Quotes about door (1711 quotes, page 14)

“Charity befriends the children—
From us, through us, in us. Behind this door,
Charity waits. Alone. Tolerant.
With a smile as deep as your core.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

"Charity"

Children , Smile , Waiting

“I want to see all Americans have a reasonable amount of leisure. Then I want to see them educated to use such leisure for their own enjoyment and betterment, and the strengthening of the quality of their citizenship. We can go a long way in that direction by getting them out of doors and really interested in nature. We can make still further progress by engaging them in games and sports. Our country is a land of cultured men and women. It is a land of agriculture, of industries, of schools, and of places of religious worship. It is a land of varied climes and scenery, of mountain and plain, of lake and river. It is the American heritage. We must make it a land of vision, a land of work, of sincere striving for the good, but we must add to all these, in order to round out the full stature of the people, an ample effort to make it a land of wholesome enjoyment and perennial gladness.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Women , Men , People , Education

“The early cars
Already are
Drawing deep breaths past my door.
And last night's phrases,
Sick with lack of basis,
Are still writhing on my floor.And it doesn't seem fair
That your wicked words should work
In holding me down.
No, it doesn't seem right
To take information
Given at close range
For the gag
And the bind
And the ammunition round.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Not About Love
Song lyrics, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

Cars , Past , Drawing , Night

“In no time at all his cheerful face appeared at the door of the spring dusk. In the street among peaceable strangers he did a handstand. Then easy and impervious, in full control, he cartwheeled eastward into the source of night.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Pale Pink Roast" (1959)

Spring , Appearance , Time , Night

“Of all businessmen the small shopkeeper is the one most under control and most at the mercy of the Party. The Party man, whose good will he must have, does not live in faraway Berlin; he lives right next door or just around the corner. This local Hitler gets a report every day on what is discussed in Heer Schultz’s bakery and Herr Schmidt’s butcher shop. He would regard these man as ‘enemies of the State’ if they complained too much. That would mean, at the very least, the cutting of their quota or scarce and hence highly desirable goods, and it might mean the loss of their business license.”

Günter Reimann (1904–2005) German economist

Source: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, 2014, p. 31

Business , Loss

“What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (c. May 1928)
Letters

Death

“Movies touch our hearts, and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places. They open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

"The Film Foundation Main page".

Way , Memory , Change , Heart

“In some way the Chicano movement strikes me as being revolutionary, but only in a pathetic way, because the genius of Mexico has always been assimilation. I tell Mexican American kids all the time—if I get a chance to talk to them without their teachers—that they come from a culture that violates borders. Kids are coming up every night across the border in violation of Protestant lines. These kids represent a force of anarchy in the world. We are not people of pure race. We are people of mixed race. We have violated those borders already. We are people whose identity assumes the continuousness of experience rather than the segregation of experience. I tell them to be proud of that experience. Don't say to the United States, "I want a separate math class in Spanish." That's not going to scare them. Instead, terrify America by saying, "I'm going to marry your daughter." Or see what happens to the Chicano movement when you announce to the blonde people next door, "I'm going to start dating your son," or "You're going to be my best friend," that "We're neighbors."”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

People , World , Way , Teachers

“The Emancipation Proclamation shattered in one blow the slave system, undermining the foundations of the economy of the rebellious South; and guaranteed that no slave-holding class, if permitted to exist in defeat, could prepare a new and deadlier war after resuscitation. The Proclamation opened the door to self-liberation by the Negro upon which he immediately acted by deserting the plantations in the South and joining the Union armies in the North.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

War

“…often see the glamorous side of this career. …It's really saying it's not like that and I'm just the girl next door. There's always somebody who either loves you or hates you, and you just have to have a thick skin.”

Ashley Tisdale (1985) American actress, singer

Tisdale talks about possible third single on TRL http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/ashley_tisdale/artist.jhtml. MTV. Retrieved July 20 2007.
"Not Like That" a song from Headstrong. (2007)

Love , Hate , Girl

“Maybe if I looked in my heart, I could find a back door.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

Heart

“I did very little marketing. The key is to make your clients money. If you have a good track record, people will find you and knock on your door. Just make your clients money.”

