Quotes about down
page 62

Bouck White photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Georg Simmel photo

“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social technological mechanism. An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life. Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The Metropolis and Modern Life (1903), p. 409

“We came down from the trees, up from the grasslands, and into an SUV. We drove. We motored. We headed for that Texas horizon, flat as the flat-line on a heart monitor, straight to the brink of extinction, all the while pumping gas.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Cryonic Freeze" Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter 2013) "Felix, Living History Enactor, Despairs."
2010-

Pablo Neruda photo

“One pillar holding up consolations
And don’t bother telling me anything
And so? The pale metalloid heals you?
I have a terrible fear of being an animal.
And what if after so many words,
The anger that breaks a man down into boys.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Un pilar soportando consuelos
Y no me digan nada
¿Y bien? ¿Te sana el metaloide pálido?
Tengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal
íY, si después de tantos palabras
La cólera que quiebra al hombre en niños
From Espana, aparta de mi este caliz, Masa, Neruda and Vallejo: selected poems, By Robert Bly, John Knoepfle, James Arlington Wright, Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, copyright 1971, Beacon Press. Translations by Robert Bly, John Knoepfle, and James Wright. ISBN 0-8070-6480-0.

A.A. Milne photo
Robert Frost photo
Aldo Capitini photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Albert Chevalier photo

“We was as ’appy as could be that day
Down at the Welsh ’Arp, which is ’Endon way.”

Albert Chevalier (1861–1923) English music hall comedian and singer

Song The Coster’s Serenade http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Farmer-MusaPedestris/the-costers-serenade.html (1894).

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Paul Simon photo

“In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving."”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

But the fighter still remains.
The Boxer
Song lyrics, Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)

Cormac McCarthy photo
Thomas More photo

“See me safe up: for in my coming down, I can shift for myself.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

On ascending the platform to his execution, as quoted in History of England (1856-1870) by James Anthony Froude

Huldrych Zwingli photo
Lee Child photo
Peter Gabriel photo

“Looking down on empty streets, all she can see
Are the dreams all made solid
Are the dreams all made real.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Mercy Street
Song lyrics, So (1986)

Willa Cather photo
Ben Carson photo

“Be nice to every-body. You meet the same people going up as you meet going down.”

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

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 196

Elton John photo

“And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home.
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Rocket Man
Song lyrics, Honky Château (1972)

Jean Baudrillard photo
Boris Johnson photo

“There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"Face it: it's all your own fat fault", Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2004, p. 24.
On the dangers of obesity.
2000s, 2004

Madeleine Stowe photo
Marvin Gaye photo
Kent Hovind photo
Woodrow Wilson photo
Billy Joel photo

“She comes to me when I'm feelin' down
Inspires me without a sound
She touches me and I get turned around.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

She's Got a Way.
Song lyrics, Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

Mark Zuckerberg photo

“"I underestimated you, woman."… "The cry of men down the ages."”

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 15

Andrew Sega photo
Neil Kinnock photo
Richard Cobden photo
Josh Homme photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Francesco Dall'Ongaro photo

“Too many for the fruit cut down the tree,
And find their gain in world-wide misery.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Troppi taglian la pianta per i frutti,
E traggono lor pro dal mal di tutti.
Stornelli Politici, "Gaetano Semenza", II.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 428.

Anthony Powell photo
Merle Haggard photo

“I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball.
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

"Okie from Muskogee" (September 1969), co-written with Roy Edward Burris, for Okie from Muskogee (October 1969)

Bill Gates photo

“A million feathers falling down,
a million stars that touch the ground,
so many secrets to be found
amid the falling snow.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Richard Stallman photo
M. K. Hobson photo
Andy Warhol photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo
Clifford D. Simak photo

“The tyrant puts down his own rebellion, everywhere.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#77
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Shunryu Suzuki photo
Marcus Manilius photo

“How many realms since Troy have been o'erthrown?
How many nations captive led? How oft
Has Fortune up and down throughout the world
Changed slavery for dominion?”

