Quotes about closet (120 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Just promise me, whatever we say
Or do to each other,
From now, we make a vow to just
Keep it in the closet.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

In the Closet
Dangerous (1991)

“Nationwide, the nonreligious population is both the fastest growing, and the most despised. I ask you all, why is that? Why are we hated, when we endorse no violence, incite no racism or hatred, and demand nothing more than equal treatment? I'll tell you why: It's easy to hate what you don't know, and the theists don't know us. Well, actually, they do know us, but they don't know they know us, because most atheists in this country are closeted. Bigotry is born of ignorance, but ignorance can be cured. If the atheists weren't closeted, it would be harder to hate us, because in the end, you can't hate what you already love.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

Love , Hate , Country

“They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

Statement made upon opening the Marikina City Footwear Museum in Manila, as quoted in "Homage to Imelda's shoes" at BBC News (16 February 2001) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1173911.stm.

God , Beauty , Shoe

“In a way, I suppose you could say my experience is quite limited. For example, I never locked Oliver Cromwell in a broom closet while singing "Waltzing Matilda." I never sawed a television in half, although I once saw Wendy O. Williams saw a guitar. I never played a decent game of jacks. I never played poker with a toothless one-eyed pirate who kept picking his teeth with a Bowie knife to distract me, while his parrot looked over my shoulder and told him what cards I had by using an elaborate code involving vomiting, chirping, and sea chanteys.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"I'm Sorry"
Lyrics, Happy Hour (1992)

Way , Game , Singing , Sea

“Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Learning , Forgetting

“So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight.”

Octavia E. Butler book Clay's Ark

Source: Clay's Ark (1984), Chapter 28 (p. 609)

People , Fear

“Hello, I'm Boy George, and you are watching RBTV. Come out of the closet, all you students - we want you!”

Boy George (1961) English musician

RBTV (Rainier Beach High School TeleVision in Seattle), 1996 ( youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyUMz-drEaU)

Boy

“All those reports that I sleep in my closet. I don't know how people get that. People are so obsessed with what you do at home.”

Jared Leto (1971) American actor and musician

People , Home , Sleep

“And just then Damon stepped out of the coat closet, and at the same time Aunt Maggie tripped him neatly and said, “Bathroom door beside you,” and picked up a vase and hit the rising Damon over the head with it. Hard.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

Time

“Writing is not some quiet, closet act.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

“Come on sempai, would you please stop growing mushrooms in other people's closets?

-Haruhi”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

People

“Beware the viper in your closet. Isn’t that another thing you’re always saying, Father? Ambition and jealousy are at the heart of all betrayals. (Ryssa)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Jealousy , Betrayal , Heart

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.”

Joan Didion Where I Was From

Source: Where I Was From

Way , Box

“Alec was closeted, shy, obviously insecure, and obviously hung up on his blond friend Trace Wayland.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Course of True Love [and First Dates]

“Guy? Mister? Mr. Goth Man, would you please wake up so I can leave? I really don't want to hang out in a closet with a dead man any longer than I have to, okay? C'mon, please, don't make this a Weekend at Bernie's thing! (Amanda)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Guy , Dead

“when you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Shoe

“I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom… and a moth ate my sports jacket.
He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Home , Sport , Night

“No… I mean, I'm sorry he… You know, said those things to you."
"It's part of being a 'good' family. Everyone's got skeletons in their closet.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Family , Parting

“Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Parting

“The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“One time I actually cleaned out my closet so good I ended up on the cover of Time magazine.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Time

“I like my money right where I can see it…hanging in my closet”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Money

“One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Appearance , Night

“As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Source: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Night

“Did something happen to the sanctity of your church again?"

My eye twitched. "Newt broke it so she could look in my closet." Again.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

“Me and my needs were driving my mother away. Me and my needs retreated to my closet, disappeared into fairy tales. I started making up a world where my needs wouldn´t exist at all.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

World

“And put me down right this minute or I'll scream bloody murder, then do the job for real!"