Jim Rogers (1942) American writer

Interview, February 2005

Money , People

“Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness, stanza 1

Music , Thinking

“Holy writing must strive (by all means) for perfection and true holiness, that a door may be opened to him in heaven.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

Preface.
Silex Scintillans (1655)

Perfection

“Little houses in a row,
Down a quiet lane;
Neither doors nor windows know,
Peace and darkness reign.
Though you cannot pay the rent,
You will dwell there with the best.
Where the weary, broken, spent,
Find eternal rest!”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Sewing the Wedding Gown, 1906. Nine One-Act Plays from Yiddish. Translated by Bessie F. White, Boston, John W. Luce & Co., 1932, p. 126.

Peace , Housing

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception (1954)

Understanding

“We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thirsty hitchhikers.
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early-birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

I Love This Bar, written with Scotty Emerick
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Love , Fools , Girl , Star

“As [Phoenix] drew near her room, she heard a woman's voice saying, "It will be easier for us when that monster of yours dies."
"There will be another one, and she will be the same," answered Chia Lien's voice.
"You can make Patience your wife," the woman said. "She will be easier to manage."
"She won't even let me touch Patience," Chia Lien said. "And Patience doesn't dare complain, though she doesn't like her vigilance either. I wonder what I have done to deserve such a wife."
Phoenix shook with rage. Thinking that Patience must have complained behind her back, she turned to her and slapped her face. She then burst into the room, seized Pao-er's wife and struck her repeatedly. Fearing that Chia Lien would bolt from the room, she planted herself at the door while she denounced the woman. "Prostitute!" she cried, "you seduce your mistress's husband and then plot to murder her! And you," she turned to Patience, "you prostitutes are all in conspiracy against me, though you pretend to be on my side." She struck Patience again.
Patience was outraged. She cried, "You two—is it not enough for you to do this shameful thing without dragging me in?" She also made for Pao-er's wife.
Chia Lien, who had until now stood helplessly watching Phoenix beat Pao-er's wife, took the opportunity to hide his own embarrassment by beating Patience. "Who are you to raise your hand against her?" he said to the maid.
Patience retreated and said, weeping, "But why did you drag me into it?"
Phoenix's anger mounted when she saw that Patience was afraid of Chia Lien and commanded her to ignore him and beat Pao-er's wife. The maid, outraged and helpless, ran out of the room, crying and threatening to kill herself.
Phoenix now threw herself at Chia Lien, crying that he might as well kill her then and there since he wanted to get rid of her. Chia Lien grew desperate. He seized a sword from the wall and said he would gladly oblige if she insisted.
Yu-shih and others arrived on the scene. "What is the matter now?"”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

she asked. "Everything was going well a moment ago."
Emboldened by the presence of the newcomers, Chia Lien became more menacing. Phoenix, on the other hand, quieted herself and left the scene to seek the protection of the Matriarch. She threw herself sobbing into the Matriarch's arms and said, "Save me, Lao Tai-tai. Lien Er-yeh wants to kill me."
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 198–199

Fear , Thinking , Rage , Cry

“I count my time working for Dortch Oldham as one of the most important formative experiences of my life… There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face. Mr. Oldham taught legions of young people to communicate quickly, clearly and with passion, a lesson that has served me well in my life since then.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2009-02-27
Dortch Oldham dies at 89
E. Thomas
Wood
Nashville Post
http://nashvillepost.com/news/2009/2/27/dortch_oldham_dies_at_89
2009

Life , People , Communication , Passion

“Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 176 : to Vollard. Renoir was referring to two of his landscapes, painted in the open air, having a different look in the studio light.

Light

“The linga he raised was the stone of Somnath, for soma means the moon and natha means master, so that the whole word means master of the moon. The image was destroyed by the Prince Mahmud, may God be merciful to him! - AH 416. He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghaznin, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze, that had been brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somanath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghaznin, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.”

Al-Biruni book Alberuni's India

E.C. Sachau (tr.), Alberuni's India, New Delhi Reprint, 1983
From Alberuni's India

God , People , Parting

“"When an alluring woman comes in at the door," warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, "discretion may be found up the chimney". It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: "The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly."”

