Quotes about fork (90 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes, Hyperion, 2002, ISBN 0786867752, p. 1
Also in What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 33
Berra says this is part of driving directions to his house in Montclair, New Jersey. There is a fork in the road, and whichever way you take, you will get to his house.
Found in newspapers from as early as 1913. The earliest known published evidence connecting the saying with Berra is from 1988. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/25/fork-road/
Disputed, Misattributed

Funny

“Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?”

Stanisław Jerzy Lec book Unkempt Thoughts

Czy jeżeli ludożerca je widelcem i nożem to postęp?
This inspired the title for Cannibals with Forks : The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1998) by John Elkington
Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

“If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Imagination

“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“The moment Colin sat down, Hollis asked Hassan, "Would you like to say grace?"
"Sure thing." Hassan cleared his throat. "Bismallah." Then he picked up his fork.
"That's it?" Hollis wondered.
"That's it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry."”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Hollis Wells and Hassan Harbish, p. 62
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

People

“It is a great deal easier to set a story afloat than to stop it. If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on." Nevertheless, it does not injure us; for if light as feather it travels as fast, its effect is just about as tremendous as the effect of down, when it is blown against the walls of a castle; it produces no damage whatever, on account of its lightness and littleness. Fear not, Christian. Let slander fly, let envy send forth its forked tongue, let it hiss at you, your bow shall abide in strength. Oh! shielded warrior, remain quiet, fear no ill; but, like the eagle in its lofty eyrie, look thou down upon the fowlers in the plain, turn thy bold eye upon them and say, "Shoot ye may, but your shots will not reach half-way to the pinnacle where I stand. Waste your powder upon me if ye will; I am beyond your reach."”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Then clap your wings, mount to heaven, and there laugh them to scorn, for ye have made your refuge God, and shall find a most secure abode.
"No. 17: Joseph Attacked by the Archers (Genesis 49:23–24, delivered on Sunday 1855-04-01)" pp.130
Sermons delivered in Exeter Hall, Strand, during the enlargement of New Park Street Chapel, Southmark (1855)

God , Truth , Lie , World

“My assistant showed me a video called Forks and Knives (sic) or something, about (cutting out) meat and dairy products, so I thought, 'I'll give this a shot!' … I feel OK actually, I feel better about myself, you know? I go on binges… That's the reason why I decided to cut out meat out and dairy because I've limited what I can have because when you're on the road and you're travelling, you grab buns and… burgers are everywhere… so now I've just narrowed the margin. … I'm not saying I'm gonna do it forever; I might go back - when my wife learns to cook, so that'll be never!”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

On his new vegan diet in order to get healthier, in an interview on his wife Sharon's US daytime talkshow The Talk (25 October 2011), as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne Trying Out Vegan Diet", in Contactmusic.com (25 October 2011) http://www.contactmusic.com/ozzy-osbourne/news/ozzy-osbourne-trying-out-vegan-diet_1252586

Travel , Feeling , Learning , Cooking

“At the core, eating other creatures doesn't appeal to me. … Finally after seeing Forks Over Knives, I decided it was time to cut out all dairy and eggs as well. Being a decade long vegetarian at the time, the transition was much easier. … I also hope to use my platform to educate and transform people's perceptions on plant based diets, what plant based athletes look like, and can achieve, and to just encourage everyone, no matter what your lifestyle is, to be more mindful of the choices we have when it comes to diet and the impact those choices have on ourselves, our culture, and the environment. … I just encourage everyone, especially parents and kids, to really get educated on the corporate food system currently in place. It's causing an epidemic of sick people. Take the power back, and put the nourishment of your body, mind, and soul back into your own hands. Every little step you make to eliminate animal products in your meals is a one step closer to the big leap we all could benefit from taking.”

Austin Aries (1978) professional wrestler

" Austin Aries, vegan wrestler http://www.greatveganathletes.com/austin-aries-vegan-wrestler" by Cris Iles-Wright. Interview for greatveganathletes.com, 2014.

People , Education , Food , Hope

“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

God , Wedding , Girl , Star

“High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

School

“Tori joined us for dinner --in body, at least. She spent the meal practicing for a role in the next zombie movie, expressionless, methodically moving fork to mouth, sometimes even with food on it.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Food

“The shorter the chain between raw food and fork, the fresher it is and the more transparent the system is.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Food

“Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

Courageous , Courage , Personality

“Delly lost her temper at Peeta over how he treated you. She got very squeaky. It was like someone stabbing a mouse with a fork repeatedly.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“Forks are absurd, he scoffed. They insult your food. They make it think you're killing it twice.”

