Quotes about down
page 5

“If someone falls down, pick them back up. Just because there's not a frickin camera in your face doesn't mean you don't have to look out for each other.”

Green Day

“I said I fell down.
Ah. The ground bloodied your nose, split yer lip, and punched ye in th' eye, all at once.
I said I don't want to talk about it.”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

“This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 4. Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Truth

“But people love a hypocrite, you know——they recognize one of their own, and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn't you.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

Love, People, Feeling

“If you get down and you quarrel everyday, you're saying praises to the devil, I say.”

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

“I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Books

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

(, 1964)”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Love, Death, Truth, Way

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

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

Soul

“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

God, Drink, Silence

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them down between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

John Maynard Keynes, paraphrase of Lenin Interview http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/04/15/fake-quote-files-v-i-lenin-on-inflation-and-taxation/ Misattributed

Way

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Lie, Grass, Time

“Deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, "There is something not right," no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or moral code.”

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

Support

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

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

Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions

God

“I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.”

Saul Bellow book Henderson the Rain King

Source: Henderson the Rain King

Life, Understanding, Kiss

“I waited for my thighs and butt to uncramp. Of course, they didn't know the loosening rule. They were screaming things like *Are you crazy? Do you know we're thirty-five years old? Sit down and feed us a Twinkie!”

P. C. Cast book Divine By Mistake

Source: Divine By Mistake

Waiting

“Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

268
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

Life, Death, Birth

“Just look down the road and tell me if you can see either of them."
I see nobody on the road." said Alice.
I only wishhad such eyes,"the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at such a distance too!”

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

“I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

Love, Dependency, Sea

“Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Books, World, Idea, Madness

“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”

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

Variant: Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

People

“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Thinking

“They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down…”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

Men

“What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.”

Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons

Source: Walk Two Moons

People

“Halfway down the aisle, Jamie suddenly seemed to tire, and they stopped while she caught her breath… It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Way, Thinking

“To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

“Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Boy, Past

“Deep down we've never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Prisoner of Heaven

Source: The Prisoner of Heaven

Thinking

“You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Kiss, Relationship, Cute, Romantic

“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Feeling, Drink, Thinking

“Kayla Robinson, if you don't shut up I'll fly down there and suck every last bit of blood from your stupid cheating cow body!”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Stupidity, Cheating, Flying

“Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Change

“In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam- Life, what is it but a dream?”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking Glass

Life, Lie, Dreams, Summer

“The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.”

Barbara Hall (1946) Canadian politician

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Water, Time

“My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of that port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughterhouse at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief distraction is to walk from the slaughterhouse to the graveyard. For a change one may walk from the graveyard to the slaughterhouse.”

Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) Anglo-Irish polar explorer

Change

“The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Fight, Personality

“the best part was
pulling down the
shades
stuffing the doorbell
with rags
putting the phone
in the
refrigerator
and going to bed
for 3 or 4
days.
and the next best
part
was
nobody ever
missed
me.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Parting

“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

World, Water

“It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Feeling, Painting

“Will rolled up his sleeves. "We'll probably have to knock down the door--"
"Or," said Jem, reaching out and giving the knob a twist, "not."
The door swung open onto a rectangle of darkness.
"Now, that's simply laziness," said Will.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Soul, Understanding

“Bran was stripping her futon down to the bare mattress when she entered her apartment. It was sort of like watching the president mowing the White House lawn or taking out the trash.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

Housing

“I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Smile

“We're not really intruding," he called down. "This is all a big misunderstanding."
"Stop right there!" shouted one of them.
Skulduggery held his hand to an ear he didn't have.
"What's that?"
"Stop!"
"Keep going?"
"STOP!"
"OK, we'll keep going.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

“And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Harlot's House http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/the_harlots_house.html, st. 12 (1885)

Girl

“The price of meat has just gone up and your old lady has just gone down.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

“Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But—why did you kick me down stairs?”

John Philip Kemble (1757–1823) British actor-manager

The Panel, Act i, Scene 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Altered from Isaac Bickerstaff's "'T is Well 't is no Worse"; also found in Debrett's "Asylum for Fugitive Pieces", vol. i., p. 15.

Love

“The last thing I want to turn into is a fat Hollywood jerk. I was brought up without much money and I was happy. I don't think that I will strive for money or success and end up greedy or big-headed. That only leads to unhappiness. I can still be down-to-earth and do this job as long as I enjoy it.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Money, Happiness, Jerk, Thinking

“I want to hang a map of the world in my house, and then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won’t fall down.”

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

Mitch All Together (2003)

World, Travel, Housing

“In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. … Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane
Lightning (1988)

Love, Money, Happiness, People

“The Jews work more effectively against us than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.”