Ernest Bramah book Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree

The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin's Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree (1940)

Time

“Nobody ever wrote so well so fast as Jim. One year he wrote, and we published, nine novels. It was an obsession. Back in 1941, his father had been in an asylum in Oklahoma City, begging Jim to get him out. Jim needed money to get him out, so he said to his father, "Give me a month, and I'll raise the money." His father brightened, because Jim never went back on his word. Jim took a bus to New York City and went door to door to the publishing houses, asking for money for a hotel room, a rented typewriter and meals so he could write a novel. Finally, at Modern Age, they took a chance, and in 10 days he wrote a novel. But things being what they are in publishing, it was a month plus one day before Jim got his advance. The same day, a telegram arrived. His father had committed suicide, ripping the excelsior out of his mattress and stuffing it down his throat. When Jim would drink he would sometimes cry and say, "Why couldn't he have waited another day? Didn't he trust me?"”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Jim Thompson, 1906 - 1977," in The Los Angeles Times (May 1, 1977), p. X3
Other Topics

Money , Age , Drink , Suicide

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1870s

God , World , Law , Hope

“Leave the big door open, everyone'll come around…”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Typical Situation
Under the Table and Dreaming (1994)

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Page 191
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Understanding

“I hadn't heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about--the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Bird , Thinking , Appearance , Parting

“Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing—
Torture is positively paid to sing.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On Torture: A Public Singer"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Singing

“Japan gets the most of ordinary people by organizing them to adapt and succeed. America, by getting out of their way so that they can adjust individually, allows them to succeed. It is not that Japan has no individualists and America no organizations, but the thrusts of the societies are different. Japan has distorted its economy and depressed its living standard in order to keep its job structure and social values as steady as possible. At the government's direction, the entire economy has tried to flex almost as one, in response to the ever-changing world. The country often seems like a family that becomes more tightly bound together when it must withstand war, emigration, or some other upheaval. America's strength is the opposite: it opens its doors and brings the world's disorder in. It tolerates social change that would tear most other countries apart. The openness encourages Americans to adapt as individuals rather than as a group.”

James Fallows (1949) American journalist

More Like Us : Making America Great Again (1989), ch. 3

War , People , World , Family

“Next door, the TV's flashingblue frames on the wall.It's a comedy from the seventieswith a lead no one recalls.He vanished into oblivionit's easy to doand I cried a sea when you talked to methe day you said we were through.But it's all right, some enchanted nightI'll be with you<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Miss Misery (Early version).
Lyrics, New Moon (posthumous, 2007)

Sea

“The atelier was under the roof. Inhabiting this space was forbidden due to fire code restrictions, but staying and working there was allowed. We therefore had to avoid the impression that these were our living quarters. The most necessary furniture had to disappear into the attic during the day. And so the place was decorated purely with curtains. A curtain hung in front of the entrance door, a second one in front of the oven heating.... an adjoining room was hidden by a curtain with abstractedly patterned batik.”

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) German artist

In addition to defying societal standards, die Brücke artists defied housing laws: the ateliers in Dresden that they worked and lived in were forbidden to be used as homes
Source: Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 312 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564 translation, Claire Louise Albiez]

“It seems that you live in someone else's dream
In a hand-me-down wedding dress
With the things that could have been are repressed
But you said your vows and you closed the door
On so many men who would have loved you more”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Cath…
Narrow Stairs (2008)

Love , Men , Dreams , Wedding

“I had an apartment and I had a neighbor, and whenever he would knock on my wall, I knew he wanted me to turn my music down, and that made me angry 'cause I like loud music… So when he knocked on the wall, I'd mess with his head. I'd say "Go around! I cannot open the wall! I don't know if you have a door on your side, but over here there's nothin.'”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

It's just flat."
Comedy Central Presents, S01E06: Mitch Hedberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHiHJ2AhYE&feature=youtu.be (5 January 1999)

Music

“There paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind,
With mystery before,
And reticence behind.”

Bliss Carman (1861–1929) author

At the Granite Gate, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The linga he raised was the stone of Somnath, for soma means the moon and natha means master, so that the whole word means master of the moon. The image was destroyed by the Prince Mahmud, may God be merciful to him! - AH 416. He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghaznin, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze, that had been brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somanath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghaznin, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

E.C. Sachau (tr.), Alberuni's India, New Delhi Reprint, 1983, p. 102-103
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God , People , Parting

“The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding —
Riding — riding —
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.”

