Quotes about pair

A collection of quotes on the topic of pair, likeness, other, time.

Quotes about pair

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Religion is like a pair of shoes….. Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.”

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

Religion, Shoe

“I really think guys only need two pairs of shoes. A nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Shoe, Guy, Thinking

“How do you get all those coins?" asked Mort.
IN PAIRS.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

“Can you row?" the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting-needles as she spoke.
"Yes, a little--but not on land--and not with needles--" Alice was beginning to say.”

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

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

“Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

Sex, Animals

“I was obviously floating in the atmosphere; companioned not only by the strange child and the radiant pair, but by a constantly increasing throng of half-luminous, vine-crowned youths and maidens with wind-blown hair and joyful countenance. We slowly ascended together, as if borne on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth but from the golden nebulae, and the child whispered in my ear that I must look always upward to the pathways of light, and never backward to the sphere I had just left.”

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

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Youth, Light

“To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

As quoted in Williams' Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics (2001), p. 498
Attributed from posthumous publications

Shoe

“If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Marxism Today (January 1988)

Shoe, Failure

“There was once a millionaire who bought an infinite number of pairs of shoes and, whenever he bought a pair of shoes, he also bought a pair of socks. We can make a selection choosing one out of each pair of shoes, because we can choose always the right shoe or always the left shoe. Thus, so far as the shoes are concerned, selections exist. But, as regards the socks, where there is no distinction of right and left, we cannot use this rule of selection.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), pp. 93-93

Shoe

“Finally I came upon a pair of rooms missing entire walls, into which a little forest of underbrush and stunted trees had grown. I stood in the sudden breeze wondering what could possibly have done that kind of damage and began to get the feeling that something terrible had happened here. I couldn't square my grandfather's idyllic stories with this nightmare house, nor the idea that he'd found refuge here with the sense of disaster that pervaded it. There was more left to explore, but suddenly it seemed like a waste of time; it was impossible that anyone could still be living here, even the most misanthropic recluse. I left the house feeling like I was further than ever from the truth.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 3, Page 81

Truth, Feeling, Idea, Sense

“A mother-complex is not got rid of by blindly reducing the mother to human proportions. Besides that we run the risk of dissolving the experience "Mother" into atoms, thus destroying something supremely valuable and throwing away the golden key which a good fairy laid in our cradle. That is why mankind has always instinctively added the pre-existent divine pair to the personal parents-the "god"father and "god"-mother of the newborn child-so that, from sheer unconsciousness or shortsighted rationalism, he should never forget himself so far as to invest his own parents with divinity.”

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

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

God, Parent, Personality, Forgetting

“Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.”

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

Beauty Knows No Pain.
You Are What You Is (1981)

Beauty, Shoe

“And if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, I say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the Arno which fell from the Gonfolina near to Monte Lupo, where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. And a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards Castel Florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid Arno flowed into that sea. And from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at Colle Gonzoli, laid open by the Arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. And if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between Gibraltar and Ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. And if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers — as we see them now in our time.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XVI Physical Geography

Mountain, Nature, Water, Time

“[…]his back is fairly turned?
The pair of goodly palaces are burned,
The gardens ravaged, and your Guelf is drunk
A week with joy; the next, his laughter sunk
In sobs of blood, for he found, some strange way,
Old Salinguerra back again; I say
Old Salinguerra in the town once more
Uprooting, overturning, flame before
Blood fetlock-high beneath him; Azzo fled;
Who scaped the carnage followed; then the dead
Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne.
He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone.
Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce;
Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce.”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the First
Sordello (1840)

Way, Laughter, Joy, Dead

“And I'm a big tipper I don't need to be tripping?
This my first Rolex it don't even be ticking
This my first pair of earrings I can wear in the shower,
Without them clouding up in half an hour.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

My Baby, produced by Kanye West
Lyrics, Damita Jo (2004)

“Man develops his way of anticipating events by construing, by scratching out his channels of thought. Thus he builds his own maze. His runways are the constructs he forms, each a two-way street, each essentially a pair of alternatives between which he can choose.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

George A. Kelly, "Man's construction of his alternatives." Assessment of human motives (1958): 33-64.