"I already hid all the electrical appliances, and I'm not taking a shower without locking you in the closet first.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips book Nobody's Baby But Mine

Source: Nobody's Baby But Mine

“There are women in my closet, hanging on the hangers. a different woman for each suit, each dress, each pair of shoes. I hoard clothes. My makeup spills from the bathroom drawers, and there are different women for different lipsticks.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Women , Shoe , Clothes

“Right. That’s the end of the line for you tonight. You’re going home, I’m seeing you safe inside, and I’m going home to hide in a closet until this blows over. I suggest you do the same.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Home

“Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Appearance , Time , Sun

“The soul was not cured,
it was as full as a clothes closet
of dresses that did not fit.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Soul , Clothes

“the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights-out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

World , Light , Wine

“Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.”

Paris Hilton (1981) American socialite

Variant: Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.

Life

“She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 130

Love , Knowledge

“I don't know why men like to barbecue so much. Maybe its the only thing they can cook. Or maybe they're just closet pyromaniacs.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Men , Cooking

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth , Hope , Business , Freedom

“The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

Late Night with Conan O'Brien, NBC (November 21, 2008)

“Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

1 July 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

World , Way , Knowledge

“Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction.”

Richard Garriott (1961) video game developer, astronaut and entrepreneur

Press Statement for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame http://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/11/09/richard-garriott-joins-gaming-hall-of-fame, 9 November, 2005.

Game , Business , Time , Success

“Oh Billie I want you so, I'm trying to meet you. Too many things they don’t know, too many repeatings, of beatings. ~ "Closet"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

“Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starman Jones

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 10, “Garson’s Planet” (p. 109)

“Here’s what I want you to know: We got through that tumultuous time. We revved up the engine of imagination and innovation. We turned back a tide of intolerance and embraced inclusion. The we who did those things were more than those in power who wanted to change course. It was millions of ordinary citizens, especially young people, who voted, marched, and organized. You may have heard that things didn’t exactly go as planned, but you know what? I’m doing okay. I’ve gotten to spend time with my family, especially my amazing grandchildren. Long walks in the woods. Organizing my closets, right? I won’t lie — Chardonnay helped a little.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Post Presidential Election, Wellesley Commencement Speech (2017)

People , Lie , Family , Imagination

“The tap of hangers,
swaying in the closet —
unburdened hooks
and empty drawers —
and everywhere I tried to love you
is yours again,
and only yours.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Does Not Suffice
Have One On Me (2010)

Love

“What a man does in his closet ought not to affect the rights of third persons.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Outram v. Morewood (1793), 5 T. R. 123.

Personality

“What makes the Pastor-CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] plan remarkable is that those who would abolish America are out of the closet. The penultimate step to world government, a North American Union built on the model of the European Union, to one day merge with it in a World Union of Nations and Peoples, is before us on the table.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

People , World

“Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“The Leaders of Men”, (17 June 1890), p. 75 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA75&dq=%22Uncompromising+thought+is+the+luxury+of+the+closeted+recluse%22
1890s

“Seven thirty-nine, more than three hundred miles to the north and east, Jack Reacher climbed out of his motel room window. One minute earlier, he had been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. One minute before that, he had opened the door of his room to check the morning temperature. He had left it open, and the closet just inside the entrance passageway was faced with mirrored glass, and there was a shaving mirror in the bathroom on a cantilevered arm, and by a freak of optical chance he caught sight of four men getting out of a car and walking toward the motel office. Pure luck, but a guy as vigilant as Jack Reacher gets lucky more times than the average.”

Lee Child book Echo Burning

Echo Burning, Ch. 1 (2001).