Alfred Noyes book The Highwayman

The Highwayman (1907)

Tree , Sea

“Warm and soothing
That's how I remember home.
Walking into arms through the back door
Hearing voices I know well and long for.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

Home

“It was on his return journey that Pao-yü's father heard of the success and disappearance of his son. Torn by conflicting emotions he hurried on, in his haste to reach home and aid in unravelling the secret of Pao-yü's hiding-place. One moonlight night, his boat lay anchored alongside the shore, which a storm of the previous day had wrapped in a mantle of snow. He was sitting writing at a table, when suddenly, through the half-open door, advancing towards him over the bow of the boat, his silhouette sharply defined against the surrounding snow, he saw the figure of a shaven-headed Buddhist priest. The priest knelt down, and struck his head four times upon the ground, and then, without a word, turned back to join two other priests who were awaiting him. The three vanished as imperceptibly as they had come; before, indeed, the astonished father was able to realise that he had been, for the last time, face to face with Pao-yü!”

Herbert Giles book A History of Chinese Literature

"The Hung Lou Mêng", p. 383
A History of Chinese Literature (1901)

Secret , Home , Time , Success

“President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama. Nope, still can't get used to it. It's literally too good to be true. I must've died in my sleep and am now having an insane fantasy pumped into my head by the Matrix. Any minute now Salma Hayek is going to float through the door with a tray of biscuits and I'll know the game's up.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 10 November 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/10/barack-obama-zombies-running
Guardian columns

Game , Sleep

“I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 80, preached at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne, December 12, 1626
LXXX Sermons (1640)

God , Angels , Flying

“On September 16, 1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door. When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgement, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer--not one mosque calling carefully after another, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

People , Angels , Hell , Sun

“Fifteen minutes out of Mexico City for Tokyo a passenger aboard a 747 screamed that he was being eaten by red-hot ants, and managed to open the emergency door at 23,000 feet. He had been to the washroom and drunk from the faucet there before takeoff.
It was, after all, labeled DRINKING WATER.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

July “BLOWBACK”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Drink , Water

“Open wide my door, my Lord, to whatever makes me love You more.”

Aaron Weiss

C-Minor.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Love

“A cemetery is an affront to the rational mind. One reason is its eerily wasted space, this tribute to the dead that inevitably degenerates into ancestor worship as, on birthdays and anniversaries, humans of every faith and no faith at all brave whatever weather may that day threaten, in order to stand before these rows of silent stone markers, praying, yes, and remembering, of course, but very often actually speaking to the deceased, an oddly pagan ritual in which we engage, this shared pretense that the rotted corpses in warped wooden boxes are able to hear and understand us if we stand before their graves.The other reason a cemetery appeals to the irrational side is its obtrusive, irresistible habit of sneaking past the civilized veneer with which we cover the primitive planks of our childhood fears. When we are children, we know that what our parents insist is merely a tree branch blowing in the wind is really the gnarled fingertip of some horrific creature of the night, waiting outside the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, to let us know that, as soon as our parents close the door and sentence us to the gloom which they insist builds character, he will lift the sash and dart inside and…And there childhood imagination usually runs out, unable to give shape to the precise fears that have kept us awake and that will, in a few months, be forgotten entirely. Until we next visit a cemetery, that is, when, suddenly, the possibility of some terrifying creature of the night seems remarkably real.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 50, Again Old Town, I

Children , Fear , Faith , Imagination

“Emily pounded on the door, assuming it would do no good, but finding the act of pounding very satisfying indeed.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Source: The Hidden Goddess (2011), Chapter 21, “The Dragon’s Eye” (p. 330)

“Villages and valleys pass by [Balla viewed during his train voyage to Düsseldorf in July 1912] and with my friend the binoculars [field glasses] I stare into the closest windows; semi-undressed people who wash themselves, bedding on balconies, clean almost empty rooms, a stupendous white shoulder of a women who, with a nude arm opens a door and goes inside.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote from a letter to Balla's family, July 1912; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 306, note 34

