Quotes about closet
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“Folks, last week, people came from all over the world. They came from all over the world to Washington, DC. And they told this country, "we will not be stagnant anymore". Then they stood, on the Mall, for hours, in front of the cameras, in front of the world to see, and they said "we will not be closeted anymore". And then, they stood there, in the rain, and in the cold, with all of us, for nine hours, our faces sore from smiling, our hands sore from clapping, and we screamed, "we will not be quiet anymore!"”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

And, by the way, we're freaking right!
Rock Beyond Belief concert, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina,

People, World, Smile, Way

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

From a tape recording (1977-11-18) to be played in the event of his assassination, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), pp. 372. Milk made three recordings for this purpose; these words come from the version given to Frank Robinson.

Country

“We have confirmation - and I'm not going to give the name yet because we are trying to coax this guy out of the closet - but one of the senior most people in the SETI project, which is the Carl Sagan Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Effort, has confirmed to the Disclosure Project, this is one of the senior most people, that they have received multiple extraterrestrial signals … but that now they are getting external human, probably NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) or NSA jamming of those signals and they are getting very frustrated. The question is why hasn't the SETI project, funded by Paul Allen who's the co-founder of Microsoft, come forward with this information? I'm a little uncomfortable even mentioning this, except for the fact that the public needs to know that this effort, which has received a great deal of mainstream media attention, has actually confirmed to us from two inside sources that they have received extraterrestrial signals and have confirmed them as being extraterrestrial and that they have become increasing in frequency.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

May 9, 2006 <br class="br">2006 <br class="br">Source: [Steven M. Greer, SETI Has Made ET Contact http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5793453751420599744, Recorded Conference, Disclosure Project, Toronto, Canada, 2006-05-09]

People, Guy, Search, Intelligence

“There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications. We fall in love with a book; it is our book, we feel, for life; we shall not need another. We cram-throat our friends with it in the cruellest fashion; make it a Gospel, which we preach in a spirit of propaganda and indignation, putting a woe on the world for a neglect of which last week we were equally guilty.
I am not at all sorry that I have never been cured of this form of youthful susceptibility; one may after all become the victim of more inadvisable forms of folly. My infatuations have at least one advantage; they may lead to satiety, but they do not often end in disillusion. I have, of course (who hasn’t?), my Bluebeard’s closet of dead loves, abandoned for ever; but for the most part I find that the objects of my former adoration are quite capable of awakening my old affection. My experiences of love at first sight, being followed by love at second or third or fourth sight, I enjoy the bliss of both the constant and the inconstant lover. Indeed, these returns to old books—as I have just now returned to Montaigne’s Essays—have often proved, in a life of desultory reading, to be among the pleasantest experiences of that pleasant scheme of existence.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 1
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Love, Life, Books, Youth

“The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet. In 1987, the average CEO against someone who was working in his factory was 70 times. It's now 410 times.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Paul Newman's Road To Glory," http://www.filmmonthly.com/Profiles/Articles/PNewman/PNewman.html interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly (2002-07-01)

People, Time, Hurt, Personality

“I cannot help observing, that many of those who have written in support of our ancient system of jurisprudence, the growth of the wisdom of man for so many ages, are not as they are alleged by some to be men writing from their closets without any knowledge of the affairs of life, but persons mixing with the mass of society, and capable of receiving practical experience of the soundness of the maxims they inculcate.”

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

King v. Waddington (1800), 1 East, 157.

Life, Wisdom, Men, Age

“That holy, humble, meek, modest, retiring Form, sometimes called the Spirit of Prayer, has been dragged from the closet, and so rudely handled by some of her professed friends, that she has not only lost all her wonted loveliness, but is now stalking the street, in some places, stark mad.”

Asahel Nettleton (1783–1844) American theologian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 193.

Madness

“But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Game, Night

“Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Applicant" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/applicant.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

Boy, Thinking, Cooking

“If I can reconcile myself to the certainty of death only by forgetting it, I am not happy. And if I can dispose of the fact of human misery about me only by shutting my thoughts as well as myself within my comfortable garden, I may assure myself that I am happy, but I am not. There is a skeleton in the closet of the universe, and I may at any moment be in the face of it. Happiness is inseparable from confidence in action; and confidence of action is inseparable from what the schoolmen called peace -- that is, poise of mind with reference to everything I may possibly encounter in the chances of fortune.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XV : The Need of a God, p. 218.
Context: If I can reconcile myself to the certainty of death only by forgetting it, I am not happy. And if I can dispose of the fact of human misery about me only by shutting my thoughts as well as myself within my comfortable garden, I may assure myself that I am happy, but I am not. There is a skeleton in the closet of the universe, and I may at any moment be in the face of it. Happiness is inseparable from confidence in action; and confidence of action is inseparable from what the schoolmen called peace -- that is, poise of mind with reference to everything I may possibly encounter in the chances of fortune.
Now this perfect openness to experience is not possible if pain is the last word of pain. Unless there is something behind the fact of pain, some kind of mystery or problem in it whose solution shows the pain to be other than what it pretends, there is no happiness for man in this world or the next; for no matter how fair the world might in time become, the fact that it had been as bad as it is would remain an unbanishable misery, unbanishable by God or any other power.

Death, Happiness, Peace, Confidence

“But let none think that public prayer will make up for closet communion.”

George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative

Thinking

“I watched my life fade-away in a flash
A quarter of a century dash through closets full of candles with never a room
For rapture through a kingdom had been captured.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

Source: Pleasures of the Harbor (1967), Liner notes; part of this statement is often paraphrased "In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty."
Context: I watched my life fade-away in a flash
A quarter of a century dash through closets full of candles with never a room
For rapture through a kingdom had been captured.
And so I turn away from my drizzling furniture and pass old ladies
Sniffling by movie stars' tombs, yes I must be home again soon.
To face the unspoken unguarded thoughts of habitual hearts
A vanguard of electricians a village full of tarts
Who say you must protest you must protest
It is your diamond duty…
Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty
And the bleeding seer crawled from the ruins of the empire
And stood bleeding, bleeding on the border
He said, passion has led to chaos and now chaos will lead to order.
Oh I have been away for a while and I hope to be back again soon.

Life