Quotes about down (8440 quotes, page 29)

“It crept upon me--the restlessness, the loneliness. What was the matter…Then it came to me like crashing and thunder, like death and destruction. I got up from the counter and walked away in fear, walking fast down the boardwalk, passing people who seemed strange and ghostly: the world seemed a myth, a transparent plane, and all things upon it were here for only a little while…”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death , People , World , Fear

““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

“Ooh, baby let's get down tonight
Baby I'm hot just like an oven
I need some lovin'
And baby, I can't hold it much longer
It's getting stronger and stronger
And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing.
Sexual Healing, baby
Makes me feel so fine
Helps to relieve my mind.
Sexual Healing baby, is good for me
Sexual Healing is something that's good for me.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Sexual Healing, co-written with Odell Brown and David Ritz.
Song lyrics, Midnight Love (1982)

Feeling , Help , Baby

“I'm going down
Follow if you want
I won't just hang around
Like you'll show me where to go
I'm already out
Of foolproof ideas
So don't ask me how
To get started
It's all uncharted”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Uncharted"
Lyrics, Kaleidoscope Heart (2009)

Idea

“Roger: Uhh.. You know.. I'm really picky and I don't actually like very many bands. The only like new band that I really like is System of A Down. I think they are amazing! It's good stuff. It's aggressive and unpredictable and I love it!!”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Love , Thinking

“It's obviously a tremendous loss for the state …. I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess.”

David Vitter (1961) U.S. Senator from Louisiana

In May 1999, Vitter replaced Congressman Bob Livingston after Livingston resigned due to an adultery scandal.
[Konigsmark, Anne Rochell, A Week Of Crisis Impeachment: The Speakership Livingston's Constituents Decision to resign jolts home district, D4, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, December 20, 1998, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=0EADA4168D35692C, 2007-07-10]

Thinking , Loss

“Seriously if I had a gun I would have shot the plane down.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

MY-2011, Lancashire Evening Post
Did he not like Blackpool's stunt

“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Speech to voters of South Salford (1906), quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 204
Response to his Tory opponent's slogan, "Don't vote for a Frenchman and a Catholic". On polling day, 13 January 1906, Belloc, standing as a Liberal, overturned a Conservative majority to win by 852 votes, winning again four years later, though by an even slimmer margin.

God , Religion

“The separation of men from women at the dinner was still in the mediaeval tradition. Another interesting feature of the evening is the relatively small number of people involved. Eighteen sat down to dinner, fifteen couples danced at the ball. The entertaining was ‘the finest that ever was seen’ because of the style and richness of the accompaniments, not because of its size. This was typical of the period. Feasts for several hundred people were still being given in the country, to prepare for an election or celebrate Christmas, births, weddings, and comings of age. They usually centred round dinner in the hall, and could involve all the neighbouring gentry and near-gentry, and even the tenants and local freeholders. But the entertainments which enjoyed the most prestige were small but elaborate ones for relatively few people – just as the prestigious part of the house was devoted to a few large apartments for great people coming on what amounted to a state visit. A hard line was still drawn between the inner ring of the great and smaller fry.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Women , Men , People , Age

“The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Affurisms: Slips of the Pen http://books.google.com/books?id=Wpk_AAAAYAAJ&q="The+lion+and+the+lamb+may+possibly+sumtime+lay+down+in+this+world+together+for+a+fu+minnits+but+when+the+lion+kums+tew+git+up+the+lamb+will+be+missing"&pg=PA227#v=onepage The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1876)

World

“I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 136.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Books , Law , Understanding , Reading

“He called to mind all the millionaires he had ever read or heard of; they didn’t seem to get much fun out of their riches. The majority of them were martyrs to dyspepsia. They were often weighed down by the cares and responsibilities of their position; the only people who were unable to obtain an audience of them at any time were their friends; they lived in a glare of publicity, and every post brought them hundreds of begging letters, and a few threats; their children were in constant danger from kidnappers, and they themselves, after knowing no rest in life, could not be certain that even their tombs would be undisturbed. Whether they were extravagant or thrifty, they were equally maligned, and, whatever the fortune they left behind them, they could be absolutely certain that, in a couple of generations, it would be entirely dissipated.”

