Quotes about fall
page 2

“I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted
most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Love

“Never surrender, it's all about the faith you got: don't ever stop, just push it 'till you hit the top and if you drop, at least you know you gave your all to be true to you, that way you can never fall”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Faith, Way

“The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: The Tale of Genji

World, Autumn, Heart, Night

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

World, Hell, Night, Heartbreaking

“It's a very brave thing to fall in love. You have to be willing to trust somebody else with your whole being, and that's very difficult, really difficult and very brave.”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

Love

“Endymion, you are my first love, my only love… even if we're reborn, in another life, we'll find each other… and then… We'll fall in love again… - Princess Serenity”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, Life, Princess

“Falling in love is kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”

Spike Jonze (1969) American director and actor

Source: her

Love

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Source: Jazz

Love, Thinking

“If the mind falls asleep, awaken it. Then if it starts wandering, make it quiet. If you reach the state where there is neither sleep nor movement of mind, stay still in that, the natural (real) state.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Source: The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi

Nature, Sleep

“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Complete Poems

Knowledge, Heart

“Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

“Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

“Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew.”

Christopher Logue (1926–2011) Poet, screenwriter, actor

Originally written for a poster advertising an Apollinaire exhibition at the ICA in 1961 or 1962, and there titled "Apollinaire Said". The poem is therefore often misattributed to Guillaume Apollinaire. (Source: Quote…Unquote Newsletter, July 1995, p. 2).
Source: "Come to the Edge", from New Numbers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969) pp. 65-66.

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Source: The Faerie Queene

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 4
On the Road (1957)

Star, Night

“Dusk falls. There is nothing gentle
about the sky.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

“A good friend will help you up when you fall. A best friend will laugh and try to trip you again.
- I'm not sure”

Tamora Pierce The Immortals

Source: The Immortals

Help

“Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows — maybe even tomorrow.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love, Home, Appearance

“[This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Sermon on The Gospel for the Festival of the Epiphany, 1522.
Luther's Works, American Ed., Hans J. Hillerbrand, Helmut T. Lehmann eds., Philadelphia, Concordia Publishing House/Fortress Press, 1974, ISBN 0800603524 (Sermons II), vol. 52:198

God, People

“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto XII, lines 95–96 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Flying

“Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”

John Betjeman Slough

"Slough" line 1, from Continual Dew (1937).
Poetry

Death, Grass

“Today I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

1970s, Speech to UN General Assembly (1974)

Freedom

“When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love”

C.G. Jung book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

a special instance of love at first sight
Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30

Love, Drawing

“How great a joy I feel in my heart. That a day so pleasant, so dear and glorious begins, a day that I greet with the wish. That long years may pass in happiness. In health and vigour, peacefully, successfully. May the gift of heaven fall richly upon you”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in his letter to his father, dated December 6th 1817[citation needed]

Happiness, Health, Feeling, Heart

“Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

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

Remarks Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002).
2000-03

People, World, Way, History

“I think Terrell will catch hell at the sound of the bell.
He's going around saying that he's a championship-fighter,
but when he meets me he fall 20 pound lighter.
He thinks that he's the real heavy weight champ
but when he meets me, he'll just be a tramp
Now I'm not sayin' just to be funny, but I'm fightin' Ernie because he needs the money.”

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

About Ernie Terrell before their February 1967 boxing match, - ( YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVZYo2MYmfg Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=6ClZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=I+think+Terrell+will+catch+hell+at+the+sound+of+the+bell&source=bl&ots=2atsVuDXae&sig=ACfU3U0qSka952BOrSsGqAg13ji8vvdxPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK1sa854jvAhWY_J4KHe0xAf0Q6AEwEnoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=I%20think%20Terrell%20will%20catch%20hell%20at%20the%20sound%20of%20the%20bell&f=false Ali: The Official Portrait of "The Greatest" of All Time

Money, Hell, Thinking

“We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.”

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

Address at Oyster Bay, New York (27 July 1904) http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/104.txt, in response to the committee appointed to notify him of his nomination for the Presidency. 1900s

Past, Future

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, Life, Feeling, Mountain

“I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

38e–39a
Plato, Apology

Death, War, Law, Way

“Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

“The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Alhazen, quoted in “Muslim Journeys.” Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Also in Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003) http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html

Truth, Faith, Question, Nature

“I compare my situation to a person on board a ship. When there is a shipwreck the passenger then falls in the ocean and has no choice but to keep swimming. What happened in our society was that the laws overturned every right that women had. I had no choice. I could not get tired, I could not lose hope. I cannot afford to do that.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 2006 interview with Ebadi by Harry Kreisler (translator, Banafsheh Keynoush) about her newly released book, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope. From May 10 2006 interview with Ebadi at Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Ebadi/ebadi-con3.html (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Women, Law, Hope, Personality

