Quotes about clutch (117 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 19

Law , Personality

“Then indeed, pierced by grief's bitterest pang, she clutched the hand of Jason and humbly besought him thus: "Remember me, I pray, for never, believe me, shall I be forgetful of thee. When thou art gone, tell me, I beg, on what quarter of the heaven must I gaze?"”
Tum vero extremo percussa dolore arripit Aesoniden dextra ac summissa profatur: 'sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quantum hinc aberis, dic quaeso, profundi? quod caeli spectabo latus?

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 475–479

Art , Forgetting

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , People , Youth , Age

“I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to swim across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. … if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life , Food , Way , Feeling

“The more remote and unreal the personal mother is, the more deeply will the son's yearning for her clutch at his soul, awakening that primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes, and helps assumes maternal form, from the Alma Mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) In CW 13: Alchemical Studies P.47

Soul , Universe , Science , Help

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, and I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About

Love , Fate , Children , World

“We went to the Opera to hear music of the vanguard, Maximilian by Darius Milhaud. We clutched our chair. But we were hurled out of it by such a hurricane of wrong notes that we found ourselves, half dead, on the stairway, without knowing how we could fall down quite so far. The composer knows the grammar, the spelling and the language; but he can speak only Esperanto and Volapuk. It is a work of a Communist traveling salesman.”

Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) French composer and teacher

Anonymous reviewer, as quoted in Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1965) by Nicolas Slonimsky, p. 126
About

Music , Travel , Dead

“I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso. I am redundant because I can’t believe what I saw. I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso--tumbling in the air--dressed in a bright white shirt--the shirt of the businessman--tucked in--neatly--under the belt--snugly fastened--holding up his pants that had no legs. He had hit a steel girder--and he was dead--dead for a ducat, dead--on the floor of Krispy Krème--with powdered donuts for a head--fresh out of the oven--crispy and round--hot and tasty--and this businessman--on the ground was clutching a briefcase in his hand--and on his finger, the wedding band. I suppose he thought his briefcase was his life--or his wife--or that both were one--because the briefcase was as tight in hand as the wedding band.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Life , Wedding , Dead

“According to the old story, King Midas had long hunted wise Silenus, Dionysus' companion, without catching him. When Silenus had finally fallen into his clutches, the king asked him what was the best and most desirable thing of all for mankind. The daemon stood still, stiff and motionless, until at last, forced by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and spoke these words: 'Miserable, ephemeral race, children of hazard and hardship, why do you force me to say what it would be much more fruitful for you not to hear? The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you — is to die soon.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Es geht die alte Sage, dass König Midas lange Zeit nach dem weisen Silen, dem Begleiter des Dionysus, im Walde gejagt habe, ohne ihn zu fangen. Als er ihm endlich in die Hände gefallen ist, fragt der König, was für den Menschen das Allerbeste und Allervorzüglichste sei. Starr und unbeweglich schweigt der Dämon; bis er, durch den König gezwungen, endlich unter gellem Lachen in diese Worte ausbricht: `Elendes Eintagsgeschlecht, des Zufalls Kinder und der Mühsal, was zwingst du mich dir zu sagen, was nicht zu hören für dich das Erspriesslichste ist? Das Allerbeste ist für dich gänzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein. Das Zweitbeste aber ist für dich - bald zu sterben.
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 22

Children

“The moment eternal — just that and no more —
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Now", line 12 (1889).

“Getting the call to be in The Goblet of Fire was like being welcomed into the most exclusive upper circle of some elite actors' club. You sit on set with the cream of the National Theatre and the RSC, all clutching wands or wearing witches' hats.”

David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor

Radio Times (16-22 July 2011)

“Oh, you, who are clutching the sickle, give the tree of superstition its final stroke. Do not be content with hacking off the branches. Tear outby its roots a plant with such noxious effects.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Tree , Tear

“Bad divorce?" Hardy asked, his gaze falling to my hands. I realized I was clutching my purse in a death grip.

