Quotes about blow
page 2

Henri Barbusse photo
Everlast photo
Plato photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Arthur Miller photo
Patch Adams photo
Arthur Miller photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal
Variant: Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Charles Manson photo
Omar Khayyám photo
Barack Obama photo
Humbert Wolfe photo

“Space is a wind that does not blow
On Betelgeuse and time – oh time – is a bird,
Whose wings have never stirred
The golden avenues of leaves
On Betelgeuse.”

Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) English poet

"Betelgeuse", from The Unknown Goddess (London: Methuen, [1925] 1927) p. 34.

Jeremy Bentham photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Samuel Rutherford photo

“If you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idoizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Was falsely attributed to Rutherford by Joni Eareckson-Tada in Heaven: Your Real Home http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=cQrPd8R0o0kC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (2010), p. 259 From Edward Payson in " Momentos of Rev. Edward Payson D.D., ed. Edwin L. Janes (New York: Nelson & Phillips, 1873), p. 87 https://archive.org/details/mementosofrevedw00pays/mode/2up.

The Original version reads: "... for if you should see a man shut up in a close room, idolizing a set of lamps, and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps, and then throw open the shutters, to let in the light of heaven."

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Samuel Rutherford / Misattributed

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Swamy Shraddananda’, written by Rabindranath in Magh, 1333 Bangabda; compiled in the book ‘Kalantar’.

Thomas Paine photo

“Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake let us come to a final separation.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Malcolm X photo
Rupert Brooke photo
Louis Armstrong photo
Heinrich Heine photo

“Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 60

John Knox photo

“I am a watchman…For that reason I am bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

As quoted in World Studies for Christian Schools (2000) by Terri Koontz, Mark Sidwell & S. M. Bunker,
Context: As touching nature I am a worm of this earth, and yet a subject of this commonwealth; but as touching the office wherein it has pleased God to place me [head of the Reformed church in Scotland], I am a watchman... For that reason I am bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and political life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows.

U.G. Krishnamurti photo

“I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize. That's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Part 1: U.G.
The Mystique of Enlightenment (1982)
Context: People call me an enlightened man — I detest that term — they can't find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I've searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn't arise. I don't give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.
I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize. That's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize.

Thucydides photo
Ikkyu photo

“If it rains, let it rain, if the wind blows, let it blow.”

Ikkyu (1394–1481) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in The Essence of Zen : Zen Buddhism for Every Day and Every Moment (2002) by Mark Levon Byrne, p. 28.
Context: From the world of passions returning to the world of passions:
There is a moment's pause.
If it rains, let it rain, if the wind blows, let it blow.

Buckminster Fuller photo

“Integrity of the individual is what we're being judged for and if we are not passing that examination, we don't really have the guts, we'll blow ourselves up.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)
Context: Integrity of the individual is what we're being judged for and if we are not passing that examination, we don't really have the guts, we'll blow ourselves up. It will be all over. I think it's all the difference in the world.

Henri Barbusse photo

“There are those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages.”

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: There are all those things against you. Against you and your great common interests which as you dimly saw are the same thing in effect as justice, there are not only the sword-wavers, the profiteers, and the intriguers.
There is not only the prodigious opposition of interested parties — financiers, speculators great and small, armorplated in their banks and houses, who live on war and live in peace during war, with their brows stubbornly set upon a secret doctrine and their faces shut up like safes.
There are those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages.
There are those who bury themselves in the past, on whose lips are the sayings only of bygone days, the traditionalists for whom an injustice has legal force because it is perpetuated, who aspire to be guided by the dead, who strive to subordinate progress and the future and all their palpitating passion to the realm of ghosts and nursery-tales.
With them are all the parsons, who seek to excite you and to lull you to sleep with the morphine of their Paradise, so that nothing may change. There are the lawyers, the economists, the historians — and how many more? — who befog you with the rigmarole of theory, who declare the inter-antagonism of nationalities at a time when the only unity possessed by each nation of to-day is in the arbitrary map-made lines of her frontiers, while she is inhabited by an artificial amalgam of races; there are the worm-eaten genealogists, who forge for the ambitious of conquest and plunder false certificates of philosophy and imaginary titles of nobility. The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones.
And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say, each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism — which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred — out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.
They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.
Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you — "It wasn't me that began, it was you!" — "No, it wasn't me, it was you!" — "Hit me then!" — "No, you hit me!" — those puerilities that perpetuate the world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done with it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient state of things and find or invent excuses for it — they are your enemies!
They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all, and be mindful for ever!