Men , Cars , Guy , Chance

“THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Epigraph
The October Country (1955)

People , Autumn , Thinking , Sun

“Most of us know Ed Bradley from his 25 years of work on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, and his many interviews with world figures, celebrities and cultural icons. The men and the women who sat in the chair across from Bradley doing his 60 Minutes interviews were figures of importance, people to whom we should pay attention, and we could rely on Bradley to make sure that no skeleton in the darkest corner of his subject's closet was safe from the tenacious journalists.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Danny K. Davis, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Women , Men , People , World

“Closet (definition): Basement suite of a heterosexual outhouse.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

“Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Javanese or the Piltdown man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence. His nose, broken in childhood by a self-inflicted blow with a hockey stick, has a prehensile tip, ever quick to smell out an insult; at the least suspicion of an affront, Perelman, who has the pride of a Spanish grandee, has been known to whip out his sword-cane and hide in the nearest closet.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

The Best of S. J. Perelman, Introduction (1947)
The Introduction was written under the name "Sidney Namlerep".

Childhood , Hockey

“Edward Smith: Would you like to see your pictures on as many walls as possible, then?Andy Warhol: Uh, no, I like them in closets.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

1975 - 1987, BBC interview (1981)

“As for broken hearts, no self-respecting young woman shows such an ornament at any well regulated breakfast-table; they are kept in dark drawers and closets like other broken furniture.”

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

Source: Esther: A Novel (1884), Ch. IX

Heart

“Ashlee Simpson did a special performance at Mall of America this week. Reports from those present say that the venue was completely packed; I mean seriously, people were like sardines, wall to wall, there had to be like ten of them…all pushed up against the giant stage they constructed…in the janitor's closet. Because she sucks.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

People

“Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.”

Helen Garner (1942) Australian author

In the title story Postcards from Surfers.
Garner describing her mother.
Postcards from Surfers (1985)

“You didn't build that’ will be Obama's political epitaph: With these remarks, Obama has come out of the closet as a most odious collectivist, who believes religiously that government predation is a condition for production. Or, put simply, that the parasite created the host.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“You Didn’t Build That: Obama’s Political Epitaph,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=663 WorldNetDaily.com, July 27, 2012.
2010s, 2012

“I called Anna Freud in London to tell her what was about to happen. It was a strange, honest conversation.
"Miss Freud, I am sure you have heard that Dr. Eissler is going to fire me from the Archives."
"Yes. And I disagree with him. I did not like that second article in the New York Times. And I think you are wrong in your views. But I do not see why you should be so severely punished for holding them. On one point, however, I feel that I was deceived by Dr. Eissler. He never told me that you were going to live in my house. My understanding was that you were to be in charge of the library and of the research, but not actually live in the house." I never did find out why Eissler never explained this to Anna Freud. Perhaps he was being discreet, not wanting to bring up the matter of her death, or perhaps he knew she would not like the idea of my living in the house. Of course, as things turned out, I never did live in the Freud house.
"Did the idea of my living in your house upset you?"
"Frankly, yes it did."
"Why?"
"Because my father would not have wanted it."
"You mean he would not have liked me?"
"I am not saying that. But he would not have wanted somebody like you living in the house. He would have wanted somebody quiet, modest, unobtrusive. You would have been everywhere, searching for everything, going through boxes, drawers, closets, bringing people in, opening things up. My father would not have wanted this." She was right.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: Final Analysis (1990), pp. 196-197

Death , People , Feeling , Search

“The morning slips away in a Valium haze and catalogues,
And numerous cups of coffee,
In the afternoon the weekly food is put in bags - as you float off down the high street.
The shop windows reflect, play a nameless host to a closet ghost -
A picture of your fantasy, a victim of your misery…”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Private Hell, from Setting Sons (1979)

Food , Coffee

“An intellectual dapperling of these times boasts chiefly of his irresistible perspicacity, his “dwelling in the daylight of truth,” and so forth; which, on examination, turns out to be a dwelling in the rush-light of “closet logic,” and a deep unconsciousness that there is any other light to dwell in or any other objects to survey with it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Truth , Light , Time

“Prisons are a growth industry in a country that has stopped building schools because we would rather not pay our property taxes. And we seem remarkably comfortable with a criminal-justice system that locks up and "disappears" people we fear or hold in contempt — with prisons as closets to hide our unmentionables and as factories for processing spare human parts until there is nothing left but waste.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"An Extreme Danger to Society" http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/31768/, New York Magazine (7 May 2007)

