Quotes about door (1711 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“C4 to your door, no beef no more.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Warning"

“Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.”

Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.

Me & Rumi (2004)

Housing

“Love is the only key to open the doors of paradise.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love

“When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

As quoted in "Owens pierced a myth" http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016393.html (2005), by Larry Schwartz, ESPN SportsCentury

Housing , Country

“When one door is closed, many more is open.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Coming in from the Cold, from the album Confrontation
Song lyrics

“The eidolons started pounding on the door.
'Who is it?' Leo called.
'Valdez!'
'Valdez who?”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“It's my life and you know what, nobody invited you… so there's the door… see ya!”

Green Day

Life

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

We Bereaved (1929)

Motivational , Inspirational , Attitude , Success

“It's my life and you know what? Nobody invited you so there's the door.”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

Life

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Universe

“Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, plows and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best.”

Xenophon book Cyropaedia

Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC

Women , Men , Food , Shoe

“I'm very happy, very delighted.... for I am surrounded here by all that I love. I spent my time out of doors.... and naturally I'm working all the time, and I think this year I'm going to do some serious things. And then in the evening, dear fellow, I come home to my little cottage to find a good fire and a dear little family... Dear friend, it's a delight to watch this person [his first son Jean, born in 1867] grow, and I am glad to have him to be sure…”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille: as cited by K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 22
1850 - 1870

Love , Family , Home , Nature

“The correct definition of equality is that we came through the same door to the world.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

World

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Variant: You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

Wise , Deep , Inspirational , Life

“The same crime element that white people are scared of black people are scared of. While they waiting for legislation to pass, we next door to the killer. All them killers they let out, they're in that building. Just because we black, we get along with the killers? What is that? We need protection too.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)
Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

People , Waiting

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Books , Music , Wine , Weather

“After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes, there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing.
Khan used to do riyaz (practice) before the temple of Balaji as advised by his mamu (maternal uncle) who had also told him not talk to any body about anything that might happen. But when he told his mamu about his seeing Balaji, mamu was annoyed and slapped him.
Quote, Power Profiles

Night

“The company, then, were feasting in silence, as though some one in authority had commanded them to do so, when Philip the buffoon knocked at the door and told the porter to announce who he was and that he desired to be admitted; he added that with regard to food he had come all prepared, in all varieties—to dine on some other person's,—and that his servant was in great distress with the load he carried of—nothing, and with having an empty stomach. Hearing this, Callias said, “Well, gentlemen, we cannot decently begrudge him at the least the shelter of our roof; so let him come in.” With the words he cast a glance at Autolycus, obviously trying to make out what he had thought of the pleasantry. But Philip, standing at the threshold of the men's hall where the banquet was served, announced: “You all know that I am a jester; and so I have come here with a will, thinking it more of a joke to come to your dinner uninvited than to come by invitation.””

Xenophon Symposium

“Well, then,” said Callias, “take a place; for the guests, though well fed, as you observe, on seriousness, are perhaps rather ill supplied with laughter.”
Symposium, 1.11-13

Men , Food , Thinking , Laughter

“You knock at the door of Reality. You shake your thought wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"The Gift of Water" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 200
The Essential Rumi (1995)

Reality

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Relationship , Wedding , Women , Men

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Variant: Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.
Source: The Power of Myth

Faith , Universe

“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

World

“I'll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door —
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Love Itself"
Ten New Songs (2001)

Love

“You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Food

“All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.”

Julio Cortázar book Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Music , Dance

“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Painting

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Life , Dogs , Birthday , Wedding

“Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need, instead of beating you, they'll beat a path to your door.”