F. Anstey (1856–1934) English novelist and journalist

Source: The Brass Bottle (1900), Chapter 7, “Gratitude—a Lively Sense of Favours to Come”

Life , Children , People , Time

“There was Riley pushing it, shoving it, shushing it
Hogan, Logan and ev'ryone in town lined up
Attacking it and shoving it and smacking it
They might as well have tried to push the Town Hall down.
The donkey was eyeing them,
Openly defying them
Winking, blinking and twisting out of place,
Riley reversing it,
Ev'rybody cursing it
The day Delaney's donkey ran the half mile race.”

William Hargreaves (1880–1941) English composer

Song Delaney's Donkey.

“These new means [in the modern film, 1920's] have given us a new mentality. We want to see clearly, we want to understand mechanisms, functions, motors, down to their subtlest details. Composite wholes are no longer enough for us – we want to feel and grasp the details of those wholes – and we realise that these details, these fragments, if seen in isolation, have a complete and particular life of their own... Close-ups in the cinema are a consecration of this new vision... A shoe as beautiful as a picture. A picture as beautiful as an X-ray machine.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from: 'Actualités, Fernand Léger', in 'Varietés nr. 1', 1928, pp. 522-23
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Life , Beauty , Shoe , Feeling

“We do not live that we may become more godlike. We become more godlike that we may live. We turn to the future to live in the present. The practices by which we invent different futures bring down upon us a storm of impalpable meteors. The risks to which these practices subject us, the commotions, the hurts, the joys, strike and break the coats of armor within which we are all slowly dying. They enable each of us to live in action and in the mind until he dies all at once.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 236-7.

Future , Joy , Hurt

“All ideological differences set apart, I cannot help having a sincere admiration for Mr Brezhnev. He is to all appearances an outstanding diplomat. He abides by the policy of peaceful co-existence as laid down by the Helsinki agreement. And he has succeeded in making his country as powerful as it is today: the first nuclear power in the world, soon to be he first maritime power; as for the land and air forces, their superiority is so great that it bears no comparison.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 142
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

World , Peace , Appearance , Help

“"I have one more message for you men, and for the SS goons who skulk in the woods and in the darkness," Eisenhower said. "It's very simple. We are going to stay here as long as it takes to make sure Germany can never again trouble the peace of the world." He probably expected more cheers then. He got… a few. Lou was one of the men who clapped. The guy in the tanker's coveralls edged away, as if afraid he had something contagious. That saddened him without much surprising him. He wondered how many of the others who applauded there were also Jewish. Quite a few, unless he missed his guess. Yes, Eisenhower had looked for more in the way of approval there. He'd acted professionally grim before. Now his eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down. He wasn't just grim any more; he was pissed off.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 63

Men , World , Peace , Way

“They [Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear] look at me, and you can see they're looking at a ghost. … Dave said, "She is so much like Kurt." They were all talking amongst themselves, rehashing old stories I'd heard a million times. I was sitting in a chair, chain-smoking, looking down like this. [acts bored] And they went, "You are doing exactly what your father would have done."”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

" Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

Time

“We don't know what the event that has allowed for this massive oil to be released. And until we know that, I hope we don't see a knee-jerk reaction across this country that says we're going to shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, because the cost to this country will be staggering.”

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

2010

Hope , Jerk , Country

“The war on terror as defined by President Bush is a one-dimensional presentation of reality. We cannot fight terrorism by military means alone. We can use military force only when we have a known target; but it is the habit of terrorists to keep their whereabouts hidden. To track them down we need the support of the populations amongst whom they hide. Offense is not necessarily the best defense if it offends those whose allegiance we need.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

War , Support , Reality , Fight

“He’s engaged to be married to Stiffy Byng, and his long years of football should prove an excellent preparation for setting up house with her. The way I look at it is that when a fellow has had plug-uglies in cleated boots doing a Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo on his face Saturday after Saturday since he was a slip of a boy, he must get to fear nothing, not even marriage with a girl like Stiffy, who from early childhood has seldom let the sun go down without starting some loony enterprise calculated to bleach the hair of one and all.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

Marriage , Fear , Way , Girl

“I'll break down a lesson
Step by step
Like a booklet for you to sweat
And try to apply
To make yourself fly”

Necro (rapper) (1976) American rapper

Song 12 King Pimp Commandments http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/12-King-Pimp-Commandments-lyrics-Necro/99F7CAB87AFDB14748256BEF000A98DF

Flying

“What comes from this quarter, set it down as so much gain.”