Clare B. Dunkle book The Hollow Kingdom

Source: The Hollow Kingdom

Food , Thinking

“Fate isn’t one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Fate

“He'd felt like a jack-o-lantern for the past few days, as if his guts had been yanked out with a fork and dumped in a heap while a grinning smile stayed plastered on his face.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Smile , Past

“I was going to put what birthday it was on the sign," he said, "but Jace said that after twenty, you're just old, so it doesn't matter anyway."
Jace stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth.
"I said that?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Birthday

“It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

World

“Hey, Effie, watch this!" says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean whit his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, "We miss you, Effie!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Kiss

“I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Baby

“So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Star , Waiting

“You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Life , Time

“Will set his fork down and began cheerfully, in the manner of Edward Lear's”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“I reached over and squeezed Curran’s hand. “Come on, you, me, a platter of barely seared meat, it will be great. If we see the navigators, we can make fun of the way they hold their forks.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Gifts

Way

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Men , Night

“At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

People , Hope

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”

Emily Post (1872–1960) American etiquette expert

Feeling

“There are moments in every girl’s life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, that was one of those life-changing,
fork-in-the-road moments and I didn’t even see it coming. I had no idea.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Life , Girl , Idea , Change

“You bought me some forks. And knives. And spoons. Because you love me!”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love

“Early artists considered the human body, that forked radish, that defenseless starfish, a poor vehicle for the expression of energy, compared to the muscle-rippling bull and the streamlined antelope. Once more it was the Greeks, by their idealization of man, who turned the human body into an incarnation of energy, to us the most satisfying of all, for although it can never attain the uninhibited physical flow of the animal, its movements concern us more closely. Through art we can relive them in our own bodies, and achieve thereby that enhanced vitality which all thinkers on art, from Goethe to Berenson, have recognized as one of the chief sources of aesthetic pleasure.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. V: Energy

Pleasure , Art , Animals

“Thus when Plotinus speaks of "the flight of the alone to the Alone," and the positivist or the empiricist asserts that these words are meaningless, he is right. Yet this does not import that the words are nonsense locutions, mere senseless noises which a man makes like a cough or a sneeze though it is possible that this is what the positivist intends. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain why generations of men have quoted those famous words. The explanation is that the words evoke in us a measure of the same experience which the author of them had. Our experience may be but a dim reflection of what was in him bright and clear. Our spirits vibrate faintly in unison with the soul of the great mystic, as a tuning fork vibrates faintly in response to the sound of the clear bell. But it is our own spontaneous experience which is evoked; it is not his experience which is communicated to us. His words are as grappling irons let down into the depths of our subconsciousness, which draw our own inner experiences nearer to the conscious threshold. But they are not, for most of us, drawn above the threshold. They remain below the surface faintly visible. Therefore they appear at the upper levels of our consciousness as faint hints, glimpses, and sometimes as mere vague feelings.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 91-92.

Men , Feeling , Quotes , Soul

“A lot of people don't have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut something”

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

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Talking New York

People , Food

“Of all the works of man I like best
Those which have been used.
The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges
The knives and forks whose wooden handles
Have been worn away by many hands: such forms
Seemed to me the noblest.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Of all the works of man" [Von allen Werken] (c. 1932) in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 192
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

“We saw that amazing documentary 'Forks Over Knives' and that cleared everything up for us. Every Sunday we're going to the farmers market now, getting our fresh fruits and veggies. It's just two weeks, but we feel much better. I love animals. I don't want to eat them.”

Carrie Ann Inaba (1968) American entertainer

After she and her fiancé, Jesse Sloan, became vegetarians, in "Carrie Ann Inaba goes vegetarian, George Takei shops for a hybrid", in MNN.com (16 November 2011) http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/carrie-ann-inaba-goes-vegetarian-george-takei-shops-for-a-hybrid

Love , Feeling , Animals

“Vegetarianism is not only the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food. It's a necessary prerequisite to reforming it. To quit eating meat is to dismantle the global food apparatus at its foundation. … Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Vegetarianism Is a Major Step for Environmental Change", in The Washington Post (16 November 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502210.html.

