Quotes about somewhere
page 11

Learned Hand photo

“When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities" (1932); also in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 99 - 100.
Extra-judicial writings
Context: When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome; they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.

Robert Frost photo

“For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days.

Epictetus photo
Charles Schwab photo
Sacha Baron Cohen photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo

“As the imperialist countries attained a high degree of wealth and affluence— the result both of scientific and technical progress and of their plunder of the nations of Asia and Africa— these individuals lost all self-confidence and imagined that the only way to achieve technical progress was to abandon their own laws and beliefs. When the moon landings took place, for instance, they concluded that Muslims should jettison their laws! But what is the connection between going to the moon and the laws of Islam? Do they not see that countries having opposing laws and social systems compete with each other in technical and scientific progress and the conquest of space? Let them go all the way to Mars or beyond the Milky Way; they will still be deprived of true happiness, moral virtue, and spiritual advancement and be unable to solve their own social problems. For the solution of social problems and the relief of human misery require foundations in faith and morals; merely acquiring material power and wealth, conquering nature and space, have no effect in this regard. They must be supplemented by, and balanced with, the faith, the conviction, and the morality of Islam in order truly to serve humanity instead of endangering it. This conviction, this morality, these laws that are needed, we already possess. So as soon as someone goes somewhere or invents something, we should not hurry to abandon our religion and its laws, which regulate the life of man and provide for his well-being in this world and the hereafter.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Islam and Revolution, Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Translated and Annotated by Hamid Algar, Mizan Press, Berkley, pp 36.
Islam and civilization

William Godwin photo
George Adamski photo
Joseph Addison photo
Karl Pearson photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?”

“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.
The Time Machine (1955)
R Is for Rocket (1962)

Ken Clarke photo

“No one has officially told me that I have lost the Tory whip. The fault’s probably mine. I’m notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls: nobody knows my London number and I certainly don’t do anything online. So there may somewhere be an email or text message or something telling me, but I gather from the media that there’s no doubt that I’ve lost the whip. My status otherwise is completely unclear.”

Ken Clarke (1940) British Conservative politician

Said after Clarke voted against the government on the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill 2017-19. Boris Johnson had promised to remove the Conservative whip from those who rebelled. Quoted by the Guardian. Ken Clarke: ‘I’m not sure yet, but I may protest and vote Lib Dem’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/ken-clarke-interview-andrew-rawnsley-lost-tory-whip (7 September 2019)
2019

Koenraad Elst photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“I longed for activity, instead of an even flow of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to renounce self for the sake of my love. I was conscious of a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. I had bouts of depression, which I tried to hide, as something to be ashamed of…My mind, even my senses were occupied, but there was another feeling – the feeling of youth and a craving for activity – which found no scope in our quiet life…So time went by, the snow piled higher and higher round the house, and there we remained together, always and for ever alone and just the same in each other’s eyes; while somewhere far away amidst glitter and noise multitudes of people thrilled, suffered and rejoiced, without one thought of us and our existence which was ebbing away.”

Worst of all, I felt that every day that passed riveted another link to the chain of habit which was binding our life into a fixed shape, that our emotions, ceasing to be spontaneous, were being subordinated to the even, passionless flow of time… ‘It’s all very well … ‘ I thought, ‘it’s all very well to do good and lead upright lives, as he says, but we’ll have plenty of time for that later, and there are other things for which the time is now or never.’ I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of challenge; I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to guide us in feeling.
Family Happiness (1859)

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“We haven’t gotten a chance to tell those stories for Latina women. If you look at what’s in the landscape right now, it’s very stuck in its lane, and I love that we have no lanes. There’s no road. There’s nothing. We start off somewhere and it just detours, regarding the characters…”

Tanya Saracho Mexican-American actress, playwright and showrunner

On her television series Vida which stars a Latino cast in “‘Vida’ Creator Tanya Saracho on Exploring Underrepresented Perspectives with Her Starz Drama” https://collider.com/vida-interview-tanya-saracho/#starz in Collider Magazine (2018 May 5)

Ariel Dorfman photo

“More than a traveler, I’m a displacer. In other words, I’m a person who is constantly meditating on what it means not to arrive at a place, but to be on my way somewhere else.”

Ariel Dorfman (1942) Chilean writer

On further elaborating on his point of being displaced in “Ariel Dorfman: 'Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/09/ariel-dorfman-not-to-belong-anywhere-to-be-displaced-is-not-a-bad-thing-for-a-writer in The Guardian (2018 May 9)

Damon Runyon photo

“Some day, somewhere … a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son … do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an ear full of cider.”

Damon Runyon (1880–1946) writer

From the short story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, Collier's Weekly, January 28, 1933. Used with slightly different wording in the musical Guys and Dolls -- both the 1950 stage and the 1955 film versions.