V.S. Naipaul photo

“It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

"Our Universal Civilization" in The New York Times (5 November 1990) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/05/opinion/our-universal-civilization.html
Context: The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always as attractive as it is today. The expansion of Europe gave it for at least three centuries a racial taint, which still causes pain. … This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don't imagine my father's Hindu parents would have been able to understand the idea. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.

Francis Drake photo

“Coming up unto them, there has passed some cannon shot between some of our fleet and some of them, and so far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows.”

Francis Drake (1540–1596) English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era

Letter to Admiral Henry Seymour, after coming upon part of the Spanish Armada, written aboard the Revenge (31 July 1588 {21 July 1588 O.S.})
Context: Coming up unto them, there has passed some cannon shot between some of our fleet and some of them, and so far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows. … This letter honorable good Lord, is sent in haste. The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails, many great ships; but truly, I think not half of them men-of-war. Haste.

Virginia Woolf photo

“The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast: —
'THE TRUTH!
at which Orlando woke.”

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast: —
'THE TRUTH!
at which Orlando woke.
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess — he was a woman.

Bobby Sands photo

“It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end. It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Rhythm of Time
Context: There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end. It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus photo

“An army unsupplied with grain and other necessary provisions will be vanquished without striking a blow.”
Qui frumentum necessariaque non praeparat, uincitur sine ferro.

General Maxims
De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"

Leon Trotsky photo
Mark Twain photo

“Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ISBN 0520246950)

Adam Levine photo

“Tiffani-Amber Thiessen thought we were all on blow…. Tori Spelling hung out with us backstage and gave us the lowdown. Brian Austin Green, kept telling us about his music. Ian Ziering was kind of a dick. Maybe he was having a bad day.”

Adam Levine (1979) singer, songwriter, actor, and record producer from the United States

On being on Beverly Hills, 90210 when he was 17 in his band Kara's Flowers
Voss, Brandon (2007-05-22), "Adam Levine". Advocate. (986):25.

Tennessee Williams photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
William Wordsworth photo
Tennessee Williams photo

“For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye….”

Tom, Scene Seven
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Context: Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out! — for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura — and so goodbye…

Anne Lamott photo

“I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'
Oh, Rae. Who hasn't”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Crooked Little Heart

Clint Eastwood photo
John Muir photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Darren Shan photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Charlaine Harris photo

“Blow me, Grim Reaper!”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Mary Karr photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Richelle Mead photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

The origin of this quote is often misattributed to Cicero; however, it is from Line 135-136 of Book 2, Satire 2 by Horace, "Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus." The English translation that most closely matches the one misrepresented as Cicero's is from a collection of Horace's prose written by E. C. Wickham, "So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts."
Misattributed

“All losers are romantics. It's what keeps us from blowing our brains out.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Butcher Bird

Sylvia Day photo
Nick Cave photo
Bill Cosby photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Stephen King photo
Richelle Mead photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Rick Riordan photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Anne McCaffrey photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
John Milton photo

“Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

At a Solemn Music
Source: The Complete Poetry

James Patterson photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Confucius photo

“When the wind blows, the grass bends.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects

Charlaine Harris photo
Michael Chabon photo
Stephen King photo
Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo

“We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Variant: We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest;
And deal full many a thoughtless blow,
To those who love us best.

Susan Sontag photo
Bill Maher photo
William Golding photo
Miranda July photo
Warren Ellis photo

“Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street

Bob Dylan photo

“You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Subterranean Homesick Blues

Karen Marie Moning photo

“Yo, Dekko, who do I gotta blow around here to get a shower?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Cecelia Ahern photo
Holly Black photo