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

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 216
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

People , Knowledge

“The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

“Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace!
And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Death , Kiss

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Love , Life , Bird , Sea

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Aldous Huxley, using the term "the doors of perception" which originated with William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is sometimes credited to Morrison because he cited it in interviews as the inspiration for the name The Doors and without always crediting Huxley as the source.
Misattributed

“Mathematicians have constructed a very large number of different systems of geometry, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, of one, two, three, or any number of dimensions. All these systems are of complete and equal validity. They embody the results of mathematicians' observations of their reality, a reality far more intense and far more rigid than the dubious and elusive reality of physics. The old-fashioned geometry of Euclid, the entertaining seven-point geometry of Veblen, the space-times of Minkowski and Einstein, are all absolutely and equally real. …There may be three dimensions in this room and five next door. As a professional mathematician, I have no idea; I can only ask some competent physicist to instruct me in the facts.
The function of a mathematician, then, is simply to observe the facts about his own intricate system of reality, that astonishingly beautiful complex of logical relations which forms the subject-matter of his science, as if he were an explorer looking at a distant range of mountains, and to record the results of his observations in a series of maps, each of which is a branch of pure mathematics. …Among them there perhaps none quite so fascinating, with quite the astonishing contrasts of sharp outline and shade, as that which constitutes the theory of numbers.”

G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) British mathematician

"The Theory of Numbers," Nature (Sep 16, 1922) Vol. 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=1bMzAQAAMAAJ p. 381

Beauty , Mountain , Mathematics , Idea

“Sometimes you just need to go through a door.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 4, Page 92

“Archie's been living off the fat of the land.
I'm here to give him his pension plan.
When you come to the fight don't block the door.
'Cause you'll all go home after round four.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Before his fight with Archie Moore (1962), as quoted in "Muhammad Ali was also great for civil rights" by Mark Wiedmer, in Times Free Press (17 January 2012) http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jan/17/muhammad-ali-also-great-for-civil-rights/?print

Home , Fight

“The Word of God can take care of itself, and will do so if we preach it, and cease defending it. See you that lion. They have caged him for his preservation; shut him up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes! See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. O fools, and slow of heart! Open that door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and ease itself of its adversaries.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Lover of God's Law Filled with Peace (January 1888) http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols34-36/chs2004.pdf

Men , God , Fools , Way

“Our song is the slamming screen door,
Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window.
When we're on the phone and you talk real slow
'Cause it's late and your mama don't know.
Our song is the way you laugh,
The first date "man, I didn't kiss her, and I should have."
And when I got home, before I said amen
Asking God if he could play it again.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Our Song.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

God , Way , Home , Kiss

“Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

5th HOPE conference (2004)

People

“It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257 http://books.google.com/books?id=XuITAAAAQAAJ&vq=257&pg=PA257

Beauty , Knowledge , Science

“What if everything that you see, is more than what you see? The person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it or accept that there is more to the world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source: Nintendo Power

World , Thinking , Appearance , Personality

“Cause all I know is we said hello
And your eyes look like coming home.
All I know is a simple name, everything has changed.
All I know is we held the door,
You'll be mine and I'll be yours.
All I know since yesterday is everything has changed.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Everything Has Changed, written by Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Home , Change

“Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

Love , Pain , Friendship , People

“Gordon put his hand against the swing door. He even pushed it open a few inches. The warm fog of smoke and beer slipped through the crack. A familiar, reviving smell; nevertheless as he smelled it his nerve failed him. No! Impossible to go in. He turned away. He couldn't go shoving into that saloon bar with only fourpence halfpenny in his pocket. Never let other people buy your drinks for you! The first commandment of the moneyless. He made off down the dark pavement.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 4

People , Drink , Beer

“AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.

The End.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Death

Death , Night

“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity…of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that —- young as I am — I may not live to see another day. Yet no one of all my acquaintances could say that in company I am morose or disgruntled.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (4 April 1787), from The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas by Andrew Steptoe [Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-198-16221-9], p. 84.

Death , God , Lie , Learning

“When I get into trouble at school I'd like to take an invisibility cloak, drape it over me and sneak out the door. Or I'd like to have a 3-headed-dog because then no one would argue with me.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

http://www.danradcliffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=28

School , Dogs

“[Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by? ] Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great "art idea". And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.”