People , Fear , School , Justice

“David Brinkley: Suppose somebody was breaking into your house at night, and you didn't have a gun. Wouldn't you wish you had one?
Sam Donaldson: No, I'd call the police immediately, I'd slam the doors, I'd cower under the bed, or in the closet…
Brinkley: George?
George Will: I'd call Carl Rowan.”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

exchange on This Week with David Brinkley, June 19, 1988.
Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?"

Housing , Night

“The maiden---pure and without stain--lay sleeping on the small couch that occupied one corner of the closet. Her fair limbs were enshrouded in the light folds of a night-robe, and she lay in an attitude of perfect repose, one glowing cheek resting upon her uncovered arm, while over the other, waved the loosened curls of her glossy hair. The parting lips disclosed her teeth, white as ivory, while her youthful bosom came heaving up from the folds of her night-robe, like a billow that trembles for a moment in the moonlight, and then is suddenly lost to view. She lay there in all the ripening beauty of maidenhood, the light falling gently over her young limbs, their outlines marked by the easy folds of her robe, resembling in their roundness and richness of proportion, the swelling fulness of the rose-bud that needs but another beam of light, to open it into its perfect bloom.”

George Lippard (1822–1854) Novelist, journalist

The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall, part 1, chapter 9 "The Bride" (1844)

Youth , Beauty , Sleep , Light

“There is something quite startling in the law that will gladden the hearts of eugenicists, who are considerable in number -- though many are still in the closet. The section on Abortion Procedures declares that the state is not permitted to interfere -- at any stage -- in a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy if "the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality."”

Nat Hentoff (1925–2017) American music critic

The Specter Of Pro-Choice Eugenics http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/nvp/consistent/hentoff_eugenics.html (May 25, 1991)

Law , Decision , Heart

“There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Life , Study , Silence , Appearance

“When I look at the man at the head of the French monarchy, surrounded as he is with all the pomp of power, and all the pride of victory, distributing kingdoms to his family, and principalities to his followers; seeming, as he sits upon his throne, to have reached the summit of human ambition, the pinnacle of earthly happiness; and when I follow him into his closet, or to his bed, and contemplate the anguish with which his solitude must be tortured, by recollections of the blood he has spilt, and the oppressions he has committed.”

Samuel Romilly (1757–1818) British politician

Slave Trade Bill speech (1807)

Family , Solitude , Victory , Happiness

“2d. Saving space: (a) By the utilization of the large volume of space contained in the slopes of roofs… (b) by the reduction of floor thickness… (c) by the utilization of space (as on shipboard) for lockers, cupboards, closets, etc… (d) by the use of thin partitions… and (e) by elimination of corridors… so that the least possible area may be required for communication.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Communication

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Preface to The First Forty-Nine Stories (1944)

“The highest activities are always essentially lonely and private, and these men had a robust sense of their independence and the ultimate self-sufficiency of the mind. In this they were just like Socrates. The only change they operated was to bring philosophy out of the closet into the open, instead of seeking protection behind a little wall like men in a storm. Of course, in so doing they made philosophy, on the one hand, more vulnerable to the public if the hopes of controlling the public are not fulfilled, and, on the other, put at risk that inner intransigence which is the necessary condition of the quest for truth. Not only the rewards but the new responsibilities might prove irresistible temptations to compromise.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 290.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Men , Truth , Hope , Sense

“So I light the fire with the lighter and then I'm like, 'Now, how am I going to light the candles?' And I'm racing through the house, tearing open drawers and throwing things out of closets, looking for matches … and I had just lit the fire with the thing!!! And then I was like, 'How did I light the fire?”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

So then l took the thing and lit the candles.
Attributed

Tear , Light , Housing

“So this, then, is the chamber of the hootchy-kootch. Its bathtub full of orchids. Its closet full of smoke.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