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

Sometimes rendered : "They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." Both of these are doctored statements that have been widely disseminated as genuine on many anti-semitic websites; They are distortions derived from a statement that was attributed to Washington in Maxims of George Washington about currency speculators during the Revolutionary war, not about Jews: "This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enemy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." More information is available at Snopes. com: "To Bigotry, No Sanction" http://www.snopes.com/quotes/thejews.htm This quotation is a classic anti-semitic hoax, evidently begun during or just before World War Two by American Nazi sympathizers, and since then has been repeated, for example, in foreign propaganda directed at Americans. In fact it is knitted from two separate letters by Washington, in reverse chronology, neither of them mentioning Jews. The first part of this forgery are taken from Washington's letter to Edmund Pendleton, Nov. 1, 1779 {and the original can be found in the Library of Congress's online service at http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mgw/mgw3h/001/378378.jpg }. I have tried to reproduce Washington's spelling and punctuation exactly. In that letter Washington complains about black marketeers and others undermining the purchasing power of colonial currency: : … but I am under no apprehension of a capital injury from ay other source than that of the continual depreciation of our Money. This indeed is truly alarming, and of so serious a nature that every other effort is in vain unless something can be done to restore its credit. .... Where this has been the policy (in Connecticut for instance) the prices of every article have fallen and the money consequently is in demand; but in the other States you can scarce get a single thing for it, and yet it is with-held from the public by speculators, while every thing that can be useful to the public is engrossed by this tribe of black gentry, who work more effectually against us that the enemys Arms; and are a hundd. times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. The second part of this fabricated quote is from Washington's letter to Joseph Reed, Dec. 12, 1778 {and can be found at the Library of Congress using the same URL but ending in /193192.jpg}, which again condemns war profiteers (the parenthetical list in the quotation is Washington's own words which he put there in parentheses): : It gives me very sincere pleasure to find that there is likely to be a coalition … so well disposed to second your endeavours in bringing those murderers of our cause (the monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers) to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented that each State long ere this has not hunted them down as the pests of society, and the greatest Enemys we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that one of the most attrocious of each State was hung in Gibbets upons a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman. No punishment in my opinion is too great for the Man who can build his greatness upon his Country's ruin. Misattributed, Spurious attributions

Happiness, Time

“Not as in rest she bowed,
But large hot tears were coursing down her cheek.
And her low-panted sobs broke awefully
Upon the sleeping echoes of the night.”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

The Path of Roses (1856)
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Tear, Sleep, Night

“In the cotton States, after the war…the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Love, War, Parting, Season

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Pattani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves. The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Declaration of War against the Americans (1996)

People, World, Suffering, Memory

“Don’t listen to what people tell you because they’ll try to bring you down. And don’t listen to yourself, either, because yourself will try to bring you down even more so than anyone else. As long as you just put all your energy into one thing, it can happen.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

People

“Never give up: There are certain times that you think, “OK, you have beaten me down to my knees. And now the challenge is, I am on my knees and you keep on beating me down. And the question is, are you going to keep beating me all the way to the ground or will I find a way to struggle my way back on to my feet.””

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2008)

Way, Question, Thinking, Time

“Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course… No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Life, Men, People, Youth

“It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Truth, Business, Learning

“A falling-down wreck on the edge of town, curtains permanently drawn, that would turn out to have been home to some ancient recluse who'd been surviving on ramen and toenail clippings since time immemorial, though no one realizes it until a property appraiser or an overly ambitious census taker barges in to find the poor soul returning to dust in a La-Z-Boy. People get too old to care for a place, their family writes them off for one reason or another—it's sad, but it happens.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 3, Page 79

People, Sadness, Family, Home

“Still I only feel alive when the view is flashing, alarms going off in my head…
I want to grab you and just kiss you; maybe I should sit down. No sense in cashing us now.
Yeah, I only feel alright when the view is flashing, bombs going off in my head…
I want to grab you, want to scream at you, no icing me down. The party's crashing us now. The party's crashing us now.”

Kevin Barnes

"The Party's Crashing Us," from of Montreal's Sunlandic Twins (2005)

Feeling, Kiss, Sense

“I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate - just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

Democracy, Country

“Yes, from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Down here we get lost and confused in the devious valleys that run off from the rdots of the hills everywhere, and we cannot make out where the streams are going, and what there is behind that low shoulder of the hill yonder. But when we get to the summit peak and look down, it will all shape itself into one consistent whole, and we shall see it all at once.
None can comprehend eternity but the eternal God.”