Food , Change

“I’ve also been on a pretty strict plant-based diet for 4 months now – feeling stronger, fitter, healthier and more productive. I ride longer distances on my bike, can do more pull-ups than ever, and my brain seems to have a larger capacity for new projects, problem solving, songwriting, and fielding random questions. My health and strength make me a better performer and all that combined gives me more confidence to go out in the world and shine my light. It also makes me a lot better in bed. … For those curious or concerned about a plant-based diet, check out the film Forks Over Knives. It’s a life changer. You can get all the protein you need from greens, quinoa, and hemp seed.”

Jason Mraz (1977) American singer-songwriter

" Plant-Based", in JasonMraz.com (19 January 2012) http://jasonmraz.com/journal/2012/plant-based/, quoted in " Jason Mraz Is 'Stronger' and 'Better in Bed' on Vegan Diet", in Ecorazzi (21 January 2012) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2012/01/21/jason-mraz-is-stronger-and-better-in-bed-on-vegan-diet/

Life , Health , World , Feeling

“For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

The Shipping News (1993)

“In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Departure , Past , Housing

“Nolan Ryan is simply a flame-thrower. They call him The Express. Get it? Ryan's Express. Harmon Killebrew says if he ever gets hit by Ryan's express, he'll have the pitcher arrested for manslaughter. Oakland slugger Reggie Jackson says Ryan is the only pitcher he's afraid of, down-deep-in-the-guts afraid of. "If a pitch ever gets away from him, he will kill someone." Nolan Ryan pitches for the California Angels, in Anaheim, which you also wouldn't confuse with New York. Thus, few people really know what an exciting young man this is, perhaps the most exciting single performer in baseball today. Yes, I've heard of Hank Aaron. For years I beat the drums, by myself, for Roberto Clemente. I like the cool gall of Vida Blue, the hot moxie of Pete Rose. They all excite me. But not down deep in the guts, the way this kid does. He excites me. He frightens me. He puts me on that double-pronged fork of attraction and revulsion. When you watch Nolan Ryan rear and throw that screaming blur of white toward the plate, you don't know whether to watch or cover your eyes. Will he strike out the hitter, or will he strike him dead?”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Nolan Ryan: The Untouchable," in Baseball Stars of 1973 (March 1973), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 92
Sports-related

People , Angels , Way , Dead

“I was the baby of a large family, and as a youngster fresh to an infant school my mother tried to break me of lefthandedness. I always held my knife in the left hand and fork in the right. One day at dinner my mother said, ' You're not a boy; you must be girl to eat your food like that. We shall have to call you Peggy.' My elder brothers, always glad to take it out of me, carried that name to school, where the other boys seized upon it, and it has stuck to me through a life-time, though it is years since anybody was curious enough to ask how I got it.”

Arthur Frederick Bettinson (1862–1926) Manager and promoter of the National Sporting Club

Life , School , Family , Food

“If the fork is not removed when the spider has arrived it seems to have the same charm as any fly: for the spider seizes it, embraces it, and runs about on the legs of the fork as often as it is made to sound, never seeming to learn by experience that other things may buzz besides its natural food.”

C. V. Boys (1855–1944) British physicist

[Boys, C. V., 16 December 1880, The influence of a tuning-fork on the garden spider, Nature, 23, 149–150, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012106640;view=1up;seq=177]

Food , Nature , Learning , Flying

“At first they set up forked stakes connected by twigs and covered these walls with mud. Others made walls of lumps of dried mud, covering them with reeds and leaves to keep out the rain and the heat. Finding that such roofs could not stand the rain during the storms of winter, they built them with peaks daubed with mud, the roofs sloping and projecting so as to carry off the rain water.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 3

Water , Winter

“For Queen Diana did my body change
Into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell,
And through the island nightly do I range,
Or in the green sea mate with monsters strange,
When in the middle of the moonlit night
The sleepy mariner I do affright.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Change , Sea , Night

“Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“A more structured connection with the mass is needed, and we must improve it in the course of the coming years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper strata of the government are concerned, we are currently utilizing the almost intuitive method of sounding out general reactions to the great problems we confront.
In this Fidel is a master. His own special way of fusing himself with the people can be appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