Terence Adelphoe

Act V, scene 3, line 30 (816).
Adelphoe (The Brothers)

“When I saw you break down in front of the judge and cry real tears, it was the best damn thing I saw anybody do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

Tear , Cry

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Religion , Smile

“Come, spur away,
I have no patience for a longer stay,
But must go down
And leave the chargeable noise of this great town.
I will the country see,
Where old simplicity,
Though hid in grey,
Doth look more gay
Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad:
Farewell, you city wits, that are
Almost at civil war;
'Tis time that I grow wise, when all the world grows mad.
More of my days
I will not spend to gain an idiot's praise;
Or to make sport
For some slight puny of the inns of court.
Then, worthy Stafford, say,
How shall we spend the day?
With what delights
Shorten the nights?
When from this tumult we are got secure,
Where mirth with all her freedom goes,
Yet shall no finger lose;
Where every word is thought, and every thought is pure.
There from the tree
We'll cherries pluck and pick the strawberry,
And every day
Go see the wholesome country girls make hay,
Whose brown hath lovelier grace
Than any painted face
That I do know
Hyde Park can show.”

Thomas Randolph (poet) (1605–1635) English poet and dramatist

"An Ode to Master Anthony Stafford, to hasten him into the Country"
Poems (pub. 1638)

War , World , Girl , Sport

“You can be an ugly baby and everyone goes awww innit nice? There was some women in a cafe the other week that I was sat in, and she came up and she sat down with her mate and she was talkin' loudly goin' on about oh the baby's lovely. They said it's got, er, lovely big eyes, er, really big hands and feet. Now that doesn't sound like a nice baby to me. I felt like sayin' it sounds like a frog. But I thought I dont know her, there's only so much you can say to a stranger. I dont know what kept me from sayin' it.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Podfather Trilogy, Episode 1 Halloween
On Life

Love , Women , Baby

“Daniel broke the king's decree,
Peter stepped from the ship to the sea,
There was hope for Job like a cut down tree,
I hope that there's such hope for me.”

Aaron Weiss

The Sun and the Moon.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Hope , Tree , Sea

“I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid…”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Unidentified edition/page
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Incubus Dreams (2004)

Smile , Nature , Hurt

“Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?”

George Lakoff (1941) American linguist

Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate — The Essential Guide for Progressives (2004) as quoted in the Washington Monthly (November 2004) http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/monthly/2004_11.php

Thinking , Evil , Fight

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant—but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"Bulverism" (1941)

Fools , Error , Thinking , Chance

“"Depa is right: Jedi are insane." "Ever since I came to this planet, people have been telling me how crazy I am. They've told me this so many times that I had started to wonder if it might be true. Now, though, I understand: you don't say this because it's true. Not even because you think it's true. You say it because you hope it's true. Because if I am insane, you aren't really the revolting slime-hearted vermin that, down deep, you know you are."”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Kar Vastor and Mace Windu, p. 286
Shatterpoint (2004)

People , Hope , Understanding , Thinking

“You're working in freezing water up to your waist for hours at a time. You're reaching down, moving rocks, bringing in the rock and the gravel and working it all the time, with your hands, with the shovels. Moving always this debris, to get rid of the debris, to pull out the little tiny samples of your future, the little tiny pieces that are going to make everything possible for you. Going to buy you the means to get rid of your mortgage, that are going to make it possible to buy some more land in Iowa, in order to move, and then pack up and go to some new place. All of that is built into every effort you're making, every single day.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About gold mining
The West (1996)