“No, the divorce was great,” I said. “It was the marriage that sucked.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Death , Marriage

“Rocking back and forth, she clutched the sword like it was the only thing she had ever loved, and let the blood spill down instead of tears.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love , Tear

“We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor…
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Laughter

“It has been suggested that hanging out with a dust bunny who carries a purse might have a negative impact on my image as a hard-core crime fighter."
"Don't be ridiculous. It's a very nice clutch.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Canyons of Night

“She admired him; she was used to clutching her hands together in his wake and heaving audible sighs.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up

Source: The Crack-Up

“Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Wise , Love

“Come on," I said, taking his hand. Clutching the afghan with the other hand, he trailed down the hall after me, a snow white giant in tiny red underwear.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

“How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Women

“There's no point in comforting words, in telling her she'll be all right. She's no fool. Her hand reaches out and I clutch it like a lifeline. As if it's me who's dying instead of Rue.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Fools

“It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Ring of Endless Light

Source: A Ring of Endless Light

Love , World

“Oh my God," Maddie whispered, horrified. "I rented him that boat. Does that make me a murderer?"

Tara's heart clutched. "He's not dead yet."

"Hurry," Maddie called to Ford. "I can't be the one who killed Tara's ex!" I look terrible in orange!”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: The Sweetest Thing

God , Heart , Dead

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Source: Selected Poems

Pain , Heart , Night

“Anthony looked down at his evil clutches -- hands, he reminded himself, hands -- and grinned anew.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Evil

“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.

“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.

“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

Time

“Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic."
"I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Brothers in Arms

Variant: "Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking, I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining."
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it…. Someone just ripped off my eyelids.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Girl , Training

“But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed.
And, of course, completely fake.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Smile , Girl

“This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.”

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Learning , Time

“The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Source: Cry, The Beloved Country

Love , Truth , Fear

“Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine! Mine!”

Margaret Atwood book The Year of the Flood

Source: The Year of the Flood

Heart

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life , Star

“Well, there it is. That's Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

"Relic"
Lupercal (1960)

“It was indeed a dead grove, made up of the corpses of trees. Even the wood of these corpses was non-living, a deathly grey, silver-green, with peeling bark; and the bark had also flaked, shrivelling and simply sloughing off like dead skin. And arching along all the dead twigs, crawled a supple, clutching, lashing, bold convolvulus-serpent. It was her leaves which glowed a cheerful green on the dead branches, on all their agonizing bifurcations; it was her flowers which hung on the branches from clusters of tiny suckers and tentacles, astonishingly tender and serene. They were so alien to that austere and honest deathly sterility that they seemed almost dazzling. It was like an explosion of something splendid, like the sombre and magical secret of that dead river and its dry valley. There was something about that copse reminiscent of the hut on chickens' legs, or Koschei's hoard, or the field sown with dead men's bones.”

Yury Dombrovsky book The Faculty of Useless Knowledge

tr. Alan Myers, The Harvill Press, 1996, Part 1, Chapter 2, pp. 100-101
cited and discussed in Peter Doyle, Iurii Dombrovskii: Freedom Under Totalitarianism, Routledge, 2000, p. 145 https://books.google.com/books?id=MoLCsjaQT08C&lpg=PA145&ots=ekC9_khOAS&dq=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&f=false
The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (1975)

Men , Secret , Flowers , Tree

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Death , Men , People , Age

“I am just as white myself as I am black; and I am not afraid of the negro getting the upper hand in me… If you build the negro a church on every hill, and a schoolhouse in every valley, and endow them all for a hundred years, you will not make up for the wrongs you have done him. Who is it that asks for protection at the polls and for equal education? The men who came forth to clutch with iron fingers your faltering flag, and shed their blood for you, who protected the women and children of the South during the war, who have tilled your soil with their horny hands, and watered it with their tears!”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1890s, Speech at Tremont Temple (1890)

Women , Men , War , Children

“When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about—more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Didn't Come Here to Argue, "My Feud With Food," page 22.

Friendship , Learning

“It was the waste of a trip. She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead." I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Buttercup (p. 386)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Pain , Stupidity , Cats , Tear

“You clutched my personal hair and ripped it out by the roots.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (May 11, 2007)