“If you could count the skeletons in my closet, under my bed and up under my faucet, then you would know I've completely lost it. Is he nuts? No he's insane!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Insane".
2000s, Relapse (2009)

“The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

4 October 1746
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

World , Knowledge

“Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It will not let the elders cry peace, where there is no peace. By its fierce sarcasms it keeps issues alive in the world until they are settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

Page 438 https://books.google.com/books?id=-F8wAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA438. Quote republished in " Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1965), p. <span class="plainlinks"> 22 http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/#p22</span>.
"Youth" (1912), II

Youth , World , Fear , Peace

“In dreams you are so 'dumb' that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so 'irrational' as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so 'unrealistic' that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited. In dreams you are so 'insane' you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 758, Page 25
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

Dreams , Travel , Feeling , Imagination

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29
Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s)
2015

Children , People , Family , Sex

“I'm like every other woman: a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear: So I wear jeans.”

Cameron Diaz (1972) American actress

Cameron Diaz on fashionhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/12/04/cameron_diaz_the_holiday_2006_interview.shtml

Clothes

“How many thousands, tens of thousands [of prisoners], are in for petty theft, while the 'robber barons' of our day get away with murder. Literally murder, accessories to murder. "Property is Theft." Proudhon wrote--The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. The early Fathers wrote--The house you don't live in, your empty buildings (novitiates, seminaries) belong to the poor. Property is Theft.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1971)

Housing

“I am gratified by her having pleasure in what I write, but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store-closet it would be charming.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1809-01-24) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Pleasure , Idea , Knowledge , Hurt

“Indeed, many businessmen seem on the evidence to have been wary of the closet anti-capitalism of the rank-and-file Nazis.”

Richard Overy (1947) British historian

Source: War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994), p. 12

“I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any wonder the AIDS epidemic started after they "came out of the closet," and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don't believe so, medically or morally.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1990
June
Ron Paul Political Report
6
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June90_p6.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

“Of the huge part of our generation who have used drugs, how many have told their parents, to this day, even though they are now successful professionals and parents and what have you? There's a need to come out of the closet and talk openly about drug use. As things stand, the only kind of use that is visible is either the dysfunctional drug use or the media portraits of it. So there's this incredibly skewed view of what drugs are about.”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

The War on Drugs

Parent , Success , Parting

“If I was gay, there would be no closet, you would never see the closet I came out of. Why? I would have burned it for kindling by the time I was 12. Because I know with all certainty in my mind, there is nothing wrong with being gay, and you know it.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Solipsist (1998)

Time

“Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 305
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

“McCarthy was a Republican. The Democrats, however, have skeletons in their own closet and it's worth remembering them, too. For example, Democrat Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, who was just as rabid an anti-Communist as McCarthy, did far more to repress free speech and political freedom than McCarthy ever attempted. It wasn't a Republican president who locked up thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese descent in concentration camps for years. It was Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. And it wasn't a Republican who wiretapped and snooped on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but Democrats John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, who signed the order as Attorney General.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Source: 2000s, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008), p. xi

Freedom

“Take the National Organization for Women — please! They've embarrassed me enough over the years, and now I'm going to give them a taste of their own medicine. They were always so holier-than-thou, systematically getting rid of everyone who wasn't just like them: white, upper-middle class, straight (or closeted), sex-phobic Democratic party apologists. As you can imagine, that's not a huge group anymore — but they still manage to hang onto a name that insists that they represent half the population!
Well, it's all over, sweethearts. I'm taking away your library card, I'm stripping badges and I'm not returning phone calls. Calling NOW feminists is like calling the People's Republic of China communist: Marx and Emma Goldman are both rolling in their graves.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

" This shameless hussy ballbuster Clinton scandals http://www.salon.com/health/sex/col/brig/1998/03/13/nc_13brig/index.html", Salon, March 13, 1998.