Effort , Water , Time , Future

“Hindu society has produced many communalists. Admitted. But it has also produced men like Mahatma Gandhi who went on a fast unto death to save the Muslims of Bihar from large-scale butchery. It has produced men like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had the Bihari Hindus bombed from the air when they did not respond to the Mahatma’s call. These have not been isolated men in Hindu society, as Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and M. C. Chagla have been in Muslim society. The Mahatma was a leader whom the whole Hindu society honoured. Pandit Nehru has been kept as Prime Minister over all these years by a majority vote of the same Hindu society. “Now let me give you a sample of the leadership which Muslim society has produced so far, and in an ample measure. The foremost that comes to my mind is Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Immediately after partition, there was a shooting in Sheikhupura in which many Hindus who were waiting for repatriation in a camp, were shot down. There was a great commotion in India, and Pandit Nehru had to take up the matter in his next weekly meeting with Liaqat Ali in Lahore. The Prime Minister of Pakistan had brought the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura with him. The officer explained that the Hindus had broken out of the camp at night in the midst of a curfew, and the police had to open fire. Pandit Nehru asked as to why the Hindus had broken out of the camp. The officer told him that some miscreants had set the camp on fire. Pandit Nehru protested to Liaqat Ali that this was an amazing explanation. Liaqat Ali replied without batting an eye that they had to maintain law and order. This exemplifies the quality of leadership which Muslim society has produced so far. This…”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

From a speech by Hamid Dalwai. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1994). Defence of Hindu society.

Death , Men , Law , Waiting

“So now we're cruisin' down this shuddering highway with the dead sun shining on my back. ~ Myrrh”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Sun , Dead

“How nauseating, thought Nicholas, a Jew being sentimental on behalf of a Negro: you lucky fellows, you’ve got plenty o’ nuthin’, whereas we’re weighted down with all this international capital and these wretched Broadway musical hits.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 7

Music

“To understand this radiation [ cosmic microwave background ], it is easier to begin thinking about the radiation from a very hot gas like that inside a neon light. The same neon… is, at room temperature, utterly transparent… The character of matter in general changes abruptly when it gets heated above 3,000 degrees or so. Below this temperature, matter is electrically neutral… At high temperatures in a neon light, the electrically charged pieces of atoms become unstuck. Frequent and violent collisions break down neutral atoms into electrons and unbalanced nuclei. Matter in this state is called plasma, and it radiates much of its collision energy in the form of light. …a gas of neutral atoms (like air) is virtually transparent. The free [charged] nuclei and electrons of plasma, by contrast, couple to light's electromagnetic fields and absorb it very efficiently. …You …see light only from the borderline layer of neon between opaque plasma and transparent neutral atoms.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Understanding , Thinking , Light , Change

“All Uncle Larry is saying is that individuals have to accept responsibility for their own bad choices. If every time we choose a turd, society, at great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all. Maybe it boils down to the premium we want to place on liberty.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

Freedom , Learning , Time

“Carmelita hold me tighter,
I think I'm sinking down.
And I'm all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Carmelita"
Warren Zevon (1976)

Thinking

“Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty's work, and "Down with Authority" her war-cry.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Libertys Declaration of Purpose (1881)

War , Cry

“I never hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars,—
Only to fail again!”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 22
Collected Poems (1993)

Flying

“I mean it; the Bible-god of western monotheism is just like that horrible kid. Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever? Religion doesn’t want to talk about life either. They hate practically everything that goes on in life. They want to talk about death and pretend that THAT is life. And those of us who know life, live life, and love life, they accuse of being dead already. Every aspect of their world-view is upside-down or backwards -as DogmaDebate brilliantly illustrated. What these religionists preach actually diminishes the very meaning of life. Humans tend to value most that which is rare and fleeting. Such is life. The more you have of anything, the less valuable it is. They’re claiming immortality for eternity, rendering the value of life infinitely worthless. They sell their imaginary after-life as if it is sooo much better than this period of discomfort we have to endure before we achieve paradise. Having to toil in this fallen, sin-corrupted, dead-and-damned world. They hate existence itself so much that they actually long for the end-of-days, and only seem to get happy when they think Armageddon is upon us.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Fukkenuckabee http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2012/12/21/fukkenuckabee/ (December 21, 2012)