Quot post excidium Trojae sunt eruta regna? Quot capti populi? quoties Fortuna per orbem Servitium imperiumque tulit, varieque revertit?

Book I, line 506, as reported in Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (1897) by T. B. Harbottle, p. 248.
Astronomica

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Phillip Guston photo
Tod A photo
Lewis Mumford photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“At night I sit in my chamber and read the Bible. Far in the distance roars the sea. Then I lie down and think for a long time about the calm and pale man from Nazareth.”

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

Abends sitze ich auf meinem Zimmer und lese die Bibel. In der Ferne braust das Meer. Dann liege ich noch lange wach und denke an den stillen, bleichen Mann von Nazareth.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Dennis Skinner photo
Jerry Coyne photo
James Brown photo

“This is an issue couples have to be straight on and agree on before they walk down that aisle; otherwise there is no way their marriage will survive.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

On having children — as quoted in Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul, p. 248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

Paul Blobel photo
Upton Sinclair photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Winston Churchill, in "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast to the United States and to London (16 October 1938) http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/524-the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace.
The 1930s

Libba Bray photo
Rick Santorum photo

“When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches — trying to say that anybody who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles, as we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that — this is what the court said — that if believe that, if believe what's taught in Genesis, if you believe what's practiced Biblically and in generations since, then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot, and that you are a hater. Because you can't possibly think differently, you can't possibly think differently unless you are a bigot or a hater, cause there's no rational reason not to see marriage as the way the Ninth Circuit does. They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what's left is the. What's left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left, in France, became the guillotine.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're a long way from that, but if we do, and follow the path of President Obama, and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

referring to Ninth Circuit ruling unconstitutional , which banned same-sex marriage

Isaac Leib Peretz photo

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

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

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

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“What reason had he then for endeavouring, with such bitter hostility, to force me into the senate yesterday? Was I the only person who was absent? Have you not repeatedly had thinner houses than yesterday? Or was a matter of such importance under discussion, that it was desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus; on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate-house.”
Quid tandem erat causae, cur in senatum hesterno die tam acerbe cogerer? Solusne aberam, an non saepe minus frequentes fuistis, an ea res agebatur, ut etiam aegrotos deferri oporteret? Hannibal, credo, erat ad portas, aut de Pyrrhi pace agebatur, ad quam causam etiam Appium illum et caecum et senem delatum esse memoriae proditum est.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Philippica I; English translation by C. D. Yonge
Potentially the origin of the phrase "Hannibal ad portas" (Hannibal at the gates)
Philippicae – Philippics (44 BC)

“My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Swami Vivekananda photo
Carlos Menem photo

“English: "A [railroad] branch that goes on strike is a branch that closes down."”

Carlos Menem (1930) Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999

"Ramal que para, ramal que cierra."
Ramal que cierra, pueblo que muere http://edant.clarin.com/diario/1997/05/25/i-01602e.htm.

Jack McDevitt photo

“Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there’s a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don’t like it very much.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 33 (p. 296)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Eino Leino photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Stanislav Pozdniakov photo

“So, life is like, again, an icy ladder. So, when you climb up, you have to be really, really energetic or you won’t be able to climb up ‘cause you slip and fall down.”

Stanislav Pozdniakov (1973) Russian fencer

Pozdniakov – Climb the Icy Ladder http://www.fencing.net/news/world/pozdniakov-%11-climb-the-icy-ladder.html

Nicholas Sparks photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Thom Yorke photo

“That there
That's not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Lyrics, Kid A (2000)

Bill Engvall photo
John Bunyan photo

“And so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.”

Apology for his Book
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I

Evelyn Underhill photo
David Cameron photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark.”

Preface to 2nd edition, Tr. F. Max Müller (1905)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Allen C. Guelzo photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Jon Stewart photo
Abbie Hoffman photo
Fred Thompson photo

“We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD. He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Des Moines Register http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071001/NEWS/71001030/1001/hawkeye_insider|, October 1, 2007

John McCain photo
Roger Waters photo