Way

“I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be.
A little gambling is fun when you're with me (I love it).
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun.
And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun, fun.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Poker Face, written by Lady Gaga and RedOne
Song lyrics, The Fame (2008)

Love, Baby

“The woman offers the man fruit. Maybe that's how our female ancestors enticed males to join them in caring for offspring. 'I'll offer you food, and in response we're going to make a team. That's the deal.' And that's the human deal. That's why we're more or less monogamous and why we more or less pair-bond, and why something approximating marriage is a human universal. You can find exceptions, but who cares? Look at the vast pattern. The price we pay for having very large brains is that we're very dependent, and it takes a long time for us to get programmed, and because of that we need relatively stable family bonding, and that's basically what we've evolved. You don't get that without making males self conscious. Why not impregnate and run. It's not 'why do men abandon their children?' that's the mystery. It's 'why do any men ever stick with them?”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Just look at the animal kingdom. The simple and easiest thing is always the most likely thing to occur. It's the exception - the long term commitment - that needs explanation."
Concepts

Men, Marriage, Children, Family

“Look a'here, some people say we got a lot of malice
Some say it's a lotta nerve
I say we won't quit moving
Til we get what we deserve.
We've been 'buked and we've been scourned
We've been treated bad, talked about
As just as sure as you're born
But just as sure as it take
Two eyes to make a pair, huh
Brother, we can't quit until we get our share.Say it loud,
I'm black and I'm proud.”

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

Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud, written with Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis (1968)
Song lyrics

People

“All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair —
The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing —
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Source: Work Without Hope (1825), l. 1

Smile, Dreams, Spring, Nature

“Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

"James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years" The Independent (January 16, 2006)

People, Fools

“Hidden in hollows and behind clumps of rank brambles were large tents, dimly lighted with candles, but looking comfortable. The kind of comfort they supplied was indicated by pairs of men entering and reappearing, bearing litters; by low moans from within and by long rows of dead with covered faces outside. These tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full; they were continually ejecting the dead, yet were never empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall to-morrow.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), V

Men, Business, Light, Dead

“We ought to be able to see more clearly just for what reason the mass-man is so easily turned into a fanatic. What I seem to myself to have grasped is this, that such permeability is due to the fact that man, that the individual, in order to belong to the mass, to be a mass-man, has had, as a preliminary, though without having had the least awareness of it, to divest himself of that substantial reality which was linked to his initial individuality or rather to the fact of his belonging to a small actual group. The incredibly sinister role of the press, the cinema, the radio, has consisted in passing that original reality through a pair of flattening rollers to substitute for it a superimposed pattern of ideas and images with no real roots in the deep being of the subject of this experiment.”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), pp. 140-141

Idea, Reality

“Sensitivity is the principle of all action. A being, albeit animated, who would feel nothing, would never act, for what would its motive for acting be? God himself is sensitive since he acts. All men are therefore sensitive, and perhaps to the same degree, but not in the same manner. There is a purely passive physical and organic sensitivity which seems to have as its end only the preservation of our bodies and of our species through the direction of pleasure and pain. There is another sensitivity that I call active and moral which is nothing other than the faculty of attaching our affections to beings who are foreign to us. This type, about which study of nerve pairs teaches nothing, seems to offer a fairly clear analogy for souls to the magnetic faculty of bodies. Its strength is in proportion to the relationships we feel between ourselves and other beings, and depending on the nature of these relationships it sometimes acts positively by attraction, sometimes negatively by repulsion, like the poles of a magnet. The positive or attracting action is the simple work of nature, which seeks to extend and reinforce the feeling of our being; the negative or repelling action, which compresses and diminishes the being of another, is a combination produced by reflection. From the former arise all the loving and gentle passions, and from the latter all the hateful and cruel passions.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Love, Men, God, Pain

“I have heard that in consequence of this 'sectional warfare', as Douglas calls it, Senator Mason of Va., had appeared in a suit of homespun. Now up in New Hampshire, the woolen and cotton mills are all busy, and there is no strike. They are busy making the very goods Senator Mason has quit buying! To carry out his idea, he ought to go barefoot! If that's the plan, they should begin at the foundation, and adopt the well-known 'Georgia costume' of a shirt-collar and pair of spurs!”

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

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Idea, Business, Appearance

“Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), Ch. 2
Context: Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.

Life

“Malays abhor the state of celibacy. To remain unmarried was and is considered shameful. Everyone must be married at some time or other. The result is that whether a person is fit or unfit for marriage, he or she still marries and reproduces. An idiot or a simpleton is often married off to an old widower, ostensibly to take care of him in his old age. If this is not possible, backward relatives are paired off in marriage. These people survive, reproduce and propagate their species. The cumulative effect of this can be left to the imagination.”

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

[Barr, Michael D., Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1999, 29 2, 147, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5058/d1bc358fe18944e8aaa399e422f74d0fed75.pdf]
1980s

Time, Imagination, Marriage, Personality

“Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Shoe

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

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Idea, Business, Appearance

“How do you accidentally kill a lord in his own manor?'

with a knife to the chest… well a pair of knives actually, one can never be too careful”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Variant: How do you 'accidentally' kill a noble man in his own mansion?"
"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest...
Source: The Final Empire

“I grabbed a pair of glowing red legs.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Okay you guys, pair up in threes!”