Love , Life , Death , God

“I always had a knack for it [music]. I bought a drum kit for like 50 bucks, and within three weeks I was in a band. Not only was I in a band, but people were saying that I was really good. Being someone with a short attention span who didn't have much patience for anything, that was great, 'cause it didn't take much. I could just sit down and do it instantly. I could play a basic rock beat right away, so it didn't require much patience, and that's probably why I ended up doing it. As I got some of the rewards for it, it fueled me to want to be better. Then the rewards thing gets old, and what you really want is to be good and understand it, 'cause you're so enthused by it. That's what got me into all the other instruments and songwriting and singing.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml,
Soundgarden Era

People , Music , Understanding , Singing

“That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Peace , Thinking

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

As quoted in Bridges to Infinity : The Human Side of Mathematics (1983) by Michael Guillen

Life , Truth

“And they noticed what few others had done – that all over the world, charismatic animals that were once numerous were beginning to disappear. The Arabian oryx, which once had been widespread all over the peninsula had now been reduced to a few hundred. In Spain, there were less than a hundred imperial eagles. The Californian condor was down to about sixty. In Hawaii, a goose that had lived in flocks on the lava fields around the great volcanoes were reduced to fifty. The strange little rhinoceros that lived in the dwindling forests of Java – to about forty. Wherever you looked there were examples of animals whose populations were falling rapidly. This planet was in danger of losing a significant number of its inhabitants – both animals and plants.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

World , Animals

“People lose their senses at the beach 'cause the sun beats down too hard. They say things that just don't gel, you know. Well, you've heard this a lot: "Pick up a shell - oh, you can hear the ocean!" You could pick up a bicycle and hear the ocean - you're at the beach. Put the shell down, you'll hear the ocean twice as loud.”

Elayne Boosler (1952) American comedian

Reported in Cader Books, That's Really Funny!: Over 1,000 More Great Jokes from Today's Hottest Comedians (2000), p. 164.

People , Sense , Sun

““Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” asked Henry II as he instigated the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1170. Down through the ages, presidents and princes around the world have been murderers and accessories to murder, as the great Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and Walter Lunden documented in statistical detail in their masterwork Power and Morality. One of their main findings was that the behavior of ruling groups tends to be more criminal and amoral than that of the people over whom they rule.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Killer Politicians, Project Syndicate - The World's Opinion Page, Oct 24, 2018 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/killer-politicians-include-american-presidents-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2018-10

People , Age , World , Behavior

“The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Ch. 2, p. 66

Past , Future

“When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

Hostility , People , Thinking , Water

“Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.... a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Life , Drawing

“Everybody's got a secret Sonny,
Something that they just can't face.
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it;
They carry it with them every step that they take.
Till some day they just cut it loose.
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions,
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Secret , Question

“[W]here’s the massive, collective condemnation about this recent Tennessee case? I’m quite sure that, once again, the left will find a way to make Samson the victim, and the young church usher, Robert Caleb Engle, the assailant. It’s just another example of how things have become upside down in America — and how we’ve all become pawns in the dangerous and delusional game being waged by the progressive, socialist left.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, I'd like to see MORE football player protests — NOT less (27 September 2017)

Way , Game

“I hoped I might become a debonair, hard-drinking, poetic Irishman like him. I'd be a New York character. I'd set the table on a roar and dominate the bars of Greenwich Village with song and story. At the Lion’s Head Bar I drank whiskey after whiskey to give myself the courage to be colorful. Bartenders suggested I slow down. Friends said they didn't understand a word coming out of my mouth. They lifted me out of the bar and into a taxi, paid the driver and told him to drive nonstop till I reached my door.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Hope , Color , Courage , Drink

“Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

"The Marshes of Glynn" (1878).
Poetry

Lovers , Light , Sea

“I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let’s talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won’t take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don’t bite.
Except … we’ve known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that’s not entirely true.
Is it?”