People , Way , Problem , Victory

“The drug hit him like an express train, a white-hot column of light mounting his spine from the region of his prostate, illuminating the sutures of his skull with x-rays of short-circuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol. His bones, beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed and polished, the joints lubricated with a film of silicone. Sandstorms raged across the scoured floor of his skull, generating waves of high thin static that broke behind his eyes, spheres of purest crystal, expanding…The anger was expanding, relentless, exponential, riding out behind the betaphenethylamine rush like a carrier wave, a seismic fluid, rich and corrosive.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Light , Rage , Perfection , Training

“There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are. … These occasions are rare, but they happen — despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths…”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Fear and Loathing in Elko" Rolling Stone (23 January 1992)
1990s

Fate , Boy , Drink , Support

“I'd make people say 'use Fork;' if I thought I could get away with it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199806232054.NAA01735@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

People

“Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Time , Future

“It was given to me by the late Shannon Hoon, who fashioned it out of a fork he got in Denny's (a US fast food chain) on the first tour Blind Melon ever did, which was opening for us. I really liked it, but I stopped wearing it after he died. Because the other thing I wore was this ring that belonged to Andy Wood, who died. It's like, 'I don't wanna wear these f**king things from people who died.' A girl outside the hotel tonight had a similar fork, and I've had people throw them on-stage. I've seen hundreds of those forks, but it always reminds me of Shannon. They're making them cos they're thinking of me, but really it's him. Which is cool.”

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

When asked about the fork necklace that he wore for several years **
Soundgarden Era

People , Food , Girl , Fashion

“With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flowerbed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
She will ever yet return.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

Nature

“We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door.”

Marvin Minsky book Society of Mind

The Society of Mind (1987)

Personality

“He was the nicest, and the only talented person I saw in all Berlin, except perhaps old Fuerstenberg … and Kurt Singer. And he was a Jew; and so was Fuerstenberg. And my dear Melchior is a Jew too. Yet if I lived there, I felt I might turn anti-Semite. For the poor Prussian is too slow and heavy on his legs for the other kind of Jews, the ones who are not imps but serving devils, with small horns, pitch forks, and oily tails. It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains. I vote rather for the plump hausfraus and thick fingered Wandering Birds. But I am not sure that I wouldn’t even rather be mixed up with Lloyd George than with the German political Jews.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Notes after a meeting with Albert Einstein in 1926, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 10, p. 383

Money , Bird , Personality

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

God , Pain , Way , Feeling

“As a boy of six I could understand the proof of a mathematical theorem more readily than that meat had to be cut with one's knife, not one's fork.”

Ferdinand Eisenstein (1823–1852) German mathematician

Curriculum Vitae - an autobiographical statement written when Eisenstein was 20, often referred to as his "Autobiography" (1843)

Boy , Mathematics , Understanding

“Those responding to Geller's phenomenon by "bending forks" themselves, were following the same pattern. their ego "roof-brain" had nothing to do with it (and they also hadn't yet learned fully enough that the act was impossible).”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926–2016) American writer

Source: Exploring the Crack In the Cosmic Egg (1974), p. 38

Learning

“To be a joyful vegan in the world today is to become involved in the most radical, positive, political revolution ever. A fork can be a weapon of mass destruction or an instrument of peace. Everything a vegan eats or consumes reflects a choice that takes into account the well-being of others rather than just ourselves—and that is a big difference. Each one of us can make a huge difference by choosing not to eat animals. By choosing kindness over cruelty, we contribute to the sustainability of our planet Earth and can even change the destiny of our species and all the species on Earth.”

Sharon Gannon (1951) American yoga teacher

Simple Recipes for Joy (2014)

World , Peace , Change , Animals

“I like colorized diffs, but let's face it, those particular color choices will make most people decide to pick out their eyes with a fondue fork.

And that's not good. Digging in your eye-sockets with a fondue fork is strictly considered to be bad for your health, and seven out of nine optometrists are dead set against the practice.

So in order to avoid a lot of blind git users, please apply this patch.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to Git mailing list, 2006-06-22, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://lwn.net/Articles/190241/,
2000s, 2006

People , Health , Color , Dead

“Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go away. Not only did I feel better physically, but I felt better knowing that there was one answer to many of the different ills afflicting both ourselves and our environment. Everything revolved around the fork.”