Personality

“After Aurangzeb’s death when Muslim power started to disintegrate, the Sufi scholar Shah Waliullah (1703-1763) wrote to the Afghan King Ahmad Shah Abdali, inviting him to invade India to help the Muslims. The letter said: “…In short the Moslem community is in a pitiable condition. All control of the machinery of the government is in the hands of the Hindus because they are the only people who are capable and industrious. Wealth and prosperity are concentrated in their hands, while the share of Moslems is nothing but poverty and misery… At this time you are the only king who is powerful, farsighted and capable of defeating the enemy forces. Certainly it is incumbent upon you to march to India, destroy Maratha domination and rescue weak and old Moslems from the clutches of non-Moslems. If, Allah forbid, domination by infidels continues, Moslems will forget Islam and within a short time, become such a nation that there will be nothing left to distinguish them from non-Moslems.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Shah Waliullah ke Siyasi Maktubat, ed. by Khaliq Ahmad Nizami reproduced in English in Khalid Bin Sayeed’s Pakistan: The Formative Phase, Pakistan Publishing House, Karachi, p. 2. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8
From his letters

Death , People , Communication , Time

““I thought I would be safe here.”
“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”
“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter V (p. 386)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Books , Idea , Time

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 25

Children , People , Feeling , Question

“There was this book I read and loved,
The story of a ship
Who sailed around the world and found
That nothing else exists
Beyond its own two sails
And wooden shell
And what is held within.
All else is sure to pass.
We clutch and grasp
And debate what's truly permanent.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place
Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page (2001)

Love , Books , World , Reading

“The human is a narrative being. We construct emotional machines, so-called “stories”, to communicate, to share the world in which we live and make it collectively experienceable. And we are pretty good at doing that. Since the primordial soup at some point mendelized into primate brains, we have either been fleeing from big cats or telling others about our escapes from the clutches of big cats. Sitting around the campfire, interpreting and breaking down the world, charging it with aura. Initially this was all very mythopoeic, and slowly it became more differentiated. But even in the post-Enlightenment age, world interpretations are not necessarily particularly rational. Good stories sell well, and the best stories are the ones that hit you in the gut, regardless of whether they would hold up to a Wikipedia check or not.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2016/04/14/the-story-of-traceroute-about.html

Age , World , Communication , Cats

“The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! … Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life , Feeling , Cats , Bird

“Is there to be no getting away from this loathsome vegetative physicality?... Utter contempt for the lewd enticements that always lure us back into life's clutches. And when, half-parched, we seek to quench our thirst, the gods laugh us to scorn.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's Diary-notes, 4 July, 1946, p. 156; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 113
Beckmann himself castigated the folly of supposing that sexual gratification leads to fulfillment.
1940s

Life , God

“She does not know where any tale waits before it's told. (No more do I.) But forty thieves sounds good, so forty thieves it is. She prays she has bought another clutch of days. We save our lives in such unlikely ways.”

Neil Gaiman book Fragile Things

From Inventing Aladdin
Fragile Things (2006)

Way , Waiting

“A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes…. The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism… During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

People , Religion , Hope , Way

“I did very little against two lefties, Mike Caldwell and Scott McGregor, for a few years anyway. Eventually, I caught up with both of them, though. It was really Jim Palmer who stands out in this context; I had some success against him overall, but he was so good in clutch situations that I never really hurt him when the game was on the line.”

Reggie Jackson (1946) American professional baseball player, outfielder, coach

As quoted in The Greatest Team of All Time: As Selected by Baseball's Immortals, from Ty Cobb to Willie Mays (1994), compiled by Nicholas Acoccella and Donald Dewey, p. 117

Game , Success , Hurt

“She staggers over to the bathroom door and grabs the edge of it to balance herself and blood starts running down her legs in thin rivulets and when she lifts up the robe we both can see her underwear soaked with blood and she pulls it off, panicking, and suddenly a huge gush of blood expels itself from beneath the robe, splashing all over the bathroom floor.She gasps, a thick noise comes out of her throat and she doubles over, grabbing her stomach, then she screams. Looking surprised and still clutching her stomach, she vomits will staggering backwards, collapsing onto the bathroom floor. There are strands of tissue hanging out of her.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Glamorama

Glamorama (1998)

“My dear Wormwood,
I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you suppose that argument was the way to keep him out of the enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Letter I
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Way , Reading

“The way that we cheered whenever our team was scoring a touchdown,
The time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song Magic Moments

Cars , Way , Time

“While II was looking for a good enough excuse to run away from Anand; I was befriended by Tribhuvandas Patel, the young cooperative chairman and almost without realizing it I began to share his dream of building a strong organization that would free the famers from clutches of the middle man. In one of my weker moments I accepted |w:Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel|Tribhuvandas’s]] suggestion that I work for the nascent Kaira Cooperative. I have never regretted that decision in my 33-year career as an employee of the farmers.”

Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) Indian founder of dairy-cooperative Amul

In p. 74
Quote, Our Leaders

Dreams , Decision , Strong

“We thus derive that the essence of a man's existence in this world is solely the fulfilling of mitzvoth, the serving of God and the withstanding of trials, and that the world's pleasures should serve only the purpose of aiding and assisting him, by way of providing him with the contentment and peace of mind requisite for the freeing of his heart for the service which devolves upon him. It is indeed fitting that his every inclination be towards the Creator, may His Name be blessed, and that his every action, great or small, be motivated by no purpose other than that of drawing near to the Blessed One and breaking all the barriers (all the earthy elements and their concomitants) that stand between him and his Possessor, until he is pulled towards the Blessed One just as iron to a magnet. Anything that might possibly be a means to acquiring this closeness, he should pursue and clutch, and not let go of; and anything which might be considered a deterrent to it, he should flee as from a fire.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

God , Pleasure , World , Peace

“A single data point—even a single clutch of measurements—could not usually prove or disprove anything, but it might later turn out to play a vital role in a chain of argument, even if it was only in the biasing of some statistical distribution closer to one hypothesis than another. Science, as Naqi had long since realised, was as much a swarming, social process as it was something driven by ecstatic moments of personal discovery.
It was something she was proud to be part of.”

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 1 (p. 188)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

Science , Parting , Personality

““The rest of the materials inside your submarine must have floated—must have flown around! What did you think?”
“Some people,” Lebret confessed, “suggested poltergeists.”
“Poltergeists!” Dakkar’s huge face registered astonishment. “Are you all idiots?”
“It was a chaotic time,” said Lebret, weakly.
“Poltergeists!” repeated Dakkar, disbelievingly. “I was certain it would be scientists who responded to my message! Instead they have sent down a clutch of gullible mystics and table-rappers!” He sounded genuinely disgusted.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 24, “Dakkar” (p. 228)

People , Thinking , Time

“Jane clutched her mug like a talisman of reality.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Greenwitch (1974), Chapter 10 (p. 97)

Reality

“Back to the glass in terror we came,
And stared at the writing round the frame.
We could not understand one word:
And suddenly we thought we heard
The hissing of the snakes again:
How could we front them all alone?
O, madly we clutched at the mirrored stone
And wished we were back on the flowery plain:
And swifter than thought and swift as fear
The whole world flashed, and behold we were there.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World , Fear , Understanding

“Here one cries sudden on a sobbing breath,
Gripped in the clutch of some incarnate fear
What terror through the darkness draweth near?
What memory of carnage and ofdeath
What vanished scenes of dread to his closed eyes appear?”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Night Duty

Fear , Appearance , Memory

“[Aphrodite] set out, and after searching up and down Olympus for her boy, found him far away in the fruit-laden orchard of Zeus. With him was Ganymede, whose beauty had so captivated Zeus that he took him up to heaven to live with the immortals. The two lads, who had much in common, were playing with golden knuckle-bones. Eros, the greedy boy, was standing there with a whole handful of them clutched to his breast and a happy flush mantling his cheeks. Near by sat Ganymede, hunched up, silent and disconsolate, with only two left. He threw these for what they were worth in quick succession and was furious when Eros laughed. Of course he lost them both immediately – they joined the rest. So he went off in despair with empty hands and did not notice the goddess's approach. Aphrodite came up to her boy, took his chin in her hand, and said: 'Why this triumphant smile, you rascal?”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

I do believe you won the game unfairly by cheating a beginner…
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea

Smile , Beauty , Search , Boy

“Honest and peace-loving people shun the Courts and are prepared to suffer loss rather than fall into a Lawyer's clutches. However, the vagaries and inconsistencies of human nature are such that people are unwillingly dragged in and the experiences they undergo leave an indelible and nauseating impression. One of these is the flagrant and plausible manner in which clients are fleeced, and snowed under a series of documents and forms which not only puzzle them, but which are always accompanied with demands for payment. There is, of course, the Lawyer's fee, but this is accompanied with the fees of his clerk (real or imaginary), then typing charges, copying charges and numerous other innumerable heads and sub-heads. In this context it is refreshing to recall that eminent legal luminary, the late Pt. Motilal Nehru was paid Rs. 5/- as his first fee and the remuneration of Dr. John Mathai was a bunch of bananas. These latter have increased immeasurably in value and are good foreign exchange getters and it is not so easy now to slip on a banana peel!”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Lawyers