Women , People , Sex , Imagination

“To a linguist, the phenomenon is familiar: the euphemism treadmill. People invent new "polite" words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations. "Water closet" becomes "toilet" (originally a term for any body care, as in "toilet kit"), which becomes "bathroom," which becomes "rest room," which becomes "lavatory." … The euphemism treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept; the concept does not become freshened by the name.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

We will know we have achieved equality and mutual respect when names for minorities stay put.
The game of the name, Baltimore Sun, 1994-04-06, http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_04_03_newyorktimes.pdf, 1994-04-03, 2011-01-19 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-04-06/news/1994096202_1_dutch-words-language,

People , Color , Water

“Of course I’m delighted that Fun Home has met with such success, but it still strikes me as very unlikely that an odd, cerebral story about a lesbian and her closeted gay suicidal mortician father would have struck a chord with anyone but me.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

on her breakout graphic novel http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6914181.ece?token=null&offset=108&page=10
Other

Home , Suicide , Success

“Being ambiguously flamboyant really does help. I’ve had so many people come up to me and be like, ‘I felt OK to come out of the closet after you said this.’ When someone says that to me -- it’s not an event I’ve ever been through, so I don’t know what to compare it to. I don’t think I even understand how important that is to someone’s life.”

Peter Wentz (1979) American musician

"This Charming Man," interview, Out.com (August 2008)

Life , People , Understanding , Thinking

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

Life , Women , Secret , World

“People have been willing to accept that the government is lying to us, but [are now also] more willing to accept the concept of aliens and other life forms. There's just a slew of stuff out there right now. It's been people's closet belief system, and now it's coming out of the closet.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Kate O'Hare, Tribune Media Services (December 2, 1994) "The Voice of Reason Speaks on FOX's 'X-Files'", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 10F.
1990s

Life , People , Lying

“Senators say they fear the N. R. A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them. On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip, The New York Times, 2013-04-18, April 17, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?hp&_r=0,

Love , Children , People , Fear

“And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Sunday Morning Comin' Down
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

Beer , Clothes

“Somewhere in my closet
There's a cardboard box just sittin' on a shelf.
It's full of faded memories
And it's been there ever since the night you left.Oh, just forgotten photographs
To remind me of the past.
Oh, but I can still see everything just fine.
Who needs pictures with a memory like mine?
Yeah, who needs pictures with a memory like mine?”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Who Needs Pictures, written by Brad Paisley, Chris DuBois and Frank Rogers.
Song lyrics, Who Needs Pictures (1999)

Memory , Past , Night , Box

“LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

in a letter to Steven Richmond (Published in Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes)
Letters

“It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people than one to our own hearts.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 476.

People , Heart

“Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

World , School , Art , Nature

“Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Love , Women , Hate

“Just about everybody in politics has something to hide. The higher they rise in the system, the more skeletons they have stuffed in their closets. And as we have all come to appreciate, this goes double — or perhaps even squared — for politicos who got their start in Chicago. And because the system no longer cares about our rights (to the extent it ever did) we can no longer focus solely on issues related to them, but must cast about more widely to ensnare and defeat the enemies of liberty.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"It Has to Cost Them Something".

“I've found that at times that question and the dubiousness that I seem to exude has given people something — not simply gossip or whether God is going to smite them for liking our band, but actually they've found strength and become more comfortable with who they are as a person. It's pansexual, that sort of reach. It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore. So it's actually a really cool side effect to all the rumors.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Being asked about his orientation. SFGate, June 11, 2006 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T0a5NuTLJPUJ:articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-11/entertainment/17297619_1_green-day-decemberunderground-miss-murder/2&hl=en&strip=1

God , People , Family , Way

“I was wondering what electrons are actually doing when they sit in your hard drive in an old laptop at the back of your closet. I mean, how does an electron sit still — is it like a cartoon M&M learning back in a folding beach chair? Is it like an angry little steel ball bearing hovering there, just waiting to go nuts on protons? What’s the mechanism that starts and stops the electron? Who’s its dungeon master?”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Learning , Waiting