Quotes about whistle (128 quotes, page 2)

“Woman, a thing changeable in nature,
more than whistles in the wind and more than the tip
of a supple stalk of wheat.”

Torquato Tasso Aminta

Femina, cosa mobil per natura,
Più che fraschetta al vento, e più che cima
Di pieghevole spica.
Act I, scene ii. Compare: "Varium et mutabile semper femina", Virgil, Aeneid, 4.569.
Aminta (1573)

Nature

“…I wanna know about the commercial I saw on TV: An Irish guy walking through a field of green, whistling one of those Irish jigs, and a woman walks up and says, "Manly, yes, but I like it too." Then the guy pulls out a huge knife and cuts off his first two fingers and somehow catches them in what's left of his left hand and hands them to the woman. Did I mention they're both dressed in green? They they both sing this song together: "Are ya icky? Are ya sticky? Are ya hot as anything? Hey! Cut off two of your fingers, and stab yourself in the eye!"”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Then he stabs himself in the eye and hands her the knife, and she stabs herself in the eye, okay? Okay? So what about that?
"The Commercial"
Lyrics, King Missile (1994)

Guy , Singing

“Whistle, and she'll come to you.”

John Fletcher Wit Without Money

Act IV, scene 4.
Wit Without Money (c. 1614; published 1639)

“When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Source: The Great War for Civilization (2005), Chapter 8: Drinking the Poisoned Chalice (page 333)

Hate , War , Truth , Understanding

“The boy who dreamed his escape on a train whistle floating east, ended up in a gated New Jersey suburb redrawing the map of the world. The world was his last invention. Odd that this self-made man who spent so much time with his long nose to the grindstone would evolve into the global seer, scholar of the world, statesman, not least a politician who wrote his own books. In a late interview, Frank Gannon asked Nixon if he believed he had lived a “good life.” Nixon replied, “I don’t get into that kind of crap.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

But what did he truly think in the end? His fall was as precipitous as any in American history.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life , Books , World , Dreams

“If his Majesty is resolved to have my head, he may make a whistle of my arse if he pleases.”

Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) British politician and political theorist

On being told that part of his sentence had been remitted — that he would merely be executed, but his estate would remain intact, quoted in Joe Miller's Jests (1739) http://books.google.com/books?id=_CbolkOxjEEC&pg=PA6&vq=algernoon+sidney, p. 6.

“He writes the kind of music you whistle on the way into the theater.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

On Sigmund Romberg, as quoted in Dancing in the Dark (1974) by Howard Dietz, p. 61

Music , Way

“Music has a natural place in our lives. Right from the shloka you recite in your morning puja and the milkman who comes whistling on his cycle, to the fakir singing as he begs for alms and your mother humming around the kitchen…Music fills our spaces naturally. It will always be dear to us.”

Gulzar

Gulzar, in an interview http://www.upperstall.com/people/gulzar

Music , Nature , Singing

“Some love to roam o’er the dark sea’s foam,
Where the shrill winds whistle free.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Some Love to Roam".
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)

Love , Sea

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"An interview with James Baldwin" (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 21

Peace , Nature

“A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.”

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944) Dutch computer scientist

Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2 http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/.
The "Linux is Obsolete" Debate

People

“Numbin' the runt of reputation they call rat frame,
Top-E as a tourniquet,
A low tune whistles across his grave,
Forever the slave of his Six Strings.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), The Six Strings That Drew Blood

“Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Children , Fear , School , Training

“I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanza 44.
Beppo (1818)

Love , Kiss

“Surprising news from New York, the whistle-blower had his whistle blown!”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

citation needed
Weekend Update samples

“As clear as a whistle.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

Epistle to Lloyd I' as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods. But, as we climb the Alps and, emerging from the morass and forest, set once more the sun and the broad landscape, we may fairly shout and sing, although we are still toiling on, and are yet far below the pure peaks towards which we go. In our Revolution, a man who saw distinctly, as we can now see, that the triumph of Great Britain would have imperiled constitutional liberty everywhere, surely had a right to rejoice over the victory of Saratoga, though it was not the end of the war. The battle did not end the war, indeed. The Tories sneered and bade the Yankees wait. They did wait. They waited from Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga to Comwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Yankee pluck, as usual, waited until it won, as in later days it waited from Bull Run to Richmond. The battle of Saratoga was a skirmish compared with our later battles, but it was a fatal blow to Tory supremacy upon this continent. It was a gleam of sunshine in which it was right to shout and sing, for it was another great gain in the 'Good Fight of Man'.