“If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over agaain.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Source: Fiction, Zendegi (2010), Ch. 1

Time

“And now in America itself after 30 years of experimenting with the Great Society programmes, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neigbourhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew, Interview with Nathan Gardels of Global Viewpoint, Sept 26 1995 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/017-1995-09-26.pdf 1990s

Children, People, Family, Feeling

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Life, Death, Men, Fate

“As a writer, my goal, (which I'm never going to achieve, and I know that, and no writer can achieve that,) but my goal is to make you almost live the books… I want you to fall through that page and feel as if these things are happening to you.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Audio Interview http://www.geekson.com/archives/archiveepisodes/2006/episode080406.htm with Geekson http://www.geekson.com in Episode 54, (4 August 2006)

Books, Feeling

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

“Look when the clouds are blowing
And all the winds are free:
In fury of their going
They fall upon the sea.
But though the blast is frantic,
And though the tempest raves,
The deep immense Atlantic
Is still beneath the waves.”

Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901) English poet and essayist

Wind, Moon and Tides.

Sea

“By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give — that by means of beauty beautiful things become beautiful.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Phaedo
Plato, Phaedo

Beauty, Thinking, Appearance

“Tell me, why do you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else; get's me frustrated. Life's like this: You fall and you crawl and you break and you take what you get and you turn it into. Honestly, you promised me I'm never going to find you faking. No, no! No!”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"Complicated"
Let Go (2002)

Life, Way

“We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 392)

Hunger, War, People, Stupidity

“O Eternal God, now may it please you
to burn in love
so that we become the limbs
fashioned in the love you felt
when you begot your Son
at the first dawn
before all creation.
And consider this need which falls upon us,
take it from us for the sake of your Son,
and lead us to the joy of your salvation.”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) Medieval saint, prophetise, mystic and Doctor of Church

"O eterne deus"

Love, God, Fashion, Joy

“Happiness does not fall out of the blue and dreams will not come true by themselves. We need to be down-to-earth and work hard. We should uphold the idea that working hard is the most honorable, noblest, greatest and most beautiful virtue.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

As quoted in "Xi Jinping meets model workers" http://english.cntv.cn/20130501/102444.shtml in cctv.com English (1 May 2013). 2010s

Happiness, Beauty, Dreams, Idea

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history — greater than the fall of empires — I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

World, Feeling, History, Thinking

“Swords flashed like lightning amid the blackness of clouds, and fountains of blood flowed like the fall of setting stars. The friends of God defeated their obstinate opponents, and quickly put them to a complete rout. Noon had not arrived when the Musulmans had wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of Allah, killing 15,000 of them, spreading them like a carpet over the ground, and making them food for beasts and birds of prey… The enemy of God, Jaipal, and his children and grandchildren,… were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan, like as evildoers, on whose faces the fumes of infidelity are evident, who are covered with the vapours of misfortune, will be bound and carried to Hell. Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on the neck. The necklace was taken off the neck of Jaipal, - composed of large pearls and shining gems and rubies set in gold, of which the value was two hundred thousand dinars; and twice that value was obtained from necks of those of his relatives who were taken prisoners, or slain, and had become the food of the mouths of hyenas and vultures. Allah also bestowed upon his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and all calculation, including five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women. The Sultan returned with his followers to his camp, having plundered immensely, by Allah's aid, having obtained the victory, and thankful to Allah… This splendid and celebrated action took place on Thursday, the 8th of Muharram, 392 H., 27th November, 1001 AD.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the defeat of Jaipal. Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 27 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Women, Men, God, Children

“I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was an inquisitive person. I had to see all that for myself. I’m such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it's like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered.”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

in the German army during world War 1. (1914-1918) Quote from Otto Dix, 1891-1969, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate Gallery, 1992, pp. 17–18; cf. pp. 27–28; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 9

Life, War, World, Personality

“Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!"”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, War

“Jnana marga is like Ramphal. Bhakthi marga is like Sitaphal (custart apple), easy to deal with and very sweet. The pulp of Ramphal is inside and difficult to get at. Ramphal should ripen on the tree and plucked ripe, If it falls down it is spoilt. So if a Jnani falls, he is ruined. Even for a Jnani there is the danger of a fall, i. e., by a little negligence or carelessness.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Sources

Tree

“The glory of life is not never falling. The true glory consists in rising each time we fall.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Life, Time

“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

Letter from Jamaica (Summer 1815)
Context: A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

Dependency

“How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

"Blackstar"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)
Context: Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)

People, Lie, Angels, Time

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Disputed Source: Udall, U.S. Rep. Morris K., Khrushchev Could Have Said It, 2016-04-06, originally published in The New Republic, 1962 http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/udall/khrushch_htm.html,