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

Source: Mad Cowboy (1998), Ch. 4: From the Farm to the Capital, p. 81

Health , Feeling , Problem , Affliction

“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

Jim Elliot (1927–1956) Martyred Christian missionary to Ecuador

Journal excerpt from Shadow of the Almighty (1989) by Elisabeth Elliot, Jim Elliot, Summer 1948

Men , Way , Decision , Christ

“Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.”

Roy Campbell (poet) (1901–1957) South African poet

"To a Pet Cobra," lines 23-24
Sons of the Mistral (1926)

“We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Quoted in "Why Oscar Niemeyer is king of curves," Tom Dyckhoff, The Times Online (London, 2007-12-12).

Hate , Time , Housing

“Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Los Angeles California (27 October 1956), as quoted in The New America (1971), edited by Seymour E. Harris, John B. Martin, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., p. 249

“We continue to live in ignorance concerning the harm we inflict on animals; very few of us have ever visited an industrial breeding site or a slaughterhouse. We maintain a kind of moral schizophrenia that has us lavishing pampering our pets and at the same time planting our forks in the pigs that have been sent to the slaughter by the millions, even though they are in no way less conscious, less sensitive to pain, or less intelligent than our cats and dogs.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Introduction, p. 4
A Plea for the Animals (2014)

Pain , Dogs , Way , Intelligence

“That same night I went into the chicken coop, took my hooked knife which I used to pit peaches with, and carved her initials on the back side of my left hand … JA. Jane Addison. My first true love. The original Miss It. I was in such a fog that I forgot to cover it with a glove or something. At supper, right in front of my mother, my brother Bob said in a loud voice, “What’s that on your hand?” I pretended not to hear. I quickly switched my fork to my right hand and put my left hand under the table. “Hey, mom. Oscar cut himself,” the bastard said. “What?””

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

she cried out. She couldn’t stand violence unless it was part of some beating to teach me respect.
Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 89.

Love , Moms , Parting , Night

“The greater part of the time I spent, when I talked at all, talking to men. I liked to take luncheon in some pub or other, sitting on a high stool at the snack-counter, barons of beef, hams, salads and dishes of pickle spread before me, the server in his tall white cap carving with skill. Other male eaters would be wedged against me, champing over newspapers, and there were a peculiar animal content in being among warm silent men, raising glasses in smacking silent toasts to themselves, the automatic ‘ah’ after the draught, the forkful of red beef and mustard pickle. Sitting with my gin or whisky afterwards I would often manage to get into conversation with some lonely man or other – usually an exile like myself – and the talk would be about the world, air-routes and shipping-lines, drinking-places thousands of miles away. Then I felt happy, felt I had come home, because home to people like me is not a place but all places, all places except the one we happen to be in at the moment.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Men , People , World , Home

“Everything stopped: forks half raised, a bowl being passed. It seemed that the man was bathed in red, great swaths of it across his shirt and hands. And then Thomas realized: he was covered in blood.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 1-10, p. 43

“The Vammika Sutta likens skeptical doubt to a fork in the road. Say a traveler who is carrying many valuables arrives at a fork in the road; if he lingers there unable to decide which way to take, robbers may catch and possibly kill him. In the same way, a doubtful meditator who falls prey to wavering and procrastination cannot continue on with practice. He or she will then become a victim of mental defilements and be unable to escape the cycle of suffering. Only when he or she abandons doubt by noting it and uninterruptedly continues the practice can he or she be liberated from the cycle of suffering.”

Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982) Burmese Buddhist philosopher

Source: Manual of Insight (1945), p. 64

Way , Travel , Suffering

“The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves'. Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what's really going on, like the colors of competing gangs.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Why Aren't We There Yet?"

Color , Democracy , Understanding , Fight

“It was at this point — the necessity of striking down monopoly — that came the parting of their ways. Here the road forked. They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, — follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism.”

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

¶ 10
State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

Way , Parting

“Our journey had advanced;
Our feet were almost come
To that odd fork in Being's road,
Eternity by term.

Our pace took sudden awe,
Our feet reluctant led.
Before were cities, but between,
The forest of the dead.