Chuck Close (1940–2021) American artist

Inside the Painter's Studio, Joe Fig, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 42

Art , Idea , Sense , Time

“Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don't let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments,
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest place.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Because of You (29 August 1960)

Death , Smile , Hope , Sun

“When the door closes you have two choices. Give up, or keep going. Let them shut you down or prove them wrong. We all start somewhere. It's where you end up that counts. Grammy 2013”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

“I don’t know what it is, truthfully, I think part of it is being still and all that. I don’t know. I like to kind of come in at the side door. I like to act like a submarine; just don’t do much and just let it evolve. It’s resisting the urge to push the envelope. It’s very difficult for an actor to avoid, you want to show a bit. But I think the less one shows the better”

Anthony Hopkins (1937) Welsh stage and television actor

Anthony Hopkins on the secret of his spooky success: ‘I like to act like a submarine’ https://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/anthony-hopkins-on-the-secret-of-his-spooky-success-i-like-to-act-like-a-submarine/ (February 11, 2010)

Thinking , Parting

“Open your doors and look abroad.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

85
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Context: Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

“Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Beggars in London", in Le Progrès Civique (12 January 1929), translated into English by Janet Percival and Ian Willison
Context: Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch. Moreover sleeping in the open is only allowed in one thoroughfare in London. If the policeman on his beat finds you asleep, it is his duty to wake you up. That is because it has been found that a sleeping man succumbs to the cold more easily than a man who is awake, and England could not let one of her sons die in the street. So you are at liberty to spend the night in the street, providing it is a sleepless night. But there is one road where the homeless are allowed to sleep. Strangely, it is the Thames Embankment, not far from the Houses of Parliament. We advise all those visitors to England who would like to see the reverse side of our apparent prosperity to go and look at those who habitually sleep on the Embankment, with their filthy tattered clothes, their bodies wasted by disease, a living reprimand to the Parliament in whose shadow they lie.

Night

“Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 1, as interpreted by Ursula K. LeGuin (1998)
Context: The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.”

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

I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Truth , Love , Making love

“I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. So my sister, who was four years younger than me, managed to lose her virginity before I did. It reminded me of how pathetic I was, that at the age of twenty-two, I was still a virgin.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Sister , Housing , Age

“Some doors slammed in your face need to be glued and nailed shut so they can never be reopened.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

“When one door opens, another closes.
this is the eternity's circle,
mistakes belongs to us, but not all,
the fate mapped out for us to follow,
but does not define our choices,
beings of necessity and randomness,
we're rattling over the abyss
in the vicinity of dying stars”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: An ocean of souls

“Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ!”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Homily of His Holiness John Paul II for the Inauguration of his Pontificate, St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, on Sunday, 22 October 1978. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220324025630/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_inizio-pontificato.html from the original https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_inizio-pontificato.html on March 24, 2022.
Other Quotes by Pope John Paul II

Christ

“What are you worried about, buddy? Isn't death just a door to immortality?”

Titon Rahmawan

#death

Death

“You can't leave me alone," she said, following him into the living room.
"Yes," he corrected, "I can. You'll be perfectly safe."
"The front door's off!"
"Well, yes. You'll be perfectly safe as long as they don't come through the front door.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Night

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Peace , Search

“Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: Clippings from My Notebook

Forgiveness , Selfishness

“Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away…forever."
The Joker”

Alan Moore book Batman: The Killing Joke

Source: Batman: The Killing Joke

Madness

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. Nothing's impossible!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 153

Life , People

“If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

130
Stray Birds (1916)

Truth , Error

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in… We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.”

Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory

Source: The Power and the Glory

Lying , Future , Childhood

“If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or i'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window—or break down a door.”

Brooke Shields (1965) US actress

Inspirational , Happiness

“Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Jabez Bowen https://founders.archives.gov/GEWN-04-04-02-0428 (9 January 1787)
1780s

Money , Fraud

“We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on natures's sustaining and poetic spirit.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Feeling , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Fools , Housing

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Ars Poetica?"

Housing , Personality

“First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these… sometimes led her to walk into doors.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Thinking

“I don't just pray for God to open doors, I also pray for God to close doors.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”

Saul Bellow book Mr. Sammler's Planet

Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) [Penguin Classics, 2004, ISBN 0-142-43783-2], p. 156
General sources

Wolf , Memory

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

World , Travel

“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

Variant: When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Suffering