Thomas Boston (1676–1732) Scottish church leader, theologian and philosopher

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 212.
Secondary Sources

God, Mountain

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

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

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Children, Truth

“p>Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Eduardo Galeano book The Book of Embraces

The Nobodies; Cied in Mother Jones Magazine (1991) The Book of Embraces. March-April 1991. p. 71
The Book of Embraces (1991)

Life, Children, World, Religion

“Defeated, I followed my impulse casually. I followed a woman who had been watching me from her corner. Then we walked side by side. We said a few words; she took me home with her. Then I went through the banal scene. It passed like a sudden hurtling–down. Again, I am on the pavement and I am not at peace as I had hoped. An immense confusion bewilders me. It is as if I could not see things as they were. I see too deep and too much.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

As translated by John Rodker
The Inferno (1917)

Peace, Hope, Home

“She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overboard and lighten ship withal.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. I

Hope, Drink, Help

“Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work as long as politics don’t get in the way. We can’t slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

Health, Family, Way, Business

“My first near-death experience was an accident, a botched anesthesia during a triple bypass. I had listened to several people on TV talk shows who had gone down the blue tunnel to the Pearly Gates, and even beyond the Pearly Gates, or so they said, and then come back to life again. But I certainly wouldn't have set out on such a risky expedition on purpose, without first having survived one …
To go through the Pearly Gates, no matter how tempting the interviewee on the other side, as I myself discovered the hard way, is to run the risk that crotchety Saint Peter, depending on his mood, may never let you out again. Think of how heartbroken your friends and relatives would be if, by going through the Pearly Gates to talk to Napoleon, say, you in effect committed suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Life, Death, People, Way

“Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy http://books.google.pt/books?id=MGkNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA202&dq=%22Mahomet+established+a%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=oZmPU-fCDemp7Ab7s4HQAg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Mahomet%20established%20a%20religion%22&f=false (W. Collins, 1838), Ch. XVI, p. 202

Death, Religion, Christ

“I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark made by one of the Latin historians. Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error, they being 'mistaken for Jews.' The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians, but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates Christianity and was not born of Christianity?”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Hate, Error

“In one variant, "Allah Almighty has a hundred mercies out of which He sent down one mercy among jinn, men, beasts and insects by which they show affection to one another and by which they show mercy to one another and by which wild animals show mercy to their young. Allah Almighty has held back ninety-nine of the mercies and will show them to His slaves on the Day of Rising."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunni Hadith

Men, Animals

“"That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?"
"It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust."
Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Light

“I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The New Wildcat Religion"

Books, Religion, Tear, Singing

“What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; the immense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; the immense increase in the velocity of the world movement—are all these to mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete and terrible when it comes? We can not be certain that the answer will be in the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not go down in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessity for us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only we have the wit and the courage and the honesty.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

World, Way, Courage

“No new temple was allowed to be built nor any old one to be repaired, so that the total disappearance of all places of Hindu worship was to be merely a question of time. But even this delay, this slow operation of Time, was intolerable to many of the more fiery spirits of Islam, who tried to hasten the abolition of ‘infidelity’ by anticipating the destructive hand of Time and forcibly pulling down temples.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Volume III, Calcutta, 1928. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/2015.62677.The-History-Of-Aurangzib-Voliii-Second-Edition_djvu.txt

Question, Time

“He holds aloft the banner of Islam and knocks down the infamous idols. He does away with people of infidelity and hostility”

Humayun (1508–1556) second Mughal Emperor

of Islam
Khwand Amir: Qanun-i Humayuni, M. Hidayat Hosain ed., Calcutta 1940. Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, p. 66-67

Hostility, People

“The time has come and fall has come so pretty…
The yellow leaves are flying over the city…
I am in love with you.
Your golden hair is flying so clear in the air.
I am in love with fall, which came with rain…
It brought the morning mists…
The days are waned…
I know the wintry wind will break her gown.
I say to fall: come back, don’t let me down.
The yellow leaves are whirling in the city.
I’ve met my love too late, it is a pity.
At last we are together and forever.
I know well that better late than never.
The time has come and fall has come so pretty…
The yellow leaves as dreams adorned the city…
I am in love with you.
Your golden hair is flying as a cobweb in the air…”

Volodymyr Melnykov (1951) Ukrainian writer, poet, composer

Kiev’s fall http://imirelnik.io.ua/s1954083/to_my_friends

Love, Dreams, Time, Flying

“And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice
and they turned away their faces and said
Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world
Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage
The soul lives on humility and patience
at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime
They settled down among their treasures
and ate and drank with princes
and to the starving they said
Suffer
Suffer as he suffered on the cross
for it is the will of God”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Marat, act 1, scene 13 (p. 28)
Marat/Sade (1963)

Life, God, World, Soul

“The train slows down, it's the Cais do Sodré. I arrived to Lisbon, but not to a conclusion.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O comboio abranda, é o Cais do Sodré. Cheguei a Lisboa, mas não a uma conclusão.