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

What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, , p. 123.
Yogiisms
Variant: Pair up in threes.

Guy

“Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”

Robert Harris (1957) novelist

Source: Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome

“I swear if that's a pair of demon horns digging into my belly and stabbing me right now, Ash, I'm going to beat you after it's born."

'Cause face it, horns on the head didn't come from my side of the family or genetic code.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Retribution

Family

“What a pair they were - a Mistborn who felt guilty wasting coins to jump and a nobleman who thought balls were too expensive.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

“Our stares connected and we were quiet for a long minute, united by our misery. At least he understood me and I understood him.
"A fine pair we make,” he said.
"Yeah.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: La Milla Verde

“…"We were the pair. One too afraid to feel anything lest she lose control of her ironclad hold on her emotions, and the other so hungry to feel anything that she´d risk her free will for one night of fun."…”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Every Which Way But Dead

Feeling, Night

“A library should be like a pair of open arms.”

Roger Rosenblatt (1940) American writer

“I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Fashion

“Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

Love, World, Shoe

“The pair of them were staring at the computer screen like two dogs watching animal planet: very focused, but incapable of turning up the volume or changing the channel.
-Manny and Butch”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Dogs, Change, Animals

“One more sign of how perfect Damen is—he keeps a pair of trunks in his car.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Cars, Perfection

“when you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

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

Shoe

“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Love, Money, Dogs

“Parabatai" said Jace. "It means a pair of warriors who fight together - who are closer than brothers. Alec is more than justmy best friend.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Fight

“Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Wolf

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Music, Knowledge, Singing

“They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

“He was proud of his "hometown" goddess, even if he hadn't found his one true pairing (OTP) yet.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

“In addition, Master Twinkle seems convinced that someone is denying him a pair of stripey trousers.”

Diana Wynne Jones House of Many Ways

Source: House of Many Ways

“"We work through this together, remember? No shutting me out. No epic sulks."
"I was figuring I could sulk for Idris in the next Olympics."
"You and Alec could go for pair sulking. You'd get the gold."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Clary Fray and Jace Herondale, pg. 118
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

“I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I could slip inside as one might a pair of favourite shoes.”

Ian McEwan book Sweet Tooth

Source: Sweet Tooth

Shoe, Way

“I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Death

“You managed to get him a duster, but you couldn't find me a pair of jeans?”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“I remember the feeling. Whenever my father got so absorbed in a book that we might have been in visible I felt like taking a pair of scissors and cutting it up.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Books, Feeling

“Note: 'family' does NOT only mean a biological unit composed of people who share genetic markers or legal bonds, headed by a heterosexual-mated pair. Family is much, much more than that.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

People, Family

“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

“That might be nice, an extra pair of arms," Jace said. "Handy in a fight."
"Not if they're growing out of your…" Dorothea paused and smiled, not without malice. "Neck.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Smile, Fight

“Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“In an earlier life, were you a pair of brakes?"
"Try a brick wall.”

Jessica Bird book Crave

Source: Crave

Life

“I think it's kinda nice.' And I did. my mom isn't famous for her pies. No, she's famous for defusing a nuclear device in Brussels with only a pair of cuticle scissors and a ponytail holder. Somehow, at the moment, pies seemed cooler.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Moms, Thinking

“It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.”

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) Tibetan Buddhist lama and writer

Shoe

“Christopher heard a pair of women gossiping nearby, whispering in disapproving undertones.

"… Ramsey was found flirting in a corner with a woman. They had to drag him away from her."

"Who was it?"

"His own wife."

"Oh, dear.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

Women

“only adj.

thats the dilemma isn't it? when you're single, there's the sadness and joy of only me. And when you're paired, there's the sadness and joy of only you.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Sadness, Joy

“What was the self-sacrifice?"
I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes."
Why was that self-sacrifice?"
Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly.
I think we have different value systems."
Well mine's better.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Love, Shoe, Thinking

“I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Pleasure

“We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Books, Reading

“There are women in my closet, hanging on the hangers. a different woman for each suit, each dress, each pair of shoes. I hoard clothes. My makeup spills from the bathroom drawers, and there are different women for different lipsticks.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Women, Shoe, Clothes

“It'll be your damnation, boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your way to hell.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Way, Boy, Hell

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U. S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Color, Feeling, Boy

“Basque and Celt. Criminals and barbarians. I didn't think there could be a more primitive pairing of genes.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Thinking

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

Sea

“Suddenly a pair of searchlights lanced out from the frigate. They swept across the dark expanse - bright knives slicing the night into pieces.”