Women , People , Training

“"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Listeners (1912)

Travel , Silence , Grass , Horse

“Inside there was a wall three feet away. And between the wall and the door, in this unbelievably tiny space, a girl in a lemon-coloured shirt sat at a desk, with word processor, potted plant, mug of pencils, furry gonk, and wadges of orange paper. It was incredible that anyone or anything could function in such a space. It was like suddenly discovering a family of otters in one of your shoes.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

Family , Shoe , Girl

“People know what's going on with other people. So, we are wise if we live our lives as if there are no secrets. If we have nothing to hide, then there's nothing for people to discover, and we're clean. Living as if there is no such thing as a secret will keep you from all kinds of pain and suffering, and it will open the door for you to receive God's love more fully. Live as if there is nothing to hide and you will maintain innocence.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 18, ISBN 0830730583]

Love , God , Pain , People

“So it is in that spirit that I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld. I have directed the Departments of State and Justice and Health, Education, and Welfare to immediately make all the necessary arrangements to permit those in Cuba who seek freedom to make an orderly entry into the United States of America. Our first concern will be with those Cubans who have been separated from their children and their parents and their husbands and their wives and that are now in this country. Our next concern is with those who are imprisoned for political reasons. And I will send to the Congress tomorrow a request for supplementary funds of $12,600,000 to carry forth the commitment that I am making today. I am asking the Department of State to seek through the Swiss government immediately the agreement of the Cuban government in a request to the President of the International Red Cross Committee. The request is for the assistance of the Committee in processing the movement of refugees from Cuba to Miami. Miami will serve as a port of entry and a temporary stopping place for refugees as they settle in other parts of this country. And to all the voluntary agencies in the United States, I appeal for their continuation and expansion of their magnificent work. Their help is needed in the reception and the settlement of those who choose to leave Cuba. The Federal Government will work closely with these agencies in their tasks of charity and brotherhood. I want all the people of this great land of ours to know of the really enormous contribution which the compassionate citizens of Florida have made to humanity and to decency. And all States in this Union can join with Florida now in extending the hand of helpfulness and humanity to our Cuban brothers. The lesson of our times is sharp and clear in this movement of people from one land to another. Once again, it stamps the mark of failure on a regime when many of its citizens voluntarily choose to leave the land of their birth for a more hopeful home in America. The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people. And so we Americans will welcome these Cuban people. For the tides of history run strong, and in another day they can return to their homeland to find it cleansed of terror and free from fear. Over my shoulders here you can see Ellis Island, whose vacant corridors echo today the joyous sound of long ago voices. And today we can all believe that the lamp of this grand old lady is brighter today; and the golden door that she guards gleams more brilliantly in the light of an increased liberty for the people from all the countries of the globe. Thank you very much.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Children , People , Health , Education

“But I do think we need to explore the commitment problem, which has caused many women to mistakenly conclude that men, as a group, have the emotional maturity of hamsters. This is not the case. A hamster is MUCH more capable of making a lasting commitment to a woman, especially if she gives it those little food pellets. Whereas a guy, in a relationship, will consume the pellets of companionship, and he will run on the exercise wheel of lust; but as soon as he senses that the door of commitment is about to close and trap him in the wire cage of true intimacy, he'll squirm out, scamper across the kitchen floor of uncertainty and hide under the refrigerator of Non-Readiness.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Column, August 18, 1991
Columns and articles

Women , Men , Food , Guy

“The debt was the most sacred obligation incurred during the war. It was by no means the largest in amount. We do not haggle with those who lent us money. We should not with those who gave health and blood and life. If doors are opened to fraud, contrive to close them. But don’t deny the obligation, or scold at its performance.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

About the Arrears of Pensions Act (1879) for disabled Union veterans, which Hayes cheerfully signed, which was roundly criticized as too expensive and too open to fraud by unscrupulous veterans fabricating service-related injuries.
Letter to William Henry Smith (19 December 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Life , Money , War , Health

“The freed self searches for the bright star that unlocks the doors of peace and rebirth.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Shared on social media on June 21, 2018.
Quotes as Marcil d'Hirson Garron

Peace , Search , Star

“Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

“What, nephew, said the king, is the wind in that door?”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Book VII, ch. 34
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

“Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed,
And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road,
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door…”

Attar of Nishapur book The Conference of the Birds

The Conference of the Birds (1177)

“Early one morning in the winter of 1906-7, Henry Ford dropped in at the pattern department of the Piquette Avenue plant to see me. 'Come with me, Charlie,' he said, 'I want to show you something.'
I followed him to the third floor and its north end, which was not fully occupied for assembly work. He looked about and said, 'Charlie, I'd like to have a room finished off right here in this space. Put up a wall with a door in big enough to run a car in and out. Get a good lock for the door, and when you're ready, we'll have Joe Galamb come up in here. We're going to start a completely new job.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

The room he had in mind became the maternity ward for Model T.
Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 96 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History, " Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908 http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ford.htm," www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2005).

Cars , Winter , Maternity

“So if I come to your door,
let me sleep on your floor.
I'll give you all I have and a little more.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Down South
Lyrics, Highway Companion (2006)

Sleep

“I took one of my kids to the dentist one time when he was about six or seven years old. The dentist said, "Mr. Hovind, this kid has a cavity." I said, "Yes sir, I know about that. Are you talking about the big one in his head or the one in his tooth?" He said, "Well, just the one in his tooth. That's the one we are going to fix today." I said, "Okay, let's fix it Doc." Then I said, "Now son, you've got to sit still. The dentist has to give you a shot." He says, "A SHOT! A SHOT!" I said, "Yes, he's going to give you a shot. Calm down; I've had one before." I showed him where I had mine. I said, "It's no problem. When he gives you the shot, your mouth will go numb so he can drill out the bad part and fill the hole with silver." He says, "Daddy, he's going to give me a SHOT!" I said, "Yes son, he's going to give you a shot. Now, listen carefully. SIT STILL! If you wiggle, I'm going to have to take you outside and spank you, so, don't -- wiggle!" He did his best. He tried to sit still, but when the doctor pulled out that giant needle about twelve feet long, and poured in about eighteen gallons of Novocain, and said, "Okay kid, open up," he freaked. [….. ] We tried to hold him still, but we couldn't hold him still enough for that kind of operation. [….. ] Finally, after a few minutes the doctor gave up and said, "I can't work on this kid. I'm sorry, I just can't do it." I said, "Doc, let me take him outside and talk to him for a few minutes." We went out to the parking lot, got in the old Chevy van and sat in the back seat. I said, "Son, listen carefully. You know that I love you." He said, "I know daddy." I said, "Now son, I told you to sit still. You did not sit still. What happens when you disobey daddy?" He said, "Sniff, sniff… I get a spanking?" I said, "Correct, bend over." Boy, did I give him a spanking, and it was a doozy. A few minutes later, smoke was rising off his hind end, tears were coming out of his eyes, and pearls were coming out of his nostrils -- the whole thing. I said, "Okay son, listen carefully. We are going to go back into the dentist office, and you are going to sit in that chair. If you wiggle one time, I'm not going to yell at you and I'm not going to scream at you. I'm going to calmly take you back out here to the van, and I'm going to give you two spankings just like the one you just received. Then, we are going to go back into the dentist office, and you are going to sit in the chair. If you wiggle, we are going to come back out to the van, and you are going to get three spankings just like the one you just got. Son, we are going to go back and forth all day long until I get tired, and I have played tennis for years. I have a wonderful forehand smash. I don't believe I'll get tired for a long time, son." I believe that he knew that, and I knew that. We went back into the dentist office. That kid sat in the chair. The dentist said, "Open your mouth." He opened his mouth. The dentist said, "Open it wider." He held it open real wide, and I said, "Son, sit still." He looked over at me, then he looked at that dentist with that giant needle. He started to shake; then he looked at me again. As he gripped the chair, he did not move a muscle. I don't think the kid even breathed for twenty minutes. The doctor gave him the shot; drilled it out; filled the tooth full of silver; and we were on our way out the door in fifteen or twenty minutes. It wasn't long at all. The doctor then said, "Mr. Hovind, come here." I said, "Yes sir?" He said, "Look, I don't know what you said to that kid while you were outside, but I would like for you to work for me."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

