the Warners. They don't go much for the "pretty boy" type there. An average-looking guy like me has a chance to get someplace, to portray people the way they really are, without any frills.”

Dane Clark (1912–1998) American film actor

New York Times, Dane Clark, Actor, 85, Dies; Starred in World War II Films, September 16, 1998

Life, People, Way, Guy

“I’m an innocent, brown-eyed child of the sun. Just a peach-picker’s boy from the West Side. Riverbank. My father’s a janitor with only a third-grade education and my mother makes tortillas at 5:00 A. M. before she goes to the cannery.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 54.

Education, Sun

“The business of a boys' author is not to consider political issues, but to entertain the readers, make them as happy as possible.”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)

Business, Happiness

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Money, People, Alcohol, World

“The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type – as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer – an insipid one or a clumsy one – but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years – as producers did – who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from "Elegy for Wonderland", by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959

Children, People, Girl, Learning

“When, I was just a baby,
My mama told me, son
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin'
I hang my head and cry.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Folsom Prison Blues
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)

Baby, Cry

“On the silverscreen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad About the Boy (1932)

Heart

“A boy is born in hard time Mississippi,
Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty,
His parents give him love and affection,
To keep him strong, moving in the right direction,
Living just enough, just enough for the city.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Living For The City
Song lyrics, Innervisions (1973)

Love, Parent, Strong, Time

“Next morning I was up betimes -- I sent the Crier round,
All with his bell and gold-laced hat to say I'd give a pound
To find that little vulgar Boy, who'd gone and used me so;
But when the Crier cried, 'O Yes!”

Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845) British writer and priest

the people cried, 'O No!' Poem: Misadventures at Margate http://www.exclassics.com/ingold/inglegnd.txt

People

“Linden Arden stole the highlights
With one hand tied behind his back.
Loved the morning sun and whiskey
Ran like water in his veins.
Loved to go to church on Sunday,
Even though he was a drinkin' man.
When the boys came to San Francisco,
They were looking for his life.
But he found out where they were drinking,
Met them face to face outside.
Cleaved their heads off with a hatchet,
Lord, he was a drinkin' man.
And when somebody tried to get above him,
He just took the law into his own hands.
Linden Arden stole the highlights,
And they put his fingers through the glass.
He had heard all those stories many, many times before,
And he did not care, nor know, to ask.
And he loved the little children like they were his very own.
You say 'Someday, he may get lonely,
Now he's livin', livin' with a gun.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Linden Arden Stole the Highlights
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Love, Life, Children, Law

“You’re negotiating all these problems for several years, they will talk about that, about a newspaper, they will talk about an underage boy in prison (for example). He’s 17 and he raped a nine-year-old, and they ask: “Why do you lock him up?” And so I say, what do you do, this is a rape case, and they want to discuss, I spend so many hours discussing whatever it is this boy… So what do they want us to do? Release him? So that he can go and rape another one?”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On doing business with China easily. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Problem

“…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Tremor of Intent (1966)

Women

“But the boy who left the hall was not the boy who had gone in some ten minutes before. After my college days, my political work, and after my years of stay at Uttarkashi at the feet of my master, Tapovanam I knew that what I gained on the Ganges banks was that which had been given to me years before by the saint of Tiruvannamalai on that hot summer day – by a mere look”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quoted in "Forever is in the Now: The Timeless Message of Sri Ramana Maharshi", p. 192

Summer

“If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Mrs. Markham to Helen

Life, Home

“To me, there are two different types of musicians. Those who are display oriented and those who are content oriented, Bill Evans being a prime example of the content orientation. I am not interested in the displayers—guys who want to be playing a lot of notes to try to impress you that they got a lot of things that they can lay in there. I'm more interested in somebody picking something that has some really great feeling and laying it in, in a really good time concept. Jimmy Rowles is a perfectly good example of that. His choice of notes may not be uncommon, but boy where he lays them down is so individual that I will go for that every time. The same thing applies with composers. When you're a young composer and you first have a chance—and this goes with everybody—you write your most complex works when you're a young man. And then, as you get a little bit older, you find that you can lot simpler things [sic] and still enjoy the devil out of what you're doing.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22It+seems+that+today,+particularly+with+younger+piano%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylFb7q&sig=zPFSLx48xHOhugAAlpcRNKTxUlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY_Zay4cbRAhWLKiYKHdVRC3gQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

Guy, Feeling, Chance, Time

“(Television) With men or boys at home, your bathroom needs cleaning every day. (Sylvia) Not if you bolt the door.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 75

Men, Home

“I just think it's double standards the whole time. On the one hand people say, 'Oh, women have equal rights now, women can be as powerful as men and do the same jobs as men', but we're still not allowed to talk about sex, 'cos that's unladylike. It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men? It's ridiculous!”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Guardian, 25 January 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/25/broadcasting.bigbrother