Scott Westerfeld book Leviathan

Source: Leviathan

Night

“Rose and Dimitri moved almost as one entity, like a matched pair of wolfes or lions, both wary and deadly as they studied their surroundings, taking no detail or person for granted.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Adrian's Lost Chapter

Study, Wolf, Personality

“Horror jolts me when I look at one of you and see a pair of beautiful eyes that make me think your mind might contain a world that could hold me as the bolts shake loose and fly from my frame.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

World, Beauty, Thinking, Flying

“On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

People, Game

“When she didn't say anything more, he frowned, thinking this was the pair of them in a nutshell: Standing three feet away from each other and being separated by miles.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Thinking

“It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“I believe every woman should own at least one pair of red shoes.”

Terry Tempest Williams book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Source: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Shoe

“When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Love, Lovers

“Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.”

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

Money, People, Sex

“And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants.

Pants = Love”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, Color

“This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

Love

“Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks.”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Love

“Women need food, water, and compliments
That's right.
And an occasional pair of shoes.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Women, Food, Shoe, Water

“The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Way

“Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big dark eyeglasses!”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Love, World, Girl

“(Bartender Harry) How can you tell the male bird from the female bird? (Sylvia) He's the one with the furrowed brow; she's the happy-go-lucky one…. He's the one reading the sports page; she's the one with 12 pairs of tiny shoes. (Harry) I don't have time for this.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 9

Shoe, Bird, Sport, Time

“The Internet is the modern form of knitting. In the old days women who had nothing to do would knit, but at least you got something out of it — a pair of socks, maybe a scarf, occasionally a little bedspread. That’s mostly what the Internet is, just passing the time. But unfortunately you are dealing with words that can have meaning.”

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) American author and journalist

American Spectator interview (2005)

Women, Time

“The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. "There it is, the kintir," one of the women said. Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, it's almost finished."”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

When the sewing was finished, he cut the thread off with his teeth.
Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 2: Under the Talal Tree

Life, Women, Pain, Grandma

“My daughter wanted a new pair of trainers. I told her "You're eleven, make your own!"”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, July 2002

Daughters

“Owning a portfolio of value stocks is the equivalent of wearing a Nehru jacket over a pair of bell bottom trousers.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 1, No Guts, No Glory, p. 37.

“Arus saw a tall powerfully built youth, naked but for a loin-cloth, and sandals strapped high about his ankles. His skin was burned brown as by the suns of the wastelands and Arus glanced nervously at his broad shoulders, massive chest and heavy arms, A single look at the moody, broad-browed features told the watchman the man was no Nemedian. From under a mop of unruly black hair smoldered a pair of dangerous blue eyes. A long sword hung in a leather scabbard at his girdle.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The God in the Bowl" (1952)

Youth, Sun, Clothes

“There was the noise of a bolt shot back, and the door opened a few inches, enough to show a long snout and a pair of sleepy blinking eyes.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 4, "Mr. Badger"

“I suppose that American League pitchers have been feeding me soft ones for 21 years. I know how they all feel, and I don't blame 'em. They'd rather strike out the Babe than anyone else. For I've been a little lucky in the home run racket. They've walked me more than 2000 times and I've never squawked. You see, I used to be a pitcher myself. Those 2000 walks and those 700 or so home runs saved my legs. Anyhow, I've had pretty good legs. They talk about Ty Cobb's legs. He had about the best pair I ever knew of in baseball. But Ty was carrying 180 pounds for 24 years, and I've had to carry from 230 to 250 pounds. I've had to carry 50 to 70 pounds more than Cobb ever had to carry. I never talked to a horse, but I'd like to ask Equipoise or Twenty Grand or Cavalcade or some of the others just how much difference 50 or 70 pounds would make in a race. And I'm not supposed to be a horse or a tank.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to NL pitchers' stated intention—as relayed by Rice—to "bear down on" Ruth in 1935; as quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice..."

Feeling, Home, Time, Horse

“I want to work. It is an obsession. I am gnawed at the heart by an excruciating desire to manipulate color... I see figures, with an incredible intensity, pass before my eyes. Let us analyze this – if it is possible to toss it. Why do you no longer work? Why work again? Faith has left me – the habit of putting myself into the background, has done the rest. Am I a true artist? Yes, yes, yes. Am I a woman? Alas. Yes, yes, yes. Are the two [very probably Jawlensky & Marinanne] able to work as a pair? No, no, no. Who will take up the desires -?... The work of my life, this talent [Jawlensky] that I protect with all my interest, with all my affection, it must be alone in the dwelling. Reason says, calm yourself. But the great passion in me, and my call to work, destroys all the calm acquisitions of my life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Life, Faith, Color, Passion

““Eyes, what an eloquent pair he has! He is able to express with them even the slightest difference in the mood”
- L. S Rajagopalan (noted art critic), 1990”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya, L.S Rajagopalan, Mani Madhava Chakyar- A Titan of A Thespian, Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 17.

Art, Mood