Stephen King book The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Introduction (2015)

Time

“It's very exciting we have a new president. It would have been nice if he ended with a 500 point up instead of down. It's certainly very exciting. His speech was great last night. I thought it was inspiring in every way. And, hopefully he's going to do a great job. But the way I look at it, he cannot do worse than Bush.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

"Donald Trump on President-Elect Obama: 'He Cannot Do Worse Than Bush'" Interview with Greta Van Susteren http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/11/06/donald-trump-on-president-elect-obama-cannot-do-worse-than-bush.html Fox News (6 November 2008)
2000s

Way , Night

“After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Montaigne"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Time

“It's an open question, the degree to which the cosmos would order itself around you properly if you got yourself together as much as you could get yourself together. We know that things can go very badly wrong if you do things very badly wrong – there's no doubt about that. But the converse is also true. If you start to sort yourself out properly, and if you have beneficial effect on your family, first of all that's going to echo down the generations, but it also spreads out into the community. And we are networked together. We're not associated linearly. We all effect each other. So it's an open question, the degree to which acting out the notion that being is good, and the notion that you can accept its limitations and that you should still strive for virtue. It's an open question as to how profound an effect that would have on the structure of reality if we really chose to act it out. I don't think we know the limits of virtue. I don't think we know what true virtue could bring about if we aimed at it carefully and practically. So the notion that there is something divine about the individual who accepts the conditions of existence and still strives for the good, I think that's an idea that's very much worth paying attention to. And I think the fact that people considered that idea seriously for at least 2000 years indicates that there's at least something to be thought about there.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

People , Family , Communication , Idea

“Did you know that when God made the universe, he didn't lift one finger? He didn't turn one screw or pound one nail. He just spoke and every molecule lined up. That's incredible to think about. When He speaks, the waves lay down; the wind quits blowing. When He speaks, the dead come to life. When He speaks, the universe is created! Everything obeys the voice of God, except us. He's having some trouble out of us right now. But He's going to fix that one of these days when "every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father," coming to a city near you. But the scoffers are willingly ignorant of how God made the heavens by His Word, and they're ignorant of how the earth was standing out of the water and in the water.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Life , God , Thinking , Universe

“Play it like something you hear down by the river.”

Edward Elgar (1857–1934) English composer

Diana M McVeagh Edward Elgar: His Life and Music (London: J. M. Dent, 1955) p. 163.
On the trio of the second movement of his Symphony No. 1.

“You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. … Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

Luke the Evangelist Gospel of Luke

11:46-52 NIV
Gospel of Luke

People , Law , Knowledge , Help

“For twenty years I have been a writer and never before have I been in a milieu where every consideration came before literary consideration. And the opinion of anybody — minor actor, money accountant or baggage man — weighed equally or more heavily than that of the author. My disgust is like a cap of fire bearing down on my head. Why would an author with any pride submit to the impertinences of theatre people?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Diary, during the production of Love and Libel (1960).

Money , People

“Seeing a guest come, she feels shy;
Her stockings coming down, away she tries to fly.
Her hairpin drops;
She never stops
But to look back.
She leans against the door,
Pretending to sniff at mume blossoms once more.”

Li Qingzhao (1084–1155) Chinese writer

《点绛唇》 ("Rouged Lips"), as translated by Xu Yuan Zhong in Song of the Immortals (New World Press, 1994), p. 227

Feeling , Flying

“Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a Boy feeding his Father’s Sheep. The Boy was in very mean Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance, and as he sate by himself he sung. Hark, said Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd’s boy saith. So they hearkened, and he said—
: He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such. Fulness to such a burthen is,
That go on pilgrimage;
HERE little, and HEREAFTER bliss,
Is best from age to age.
:* "The Shepherd Boy’s Song", in Part II, Ch. VI : The Valley of Humiliation; comparable to: "I am not now in fortune's power: He that is down can fall no lower", Samuel Butler, Hudibras (1663), Part i, Canto iii, Line 877”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part II

God , Age , Fear , Boy

“Long ago we parted,” said the slight, still man of the Fiia. “Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Prologue
Hainish Cycle, Rocannon’s World (1966)

Thinking , Tree , Grass , Parting

“What it comes down to for me is: Will the technologies of communication and culture — and especially popular music, which is a vast and beloved enterprise — help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Penthouse Magazine, September, 1988
Philosophy

Music , Communication , Understanding , Help

“Lincoln sees American democracy as a last stand, what he calls the last, best hope. And if this goes down, we may so discredit the whole notion of democracy that no one will ever want to go this way again, and so this is the test. It’s a test of whether or not we’ll have this new birth of freedom, if we’ll finally shuck off these last husks of aristocracy and move forward in the direction of democracy. That for him is the vital issue.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

Hope , Way , Democracy , Birth

“She was the perfect cliché among dear little old ladies, down to the very lavender bags she placed among her linen.”

Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) British writer

The Room

Perfection

“I did a show in New Jersey in the auditorium of a technical high school … Technical high school, that’s where dreams are narrowed down. We tell our children, “You can do anything you want.” Their whole lives. “You can do anything!” But this place, we take kids – they’re 15, they’re young – and we tell them, “You can do eight things. We got it down to eight for you.””

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-annotated-wisdom-of-louis-c-k/

Children , School , Dreams

“I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“He was the only man I have ever known who at any moment, on any subject within his wide range, could make a speech, logically developed, exact in phrasing, fortified with every fact and figure, which could be taken down and printed without revisions.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Sir Arthur Salter, Personality in Politics (London, 1947), p. 198.
About

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</p></blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165–166
The New Male (1979)

Women , Men , War , World

“Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed.”

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

Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 18-23

Fate , Food

“When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.”
ruinis inminentibus musculi praemigrant...

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VIII, sec. 103.
Naturalis Historia

“To the youths, utilise all the spaces and chances available with tact, as the saying goes, become a garuda if high up in space, become an island if fall down to the sea.”

Abdul Halim of Kedah (1927–2017) King of Malaysia

Royal address at the opening of the fifth session of the 12th Parliament http://www.parlimen.gov.my/files/hindex/pdf/DR-12032012.pdf, 13/12/2011

Youth , Chance , Sea

“There's a silence in this house today. There's a silence all over Northern Ireland today. There's grieving and there is despair. But behind the despair, there is being born a unity that we haven't seen before… I would like to commend publicly here today the priest of Antrim, the Roman Catholic priest. He made one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard from any of the cloth and he really said in Down to everyone that he did not want in his parish anybody like these men who did this task. And those of us who know Northern Ireland know that it takes some show of strength in a place like Antrim to say those words… We're coming up to St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in Ireland. And I was just thinking today, the only thing these murderers have done: they have desecrated the shamrock by trying to pour the blood of their innocent victims upon it.”

Ian Paisley (1926–2014) Politician and former church minister

Speaking in the House of Commons after the shooting dead of two unarmed British soldiers outside Massereene Barracks in March 2009.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVnQwR-HtCo

Men , Thinking , Silence , Christ

“Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!”

Charles Dickens book Hard Times

Bk. II, Ch. 4
Hard Times (1854)

Men , God , Family , Suffering

“The history of Acadians has never been written down as see by its people. Its been written by historians from outside. These historians sometimes had reason not to write the truth or didn't know the truth or didn't know the small things which become the big things, the inside story, what we in France call la petit histoire. History is made by the kings and lords, But la petit histoire is made by the people.”

Antonine Maillet (1929) Canadian writer and scholar

Antonine Maillet, Acadian author quoted by Isabel Vincent in the Toronto Globe and Mail, June 24, 1989. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Quotations by Robert Columbo. (Toronto: Stoddart, 1991) p. 3

People , Truth , History

“Sometimes I just want to tell a story regardless of whether it fits what the show is saying. I’ve been in a lot of writing rooms where somebody says an idea and everyone’s dying, like laughing so they’re delirious. It’s like a black hole in a good way, everything starts to fall into it, you know what I mean.
And then after a few minutes everybody calms down and somebody says yeah, we can’t do it that way, it doesn’t make any sense, because it hurts this thing and this. And then everyone gets a little—has a moment of silence for the idea and moves on, and something amazing was kept away from the public.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Time http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/22/louis-ck-interview-part-1-fatherhood-and-fear/#ixzz2LfKg3gu2 (2011)

Way , Idea , Sense , Silence

“Whereas reasons may, and usually do, figure among the proximate causes of belief, and thus play a part in both kinds of series (cognitive and causal), it is always possible to trace back the causal series to a point where every trace of rationality vanishes; where we are left face to face with conditions of beliefs social, physiological, and physical— which, considered in themselves, are quite a-logical in their character. /…/ on any merely naturalistic hypothesis, the rational elements in the causal series lie always on the surface. Penetrate but a short way down, and they are found no more.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Lie , Way , Parting