Retreat was out of hope,—
Behind, a sealed route,
Eternity's white flag before,
And God at every gate.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 213
Collected Poems (1993)

Dead , God , Hope

“Camilla cooked breakfast for us, and we ate from plates on our laps. The fare was fried corn meal and bacon and eggs. Sammy ate with the peculiar robustness of unhealthy people. After the meal, Camilla gathered the tin plates and washed them. Then she had her own breakfast, seated in a far corner, quiet except for the sound of her fork against the tin plate.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

People , Cooking

“They made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Soul , Light , Despair

“Liberals are always frightened by diversity of opinion. They think a fair way to decide passionately contested issues is for the federal government to issue uncompromising edicts giving liberals everything they want, and then to suppress all criticism of the edicts. The fascistic order, completely supplanting all democratic processes, is then known as a victory for "choice." As the Grand Inquisitor said in The Brothers Karamazov: "They have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy."
That's what the Supreme Court did in Roe vs. Wade, and has repeatedly done in periodic codicils to its original edict. Just this past term, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, the court expanded the apocryphal abortion right to an all-new right to stick a fork in the head of a half-born baby. The first lunacy keeps being rewritten to give abortion enthusiasts everything they could possibly want.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2000

Men , Way , Thinking , Freedom

“I'd have to think about that a lot more and probably study a little bit more. But the easy first answer is the United States. The idea that you have a nation started with what you could term a fork. So a fork from the United Kingdom in terms of the American revolution, definitely went through some bumpy parts along the way but sort of ended up as one of the freest places in the world. Especially in regards to speech and property ownership rights and the democratic system. It isn't perfect, but is one of the best things out there. One of the things that I love is the equality of opportunity where its a meritocracy. It's not as important who you are, but it's more what you do. You can have a huge amount of opportunity and the ability to succeed regardless of what you've done before or been involved in.”

Matt Mullenweg (1984) American entrepreneur

On Steppin' off the Edge http://steppinofftheedge.com/podcast/philosophy-of-open-source/, Podcast Interview, January 2011 when asked a question, related to Web Services as Government http://ma.tt/2010/06/web-services-as-governments/ article, about what he would define as his nation state / empire from history if he had to pick one for WordPress or Automattic.

Love , World , Way , Idea

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“You send me to Washington to represent you in the senate. But you do not send me there because you are interested in grave questions of national or international policy. When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me any questions about such policies; instead you ask me: “What about my pension?” or “What about that job for my son?” I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962) United States Senator from Arizona

Reported in Thomas C. Donnelly, Rocky Mountain Politics (1940), p. 283; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Attributed

Boy , Question

“When my daughter wakes up on her first morning in God's City of Zion, the sun will rise over Sierra Benida and shine upon the saints: the sun of the All-Wisdom; the sun of the Beehive, the Sego-lily, and Seagull... My son will understand that Egill Skallagrímsson and the Norse kings live here in Spanish Fork, but that they now have the gleam of righteousness in their eyes and have become leaders in the Stake, Seventies, and High Priests.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Wisdom , God , Daughters , Sun

“Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper way to eat potato chips?
Gentle Reader: With a knife and fork. A fruit knife and an oyster fork, to be specific. Good heavens, what is the world coming to? Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

World , Way , Feeling , Sense

“I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Future

“At one time, Washington actually meant something. But now, it's about as relevant as Bob Dylan's tuning fork.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

"Washington, D.C."
Ranting Again

Time

“I was digging with a fork out of the kitchen drawer, sewing tictacs, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. After a bit I got bored and just started burying cheap spoons to baffle the archaeologists of the future. [On gardening]”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Dandelion Mind (2010)

Hell , Future

“This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Variant translation: This web of time — the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries — embrace every possibility.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Context: The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.

Time

“A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Oliver Evans (16 January 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) Vol. 13, p. 66
1810s
Context: A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have.

“Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual”

G. K. Chesterton book The Ball and the Cross

The Ball and the Cross, part IV: "A Discussion at Dawn", 2nd paragraph
Context: It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

Life , Marriage , Business , Dead

“Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djam karet.”

Harlan Ellison book Eidolons

We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.
"Eidolons" (1988)

Heart

“What few songs I wrote during my brief career, there ain’t a genre that somebody didn’t record them in. I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.”

Bill Withers (1938–2020) American singer-songwriter and musician

Rollingstone interview (2015)

Bad luck , Thinking , People , Guy

“The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 46, p. 358