I said, "No sir, you don't want me to work for you, the Child Welfare would have me in jail in a flash."
Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Love , Way , Boy , Problem

“I was told by a teacher in the Deep South once when I spoke on the necessity for Christian education at the request of the pastor, it was a hostile congregation, they did not like the fact that their pastor was strong for a Christian school, and one person after another at the door told me ‘well, you, of course, are not southern, you don’t know the south. This is the Deep South, every person in our schools, every teacher is a born again Christian’. After everyone was gone, this teacher had been standing, watching, came up and said ‘they don’t know what they’re talking about. We may be born again Christians, but our textbooks that we are required to stick to are anti-Christian to the core’.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

Hostility , Education , School , Strong

“Tonight when I listen to our voices in this strange calm which is touched with the presence of death, even though the breeze is rustling so innocently at the door and the roof, I feel as if we were two gods on the clouds of heaven, with mankind dying between us.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

Feeling , God , Death

“Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)

Justice , Law

“He that holds fast the golden mean, 22
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Translation of Horace, book ii, Ode x.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Feeling

“I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor. Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me.
If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash onto his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire.
Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once. That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so that I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share, I had forgotten all about it.”

Mickey Spillane book The Big Kill

The Big Kill (1951)

Pain , Smile , Jerk , Way

“I used old comic clothes stuff in the early days. I had the big shoes, I had the tight clothes, in fact I played several different characters. I played one called Willie Work; he used to have wide shoulders, a little cat mustache, a high hat. Another one was called Lonesome Luke, and his clothes were tight with a little funny hat; he had a funny little mustache. But when I adopted the glasses, it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being. He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

1962 TV interview with Harry Reasoner.

Shoe , Cats , Nature , Time

“There are a great many doors open; but a door must be of a man's size or it is not meant for him.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

As quoted in Henry Ward Beecher: His Life and Work (1887) by J.T. Lloyd, p. 261 http://books.google.com/books?id=MV5DAAAAYAAJ
Other Sourced

“When I was a few years, often approached the door of the room where my mother exactly practicing, listened to sounds and imagined this music.”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

Kiedy miałem kilka lat, często podchodziłem do drzwi pokoju, w którym akurat ćwiczyła mama, wsłuchiwałem się w dźwięki i wyobrażałem sobie tę muzykę.
A little cellist from Krakow conquers the world, warszawa.naszemiasto.pl, 2008-04-02, Polish http://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/archiwum/1664386,maly-wiolonczelista-z-krakowa-podbija-swiat,id,t.html,

Music , Imagination

“When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark… for hours… and don't move… I'm locking the door now.'.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Lie

“It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors of all the drawing-rooms in her face.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

C'est à coups de mépris public qu'un mari tue sa femme au XIXe siècle; c'est en lui fermant tous les salons.
Vol. I, ch. XXI
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Drawing

“A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984 (1984)

Painting , Falseness

“Cannes, I slept on the beach in 1971. I had Sugar Cookies here, one 35mm film. I had the two cans, I rented theaters but I didn’t have money for a hotel. Slept on the beach, the Palais loved it, the people of Cannes loved it, it was a festival. They were discovering people. An independent company could put leaflets, we could walk into the hotels, put leaflets under all the doors. We could put leaflets on all the cars that were parked. They were interested, they encouraged someone who was unknown. Nobody knew who Troma or I was. It was before Troma. I was a nobody and I still am pretty much, but they encouraged it. Now they don’t want you to do this. You can’t even walk into a hotel without some $600 pass. If you pay, you can put your leaflets on a table maybe. It’s become an elitist festival.”

Lloyd Kaufman (1945) American film director

CraveOnline http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/507781-exclusive-cannes-interview-lloyd-kaufman-on-nuke-em-high May 28, 2013]
2013

Love , Money , People , Cars

“Open the doors that lead on in to Eden
Don't want no cheap disguise.
I follow the signs marked back to the beginning,
No more compromise.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Into the Fire, written by Sarah McLachlan and Pierre Marchand
Song lyrics, Solace (1992)

“The gods were fighting over her children but she could not seek the help of any of them. And she had so much choice. She had grown up a Buddhist, her ex-husband was alleged a Moslem when he died, her own sister was a Christian - so many options for salvation. […] Chelsea would have settled for solace through prayer. But she did not believe that there was an invisible hand behind the farce that was her life's play. At the very least she did not believe in a benevolent God. […] Surely it was better to lay the blame for the machinations of fate at the door of chance?”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 13

Life , God , Fate , Children

“I started working at the Quick Stop with him. Every Sunday I used to go to the Quick Stop and we used to put the Sunday papers together at like five in the morning. And then after a while he got me a job at the video store next door. I used to lock up the store and go next door and hang out all the time and watch movies and stuff.”