“If they will abandon the habit of mutilating, murdering, robbing, and of preventing honest persons who are attached to England from earning their livelihood, they may be sure there will be no demand for coercion. Well, you will be told you have no alternative policy. My alternative policy is that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honestly, consistently, and resolutely for 20 years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her. What she wants is government—government that does not flinch, that does not vary—government that she cannot hope to beat down by agitations at Westminster—government that does not alter in its resolutions or its temperature by the party changes which take place at Westminster.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6. The Liberal MP John Morley responded https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/03/tenth-night#S3V0306P0_18860603_HOC_120 by claiming that Salisbury was in favour of "20 years of coercion" for Ireland, which Salisbury contested https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1886/jun/04/personal-explanation#S3V0306P0_18860604_HOL_10.
1880s

Law , Hope , Way , Change

“Spy three suspicious butterflies flitting over hedge. Check the planes. Yep, small foliots, arms flapping wildly. Wasp rises up behind them, shoots down out of sun, zaps them with Infernos, one, two, three. Burning butterflies crash-land in pond. Alert master to my triumph. She inspects charred fragments. Her scowl deepens; turns out they were her slaves, returning with valuable information.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Bart's Journal

Sun

“I've been educated in some pretty lively barrooms, like the Cedar Bar in New York. And I went to high school with Frank Stella and when he got out of college he went to New York and started painting… I was working with sculpture in a kind of dilatory way, and he said to come up and work in his tiny loft when he wasn't there. At the same time I sort of dabbled in a little bit of painting, and a kind of confusion. I was an eye, ear, nose, and throat person too… One day Frank Stella just said to me, 'Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands.' I asked, 'Can't I become a good painter?' Frank said, 'No, because you are a good sculptor now.' That's really my formal education…. the company of artists is the great education. We educate each other. I've learned from older, wiser people by the old Greek method of sitting down and drinking with them. And that's how I received my education.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27 - quote referring to his close art-friend, American Minimal Art artist Frank Stella

People , Education , School , Way

“I am such a slow learner that once I understand something I might as well write it down!”

Elliott Organick (1925–1985) American computer scientist

When asked about his prolific publication record; quoted in Computer Pioneers by John A. N. Lee, pg. 510.

Understanding

“I say: liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively, not to everyone is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. […] He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

New York 1907, p. 187
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

Way , Tear , Parting

“The staff officer must be kept in his place. But this does not mean that he must be kept down, that he must be discouraged, that his initiative and imagination must be checked. On the contrary, all these characteristics should be encouraged. The important question is, through what channel are they to be directed? They should, of course, Bow through the responsible operating executive, not around him.
This process may be described in terms of the following sequence: the staff official makes a recommendation; it is approved by the responsible executive who, in his authoritative capacity, announces to those below him in the hierarchy that the recommendation is going to be adopted. Thereafter there are many details in connection with putting it into effect that can be carried out more effectively by the staff official than by the line official and with a saving of time to the latter. So long as the subordinates in the hierarchy are aware that this delegation is authorized and that the staff officer is not acting independently, unification of managerial responsibility is not impaired and there is no loss of influence and responsibility in the part of the executive.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Meshing of Line and Staff", 1945, pp. 102-104, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 306-7

Imagination , Question , Loss , Time

“The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles."”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

"Important Work of Uncle Sam's Lawyers", American Bar Association Journal (April 1931), p. 238, reprinting an address to the Federal Bar Association, Washington, D.C. (February 11, 1931), where the chief justice spoke of the "extraordinary development of administrative agencies of the government and of the lawyer's part in making them work satisfactorily and also in protecting the public against bureaucratic excesses", according to the article's subtitle

People , Way , Country

“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That’s what great religion offers us. That’s what real prayer offers us. That’s why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 93

Truth , Religion , Soul , Freedom

“They are going up and down the country, stirring up apathy.”

William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw (1918–1999) British Conservative politician, former Home Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords

On Labour's 1970 election campaign, quoted in his obituaries in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/jul/02/guardianobituaries.obituaries, and Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-viscount-whitelaw-1103681.html
Chief Opposition Whip 1964-70

Country