“The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

"Clowns' Houses"
Clowns' Houses (1918)
Context: p>The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parakeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and whiteAs powder on a mummy's face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
— Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.</p

Bird , Time

“Without destiny to guide him, he was lost in a vast, whistling darkness. Any direction he might choose was purely abitary; it would make no more sense, offer no more hope, than would sitting still.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(XII.7) Del Rey, p. 426
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)
Context: He had no idea what he should do now. Without destiny to guide him, he was lost in a vast, whistling darkness. Any direction he might choose was purely abitary; it would make no more sense, offer no more hope, than would sitting still. Which offered neither sense nor hope at all.

Hope , Sense

“When I finally cooled down to what I thought was pretty good shape, I slipped on a little muumuu, ran down the stairs of the Warwick, barefoot to the lobby. My eye caught a mailman's jacket and a sack of mail hanging across the back of a chair in the hall way entrance, and before I knew what I was doing, I whipped on the jacket, flipped the bag over my shoulder, and flew out the door, whistling a happy tune. Suddenly I thought: "My God! This is a federal offense. Fooling around with the mail." So I turned around and rushed back and BAM! the manager was waiting for me. He ordered me into the back office. They telephoned an ambulance from Bellevue and packed me into it.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

On her near-death experience and final days in New York
Edie : American Girl (1982)
Context: "The Siege of the Warwick Hotel." I was left alone with a substantial supply of speed. I started having strange, convulsive behavior. I was shooting up every half-hour... thinking that with each fresh shot I'd knock this nonsense out of my system. I'd entertain myself hanging on to the bathroom sink with my hind feet stopped up against the door, trying to hold myself steady enough so I wouldn't crack my stupid skull open. I entertained myself by making a tape... a really fabulous tape in which I made up five different personalities. I realized that I had to get barbiturates in order to stop the convulsions, which lasted either hours. Something was spinning in my head.... I just kept thinking that if I could pop enough speed I'd knock the daylights out of my system and none of this nonsense would go on. None of this flailing around and moaning, sweating like a pig, and whew! It was a heavy scene. When I finally cooled down to what I thought was pretty good shape, I slipped on a little muumuu, ran down the stairs of the Warwick, barefoot to the lobby. My eye caught a mailman's jacket and a sack of mail hanging across the back of a chair in the hall way entrance, and before I knew what I was doing, I whipped on the jacket, flipped the bag over my shoulder, and flew out the door, whistling a happy tune. Suddenly I thought: "My God! This is a federal offense. Fooling around with the mail." So I turned around and rushed back and BAM! the manager was waiting for me. He ordered me into the back office. They telephoned an ambulance from Bellevue and packed me into it. Five policemen. I was back into convulsions again, which was really a drag, and I tried to tell the doctors and the nurses and the student interns that I'd run out of barbiturates and overshot speed.... I could speak sanely, but all my motor nerves were going crazy wild. It looked like I was out of my mind. If you had seen me, you wouldn't have bothered to listen, and none of them did. Oh, God, it was a nightmare. Finally six big spade attendants came and held me down on a stretcher. They terrified me... their force against mine. I got twice as bad. I just flipped. I told them if they'd just let go of me, I would calm down and stop kicking and fighting. But they wouldn't listen and they started to tell each other what stages of hallucinations I was in... how I imagined myself an animal. All these things totally unreal to my mind and just guessed on their part. Oh, it was insane. Then they plunged a great needle into my butt and BAM! out I went for two whole days. When I woke up, wow! Rats all over the floor, wailing and screaming. We ate potatoes with spoons. The doctors at Bellevue finally contacted my private physician, and after five days he came and got me out. They sent me back to Gracie Square, a private mental hospital that cost a thousand dollars a week. I was there for five months. Then I ran away with a patient and we went to an apartment in the Seventies somewhere which belonged to another patient in the hospital, who gave us the keys. The guy I ran away with was twenty, but he'd been a junkie since the age of nine, so he was pretty emotionally retarded and something of a drag. I didn't have any pills, so, kind of ravaging around, I went to see a gynecologist