Immanuel Kant photo

“A spurious axiom of the first class is: Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

William Quan Judge photo
Elon Musk photo
Vasyl Slipak photo
Herman Melville photo
Marcus Orelias photo
Yrjö Kallinen photo

“Becoming aware, awakening, enlightenment, is possible right here and now, for everyone. From moment to moment, and yet only here and now, never sometimes, somewhere. Reality, God, is present here and now. The kingdom of heaven, blessedness, moksha, nirvana waits here and now. Outwardly nothing may happen, and yet a purely inner process can open up a new world, a new life, a new reality. - New?”

Yrjö Kallinen (1886–1976) Finnish politician

Yes, really new, and yet as all those who have ever experienced it assert, at that moment we know that we have always been at home in that world, although we only now become aware of it.
Attributed without citation at Nonduality Salon Highlights, #1891 http://www.nonduality.com/hl1891.htm, 15 August 2004

“That Somerset Maugham anthology Cakes and Ale. How destructive he is, venomous, pulling everything down in biting, corrosive cynicism. Yet somewhere deep down under all the conceit, sarcasm and snobbery is real quivering pain, helpless bewilderment at the inexplicable fact that human nature is chequered.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

And what perplexes him is less the common, mean element in decent people than the goodness and kindness of wicked, vicious ones.
Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

James Frey photo
Don DeLillo photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
John Chancellor photo

“I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.”

John Chancellor (1927–1996) American journalist

At the 1964 Republican National Convention, arrested for refusing to cede his spot on the floor to "Goldwater Girls," supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. When security came to get him, he was forced to sign off.

Ronnie James Dio photo
Bhanu Choudhrie photo

“Do not view failure as the be all and end all. It does not define you. Instead, take what you have learned and apply it somewhere new.”

"Bhanu Choudhrie - Founder of C&C Alpha Group" https://ideamensch.com/bhanu-choudhrie/, IdeaMensch (May 2019)

Enoch Powell photo
Francis Bacon photo
John Ashbery photo

“Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

A Wave (1984)
Source: "At North Farm" ( Electronic Poetry Center: At North Farm https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/ashbery/north.html)

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Look, working nine, ten years old at the farm, I was not harmed at all. When a nine-year-old, ten-year-old goes to work somewhere, it's full of people there. Now, when I'm smoking a crack pipe, nobody says anything. [...] But I want to say that I, my older brother, a sister of mine, a little younger, at that age, eight, nine, ten, twelve years, worked on the farm.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In a live social media broadcast on 4 July 2019, defending child labor. Bolsonaro Defends Child Labor https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/07/bolsonaro-defends-child-labor.shtml. Folha de S.Paulo (5 July 2019).
2019

Leigh Brackett photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Jenny Han photo

“I don’t outline anything in advance. That can be really scary. I liken it to walking blindfolded. I’m trying to head towards somewhere, but I have no idea how to get there. I don’t write in order, either. I’m taking things as they come, following my fancy.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

As quoted in "Why Jenny Han Thinks We Should Judge To All The Boys I Loved Before By Its Cover" in Refinery 29 (9 August 2018) https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/08/206826/jenny-han-to-all-the-boys-i-loved-before-author-interview

Liu Wen (model) photo

“My parents are very supportive of me, I’m their only child, of course, so I always have to call them before I leave and when I arrive somewhere. Sometimes I still don’t think they really understand what I’m doing! I think they’re just happy that I’m happy and I love my job.”

Liu Wen (model) (1988) Chinese model

Source: "Liu Wen Talks Style, Diversity And What It Means To Be China’s First Supermodel" in Marie Claire https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/fashion-news/liu-wen-interview-china-s-first-supermodel-talks-style-diversity-and-her-mango-campaign-15375 (3 March 2016)

Charles Fillmore photo
Ben Aaronovitch photo

“Sometimes when someone tells you not to go somewhere, it’s better not to go there.”

Source: Rivers of London (2011; American edition title: Midnight Riot), Chapter 9, “The Judas Goat” (p. 189)

Edgar Guest photo
Gilbert O'Sullivan photo

“Clair, the moment I met you
I swear, I felt as if something somewhere
had happened to me
which I couldn't see
And then, the moment I met you again,
I knew in my heart that we were friends,
it had to be so
it couldn't be no
But try as hard as I might do, I don't know why
you get to me in a way I can't describe.
Words mean so little when you look up and smile.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Clair" (song)
(+ Live performance in Japan, 1993. On YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpdBX-u1dv8
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Clair" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmeZaAry830 (song on YouTube.))

Om Swami photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God.”

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

Source: The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Ch. IV, p. 62

“There are those who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living.”

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

Source: The True Game, The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), Chapter 2 (p. 31)

Teal Swan photo