Love , People , Peace , Nature

“… when the empire dissolved… the people of Britain suffered from a kind of vertigo: they could not believe that they were standing upright, and reached out for something to clutch. It seemed axiomatic that economically, as well as politically, they must be part of something bigger, though the deduction was as unfounded as the premise. So some cried: 'Revive the Commonwealth'. And others cried: 'Let's go in with America into a North Atlantic Free Trade Area'. Yet others again cried: 'We have to go into Europe: there's no real alternative'. In a sense they were right: there is no alternative grouping. In a more important sense they were wrong: there is no need for joining anything. A Britain which is ready to exchange goods, services and capital as freely as it can with the rest of the world is neither isolated nor isolationist. It is not, in the sneering phrases of Chamberlain's day, 'Little England'… The Community is not a free trade area, which is what Britain, with a correct instinct, tried vainly to convert it into, or combine it into, in 1957-60. For long afterwards indeed many Britons continued to cherish the delusion that it really was a glorified free trade area and would turn out to be nothing more. On the contrary the Community is, what its name declares, a prospective economic unit. But an economic unit is not defined by economics – there are no natural economic units – it is defined by politics. What we call an economic unit is really a political unit viewed in its economic aspect: the unit is political.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Frankfurt (29 March 1971), from The Common Market: The Case Against (Elliot Right Way Books, 1971), pp. 76-77.
1970s

People , World , Communication , Nature

“As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Men

“Along crags and sunless cracks I go,
Up rib of rock, down spine of stone,
I dare not slumber where the right winds whistle,
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

Soul , Heart

“As I continued to walk step by step, the lie of life freed me from its clutches, and the universal truth of death swept over breath by breath.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) book God of the Sullied

God of the Sullied (2018)

Life , Death , Truth , Lie

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

War , Children , Age , Way

“It's unbelievable that Phil had to wait so long to get in to the Hall of Fame. Maris's home run record in 1961 has become something of a curse. He wasn't just a home run hitter, he could do everything—hit in the clutch, field, throw and run.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

On the two players deemed by Berra the most underrated of his era; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Time: As Selected by Baseball Immortals from Ty Cobb to Willie Mays, p. 13.

Home , Waiting

“Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general, of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love — and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires — longing. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Love , Life , Men , Mountain

“My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have one. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma momma momma.””

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.
“Chablis”, opening
Forty Stories (1987)

Dogs , Girl , Time , Baby

“McKey…gets it in to Miller for the win…IT'S THERE! Four tenths of a second! Yeah, you can dance, Reggie! One of the greatest clutch playoff performers of his generation has apparently done it again!”

Bob Costas (1952) American sportscaster

Calling Reggie Miller's game-winner in Game 4 of the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals.

Dance

“And thus the easy argument of exhibiting the least conditions sufficient for experience, so like a simpleton in its seeming clutch at the thin surface of things, carries in its subtle heart the proof of an imperishable persistence in all that gives life meaning and value.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.312

Life , Heart

“The light would reach us more quickly in the morning and fade more slowly at night if the whole earth were divided into vast flower beds that called forth the light at dawn and clutched it longer at nightfall. Nature instituted summer for flowers long before man took summer over for his own uses.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Flowers , Nature , Light , Summer

“O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

St. 1.
The Kingdom of God http://www.bartleby.com/236/245.html (1913)

World

“[He] would know many nights on which he would succumb to women whom a combination of over-eagerness and alcohol would make him think desirable, only to clutch his head in the morning on discovering that he had got into bed with some vast relative of Oliver Hardy's or with some flighty Bela Lugosi look-alike.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

Le quedaban por conocer muchas noches en las que sucumbiría a mujeres que su avidez y el alcohol le harían juzgar deseables, para llevarse a la mañana siguiente las manos a la cabeza al descubrir que se había metido en la cama con descomedidas parientes de Oliver Hardy o con casquivanas émulas de Bela Lugosi.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 1. Fiebre y lanza [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear] (2002), p. 59

Women , Alcohol , Thinking , Night