Women, Men, People, Sex

“While this day was legally established many years ago as an occasion to be devoted to the memory of our country's dead, it can not but each year refresh the sentiment of respect and honor in which our country holds their living comrades. Of those great armies that maintained the long struggle from 1861 to 1865, which ranked in size with any the world had ever before seen, but a few shattered ranks now remain. The old valor yet lives. The old devotion to country, the old loyalty to the flag remain: But the youth and physical vigor which caused them to be characterized as the boys in blue are gone from these heroes of a former generation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Youth, World, Memory, Loyalty

“Well, the issue of a standing UN army has been raised by many because, quite frankly, the way we operate today is like telling Ottawa that I know you need a fire station but we will build one when the fire breaks. We have no army. When the crisis breaks then we begin to put an army together. We go around to governments and begin asking for troops. The question with a standing UN army is that it raises issues of budget issues, legal issues, where do you place it, under what jurisdiction? And the big boys, big countries don't want it. The smaller countries are also nervous.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Way, Question, Country

“Saw you early this morning
With your brand new boy and your Cadillac
Saw you early this morning
With your brand new boy and your Cadillac
You're gone for something
And I know you won't be back”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Slim Slow Slider
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)

“Suddenly I am like the poster boy of music, but I think the whole idea is to realise how deep is the base of Indian art and culture, how many fabulous young artistes there are, how many incredible great senior artistes are present today but not seen in limelight. We all have our turn at being the spokesperson for something or the other," the renowned musician.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I am not torchbearer of Indian classical music: Zakir Hussain

Art, Music, Idea, Thinking

“Comrades of the 'Boys in Blue' and fellow-citizens of New York. I cannot look upon this great assemblage and these old veterans that have marched past us, and listen to the words of welcome from our comrade who has just spoken, without remembering how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it. [Applause. ] This is New York; and yonder, toward the Battery, more than a hundred years ago, a young student of Columbia College was arguing the ideas of the American Revolution and American union against the un-American loyalty to monarchy, of his college president and professors. By and by, he went into the patriot army, was placed on the staff of Washington, [cheers] to fight the battles of his country, [cheers] and while in camp, before he was twenty-one years old, upon a drum-head he wrote a letter which contained every germ of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause. ] That student, soldier, statesman, and great leader of thought, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, made this Republic glorious by his thinking, and left his lasting impress upon this the foremost State of the Union. [Applause. ] And here on this island, the scene of his early triumphs, we gather tonight, soldiers of the new war, representing the same ideas of union, having added strength and glory to the monument reared by the heroes of the Revolution.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

War, Idea, Thinking, Past

“The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street,
The young girl hums beneath her breath.
One goes out to beauty, and does not know it.
And one goes out to death.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Death, Beauty, Girl

“The dynamics of the city. His mother had been scared of cities. It had been part of his education. She had told him cities are dangerous places. They're full of tough, scary guys. He was a tough boy himself but he had walked around as a teenager ready and willing to believe her. And he had seen that she was right. People on city streets were fearful and furtive and defensive. They kept their distance and crossed to the opposite sidewalk to avoid coming near him. They made it so obvious he became convinced the scary guys were always right behind him, at his shoulder. Then he suddenly realized no, I'm the scary guy. They're scared of me. It was a revelation. He saw himself reflected in store windows and understood how it could happen. He had stopped growing at fifteen when he was already six feet five and two hundred and twenty pounds. A giant. Like most teenagers in those days he was dressed like a bum. The caution his mother had drummed into him was showing up in his face as a blank-eyed, impassive stare. They're scared of me. It amused him and he smiled and then people stayed even farther away. From that point onward he knew cities were just the same as every other place, and for every city person he needed to be scared of there were nine hundred and ninety-nine others a lot more scared of him. He used the knowledge like a tactic, and the calm confidence it put in his walk and his gaze redoubled the effect he had on people. The dynamics of the city.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

People, Education, Fear, Smile

“I think what he went through as a child was very heavy. He never got over his mother leaving his father, and following her mother to Florida, to an area that was very different, and losing his father. When he was seven years old, this was a very sensitive boy, who was wide-eyed and trusting, and not knowing how to protect himself at all.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As heard in the "Mickey Rourke" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_KOo2uaH3E installment of The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan, broadcast October 6, 2008.

Thinking

“Of course I'm not kidding myself. My recent illness proved to me that I've reached the place now where I've got to take particularly good care of myself. A lot of the boys have been kidding me because they said that illness "scared me to death." Frankly it did scare me and I'm still scared. I hope to stay scared to the point where I never forget that taking care of myself is the most important thing in my life from now on.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

In "Babe Ruth Says: I Would Like to Better Mark"

Life, Death, Hope, Forgetting

“I was a bad kid. I say this without pride but with a feeling that it is better to say it. I live with one great hope: to help kids who now stand where I stood as a boy. If what I have to say here helps even one of them avoid some of my own mistakes, or take heart from such triumphs as I have had, this book will serve its purpose.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Opening paragraph from The Babe Ruth Story (1948) by Ruth and Bob Considine; reproduced in "Sports of the Times: The Babe's Own Story" by Arthur Daley, in The New York Times (April 26, 1948), p. 30

Books, Hope, Feeling, Help

Quotes about boys page 7

Quotes about boys
page 7