and a pretty well-off one. He asked me if I would like to shoot up some acid with him. I hadn't much experience with acid, but I wasn't afraid. He closed his office at five, and we took off in his Aston Martin and drove up the coast... no, what's the name of that river? The Hudson. We stopped at a motel and he gave me three ampules of liquid Sandoz acid, intravenously, mainlining, and he gave himself the same amount and he completely flipped, I was hallucinating and trying to tell him what I was seeing. I'd say, "I see rich, embroidered curtains, and I see people moving in the background. It's the Middle Ages and I am a princess, " and I told him he was some sort of royalty. We made love from eight in the evening until seven in the morning with ecstatic climax after climax, just going insane with it, until he realized it was seven and he had to get back to his office to open it at eight-thirty. He gave me a shot to calm me down, and because I couldn't come down, I took about fourteen Placidyls. On the way back something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, but I said out loud, "I wish I was dead"... the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience I'd just gone through were really so alien. I didn't even know the man... it had been a one-night jag... he was married and had children... and I just felt lost. It hardly seemed worth living any more because once again I was alone. He dropped me off at the apartment where I was staying with the runaway patient. I had a little Bloody Mary when I got there, and dropped a few more Placidyls. With my tolerance, nothing should have happened, but I suddenly went into a coma. My eyes rolled back in my head. It was lucky... I had called an aide, Jimmy, at the hospital - he had been a good friend - I had called him anonymously and asked him to come and visit us. He happened to turn up just as I went into the coma. He and the heroin addict tried to wake me up. They slapped me and pumped my chest and they put me in a bathtub full of really cold water. Jimmy began to call hospitals - not psychiatric but medical - and one of them actually told them to let me sleep it off. But Jimmy just flipped. He knew I was dying, and he was right. He called Lenox Hill Hospital, and the police finally came. Jimmy and the heroin addict were taken into custody, and I was rushed to the hospital. I was actually declared dead. My mother was called... and then BAM! I started breathing again. I was pretty shaken up by what happened because I didn't understand how I could have almost gone out on just fifteen Placidyls when I used to live on thirty-five three-grain Tunials a day, plus alcohol. They released Jimmy and the junkie, but of course I was still in the trap. I thought I was fine and that I could leave. But a psychiatrist came to interview me and I was put in the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital - committed on the grounds of unintentional, unconscious suicide. It was a pretty devastating experience. They put me on eight hundred milligrams of Thorazine four times a day plus six hundred milligrams at bedtime - an ugly-tasting liquid, but it took quick effect and you couldn't hide the pills or spit them out later. I had all kinds of bad reactions from it - I'd get bad tremors and all itchy and wormy. I said I wasn't going to take the stuff any more, no matter what, so they finally took me off it one day. I had a seizure, vomited all over the floor, and I couldn't get tremendous dosages of Thorazine, but they accused me of importing drugs and taking them there in the hospital. My doctor was young... a resident... and I just told him, "You think I've taken drugs. There's no point in even reasoning with you. I'll just go to some other hospital." I expected to go to some plush, tolerable hospital, but I was not accepted in any private hospital with the record they gave me. They committed me to Manhattan State on Ward's Island, in the middle of the East River, next to the prison. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever been through. Really terrifying. I lived in a big dormitory on a ward with about sixty to eighty women. We did all the mopping, cleaning, making beds, scrubbing toilets. And the people there were just so awful. Really pathetic. Some of them were mean. The staff completely ignored you except to administer medication. I thought it was never going to end. In Manhattan State, even in there, there were pushers. One girl who lived in a smaller dormitory - there were two with about ten beds in them - was pushing speed and heroin. And because I'd been warned that if ever you were caught using drugs in a state hospital you'd be criminally punished, I didn't touch any drugs during the three months I was there.

God , Fools , Way , Waiting

“They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.”

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

Impromptu speech at a dinner for visiting East German dignitaries, Moscow (September 17, 1955), as reported by The New York Times (September 18, 1955), p. 19.

Peace , Smile , Learning , Waiting