Jason Mewes (1974) American actor

View Askew interview (1999)

Time

“It needs but half an eye to see in these latter days that science, the Grand Revelator of modern Western culture, has reached, without having intended to, a frontier. Either it must bury its dead, close its ranks, and go forward into a landscape of increasing strangeness, replete with things shocking to a culture-trammeled understanding, or it must become, in Claude Houghton's expressive phrase, the plagiarist of its own past. The frontier was foreseen in principle very long ago, and given a name that has descended to our day clouded with myth. That name is Babel. For science's long and heroic effort to be strictly factual has at last brought it into entanglement with the unsuspected facts of the linguistic order. These facts the older classical science had never admitted, confronted, or understood as facts. Instead they had entered its house by the back door and had been taken for the substance of Reason itself.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 264.

Understanding , Effort , Science , Past

“These sources of strength are also in the faith that sustains so many of us. Across the town of Blacksburg and in towns all across America, houses of worship from every faith have opened their doors and have lifted you up in prayer. People who have never met you are praying for you; they're praying for your friends who have fallen and who are injured. There's a power in these prayers, real power. In times like this, we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God. As the Scriptures tell us, "Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2007, Virginia Tech Prayer Vigil (April 2007)

Love , God , People , Faith

“For me, the scariest thing about a serial killer is that there's somebody who lives next door to you, running power tools late into the night, and you don't know he has a refrigerator full of penises.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

The Curious Case of David Fincher (2007)

Night

“When you try to generate ideas, think of yourself as a sales person knocking on a whole subdivision of doors. Some won't open at all, some will open a suspicious crack, and some will slam in your face. But the more doors you knock on, the greater your chances of being invited in.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Idea , Thinking , Chance , Personality

“After supper we are sitting close to the church in a quiet spot. As if from a distance we hear prayers and singing. The monks are holding their vesper services. Then it falls silent, wonderfully silent!
The sun has already set. … We are quiet, too. … A door is closed somewhere. A man's, then a woman's voice. Children are praying! My dear Jesus! Then it falls silent again. Wonderfully silent!
The night spreads its wide, black wings over the land.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Nach dem Abendbrot sitzen wir an der Kirche in einem stillen Winkel. Wie von ferne hören wir Gebet und Singen. Die Mönche halten ihre Abendandacht. Und dann wird es still, wunderbar still!
Die Sonne ist schon untergegangen. … Auch wir schweigen. … Irgendwo wird eine Tür geschlossen. Eine Männer-, dann eine Frauenstimme. Kinderbeten! Du lieber Jesus mein! Dann wird es wieder still. Wunderbar still!
Die Nacht legt ihre breiten, schwarzen Flügel auf das Land.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Children , Singing , Sun , Night

“In Germany, it's, let's say it's 5:59 and you're heading for the bakery or whatever and it's due to close at 6. The German will walk right up to that door and close it right in your face, they will lock it on the other side of that glass door with a shrug, like "sorry". A [South] Korean would never do that, ever. And, and this is what I like about them.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Colin Marshall (February 2015)

“The hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Bright) asks, "What is our interest in this war?" and he also asked me to explain the meaning of the expression "the balance of power."… [The] "Balance of power" means only this—that a number of weaker States may unite to prevent a stronger one from acquiring a power which should be dangerous to them, and which should overthrow their independence, their liberty, and their freedom of action. It is the doctrine of self-preservation. It is the doctrine of self-defence, with the simple qualification that it is combined with sagacity and with forethought, and an endeavour to prevent imminent danger before it comes thundering at your doors.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons on the debate on war with Russia (31 March 1854).
1850s

War , Freedom

“I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1965)

Life , Beauty , Idea