Training

“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech, University of Sydney, 4 November 2009

Truth, World, Peace, Justice

“The first time I came here, I got the chance to meet some people, and they said, "You know what, Gabriel, have you ever been here, have you ever been to Chicago?" I'm like, "No, it's my first time." They said, "Well, you know, we'd like to take you out eat if you're down." And I'm like, "Well, hello!" [Audience laughs] "I'm very down!" They took me to a restaurant called Portillo's." [Audience cheers] You've heard of it? So, we get there, and it was, it was very, very good. The hot dogs were delicious, I had a chicken chopped salad, it was amazing. I had a beef dip, really really good. But it wasn't until the meal was almost over that these new friends of mine said, "We'd like for you to try something you've might not have ever had before." And I'm like, "That's not likely." I said, "So, what is it you want me to try?" And they said, "Well, they sell a thing here at Portillo's called a Chocolate Cake Shake." [Audience cheers] I said, "You had me at 'Chocolate'." They said, "Well, you gotta go to the special window and you gotta order it from the lady." I go, "Okay, cool." So, I get up and walk to the lady, and she's like, "Can I help you?" I said, "Yes, my friends are telling me that I need to try this thing, called a 'Chocolate Cake Shake'." "Okay, what size would you like?" "How good is it?" "You'll want a large." [Audience laughs] "Alright, can I please have a large Chocolate Cake Shake?" "No problem." [Imitates her entering the order in on the cash register] And I pay, and she turns around and walks over to this little refrigerator that's on the counter, and she opens it up, and she pulls out a piece of chocolate cake. And I'm thinking to myself, "She must have misunderstood what I said. I didn't ask for a piece of chocolate cake, I asked for a Chocolate Cake Shake." She must've heard what I was thinking, because she's walking by and she's like, "It's gonna happen." She walks over to the blender, she takes the freaking lid off, she just looks at me and does this. [Mimes the cashier turning her hand over, dropping the chocolate cake in the blender] And I was like, "NO!" And she's like, "Oh, yeah." [Mimes the lady pushing the button and the blender blending the cake] And she pours it, and she hands me this, like, 44-ounce chocolate shake, which is WAY more than anybody should be drinking. The straw was so thick, you could almost put your thumb in it, okay? So, I grab this shake, and I begin to attempt to drink it. So, I'm [Mimics him trying to suck the shake through the straw, making heavy "MMM" sounds], and I can see the shake coming up. [Still makes the "MMM" sounds, while using his finger to show how show the shake's coming up the straw] And it hit, and then, all of a sudden, [Mimics his nipples getting hard] "WOOOOO!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

I'm Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry (2016)

People, Dogs, Way, Drink

“We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Answering a toast, "To the Babies," at a banquet in honor of General U.S. Grant (November 14, 1879). The Writings of Mark Twain, Vol. 20 (1899), ed. Charles Dudley Warner, p. 397 http://books.google.com/books?id=mRARAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA397

Baby

“I don't know much about Hitler. Except that last thing, about the Jews. There has never been a country that put its heel down on the Jews that ever lived afterwards.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long (Williams p. 761)

Country

“Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food Or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Food, Way, Change, Singing

“[having been recognized by a woman in a diner]
She sits down across the table from me, and didn't say "Hi, hello, my name is…." She just said "this is what I'm going to tell my husband when he gets home from work today. I'm going to tell him that I had lunch with Jeff Foxworthy."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

[looks up] Really God? Really?
Aged and Confused (2009)

God, Home

“Be awful nice to 'em goin' up, because you're gonna meet 'em all comin' down.”

Jimmy Durante (1893–1980) American jazz singer, pianist, comedian and actor

As quoted in The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 409
Variants:
Be nice to people on your way up, because you're going to meet them all on your way down.
As quoted in A Quote for Every Day (2011) edited by Peter A. LaPorta, p. 41
Be nice to people goin' up, because you're going to meet them all comin' down.
Be nice to 'em goin' up, because you're going to meet them all comin' down.

“Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down by a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round.”

Archilochus (-680–-645 BC) Ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragments
Variant: A Saian boasts about the shield which beside a bush
though good armour I unwillingly left behind.
I saved myself, so what do I care about the shield?
To hell with it! I'll get one soon just as good.
Variant: I don't give a damn if some Thracian ape strut
Proud of that first-rate shield the bushes got.
Leaving it was hell, but in a tricky spot
I kept my hide intact. Good shields can be bought. (as translated by Stuart Silverman)
Variant: Let who will boast their courage in the field,
I find but little safety from my shield.
Nature's, not honour's, law we must obey:
This made me cast my useless shield away,
And by a prudent flight and cunning save
A life, which valour could not, from the grave.
A better buckler I can soon regain;
But who can get another life again?