Quotes about down
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“What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

“I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Appearance, Time, Courageous, Powerful

“Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.”

Lawrence Durrell book Balthazar

Source: Balthazar

Love

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Books, Dreams, Sleep, Reading

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books, Way, Feeling, Understanding

“Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Circus Animals' Desertion, III
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Lie, Heart

“His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

Sister

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

Books, Laughter, Reading

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1910s, Mending Wall (1914)

Love

“We're always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Stupidity, Disappointment, Way, Feeling

“As I nodded and smiled and'd and'd my way down the drive, I wondered if boys had any sort of magazine that told them how to attract women and, if so, did it ever tell them to put the girls' interests first?”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Women, Smile, Way, Girl

“When it was her own doing, she was always tempted to skip a day, or just glance down, then get back to the ground. Kel had to force herself to keep her vow.”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Thinking, Clothes

“Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself
without anyone noticing.”

Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) Israeli poet

“The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

People

“Tell me where it hurts, she'd say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.

But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

People, Hurt

“Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up; if not, I'll stay down here till I'm someone else.”

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

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

Personality

“A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Happiness, Lovers

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Books, Reading

“One of the things forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

Feeling, Personality

“When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.”

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

Tree

“I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Northern Lights

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman… I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage…

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, Age, World, Religion

“Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

Life, Idea, Time

“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Light, Night

“You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Laughter

“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Life

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

As quoted in obituaries (7 September 1962)
Variant: God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
Source: Out of Africa

“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Turns Fifty

Age, Religion

“There's something happening everyday, but I'm too tired and lazy to write it all down.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”

Ed Viesturs (1959) American mountain climber

Source: No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“And what had he wanted? He'd never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted yesterday to be different from today.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

Thinking

“Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.”

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

“The more you try to be special, the more you get hurt. Just be, just melt and become part of the wind around you, the earth around you, become a part of everything. You’re here only for a while. At least when you’re in a place like this, where nobody is going to trample on you, let your defenses down.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Mystic's Musings

Parting, Hurt

“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”

Jaime Gil de Biedma (1929–1990) Spanish poet

“Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

Life, Fear, Art

“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“Ziggy, when you go up bring me up and when you go down don't let me down. Stephen, Money can't buy you life.”

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

Life, Money

“So if you are the big tree, we are the small axe. Ready to cut you down, to cut you down.”

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

Tree

“The Girl With Many Eyes
One day in the park
I had quite a surprise.
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
and her poetry classes,
and the problems she'd have
if she ever wore glasses.

It's great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Girl, Flowers, Problem

“They will always tell you that you can't do what you want to do, but you can do what you want to do. You just have to believe in yourself. The system is to bring you down, but you can rise up.”

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

“she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Books

“That night, at God knows what hour, Bill phoned me up and shouted, I told him, and put the phone down.”

Ozzy Osbourne book I Am Ozzy

Source: I Am Ozzy

God, Night

“Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

Tree, Light, Grass, Winter

“You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Actually a statement by William J. H. Boetcker known as "The Ten Cannots" (1916), this has often been misattributed to Lincoln since 1942 when a leaflet containing quotes by both men was published.
Misattributed
Context: You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

“Why don't you put your ego down for a while, Justin. It must be getting heavy.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The MacGregors: Serena & Caine