Communication, Fight

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Context: A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

Truth, Strong, Personality

“Every time a boy falls off a tricycle, every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there's a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler, 'Get Capone!' I'm sick of it. As soon as I possibly can, I'll clear out of here.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Boy, Cats, Time

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Love, Life, Pain, People

“Cause sometimes you feel tired, feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Till I Collapse"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Bad luck, Feeling, Search, Motivation

“Aboard the enigmatic horizon,
all is visible and all elusive,
all are staying and all disappear,
but more deep than human mind,
beyond the fall of stars,
there are hidden tears
that overflow like waves,
living in the core of life
hidden treasures of sensibility.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: An ocean of souls

“Before death, the leaves display magnificent beauty, and then fall to the earth to serve a greater purpose.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1980

Death, Beauty

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Life, Men, World, Food

“Patriots are few and far between when tyranny is strong. As the tyrant falls, patriots abound. But their patriotism is suspect. Accept no revolutionary leader who has not paid his dues with longevity, determination, sacrifice, defiance, dedication to unvarnished truth and love of his people.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

Love, People, Truth, Strong

“Allow the fruit to fall and rot, in order to receive more.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005)

Love, Pain, People

“And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

Autumn, Tear, Tree, Cry

“The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Variant: It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.
Source: The Bell Jar

“I don't want to fall. All I want to do is stand on solid ground.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Study

“Every moment there are a million miracles happening around you: a flower blossoming, a bird tweeting, a bee humming, a raindrop falling, a snowflake wafting along the clear evening air. There is magic everywhere. If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life, Flowers, Bird, Learning

“Seeing the world with all the unspoiled simplicity of a young child, you are free from concepts of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, and no longer fall prey to conflicting tendencies driven by desire or repulsion. Why trouble yourself about all the ups and downs of daily life, like a child who delights in building a sand castle but cries when it collapses? To get what they want and be rid of what they dislike, look how people throw themselves into torments, like moths plunging into the flame of a lamp! Would it not be better to put down your heavy burden of dreamlike obsessions once and for all?”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

Life, People, World, Beauty

“Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Trotzky's Diary in Exile — 1935 (1958)
Source: Diary in Exile, 1935

Life, Idea, Personality

“Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.”

Scott Westerfeld book So Yesterday

Source: So Yesterday

Dreams

“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world…”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

World, Beauty, Time

“Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again…”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Tattoo, Parting

“His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Personality

“Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman… Which is probably the same thing!”

Apostolos Doxiadis (1953) Greek writer

Source: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Shaunee was digging in her purse like she'd misplaced a tube of one of MAC's seasonal lipsticks that you buy and fall in love with AND THEN THEY DISCONTINUE IT BECAUSE THEY REALLY HATE US AND WANT US TO BE CRAZY.”

P. C. Cast book Destined

Source: Destined

Love, Hate, Season

“To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"The Meeting in a Dream"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Love, God, Religion, Relationship

“He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Question, Personality

“We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.”

Louise Erdrich Tracks

Source: Tracks

“Falling hard for somebody makes you do things you never thought you'd do before. Like pulling off an A in History or finally facing the truth about yourself”

Steve Kluger book Almost Like Being in Love

Source: Almost Like Being in Love

Truth, History

“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Love

“What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that — we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we are completely alone.”

Dino Buzzati book The Tartar Steppe

Source: The Tartar Steppe

Smile, Thinking

“All live to die, and rise to fall.”

Christopher Marlowe Edoardo II

Edward II

“For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Love, Parting

“THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her… I'm falling asleep in order to hear her… Go on, sister, go on… My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore…”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

Dreams, Sister, Heart

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Angels

“When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Feeling, Light

“Stefan spat. "Oh, aye, he fell. O' course, Master Ralon helped him fall, several times. Poor li'l tyke didn't have a chance.”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Chance, Time, Help

“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Flowers

“We mustn't keep meeting like this. Communications between the people of the moon and earth is forbidden… it is the way of the gods… we mustn't fall in love… but its already too late……”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, God, People, Way

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Disease, Reading

“If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 82
Context: If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love. For in the Beholding of God we fall not, and in the beholding of self we stand not; and both these be sooth as to my sight. But the Beholding of our Lord God is the highest soothness. Then are we greatly bound to God that He willeth in this living to shew us this high soothness. And I understood that while we be in this life it is full speedful to us that we see both these at once. For the higher Beholding keepeth us in spiritual solace and true enjoying in God; that other that is the lower Beholding keepeth us in dread and maketh us ashamed of ourself. But our good Lord willeth ever that we hold us much more in the Beholding of the higher, and leave not the knowing of the lower, unto the time that we be brought up above, where we shall have our Lord Jesus unto our meed and be fulfilled of joy and bliss without end.

Love, Lovers