Quotes about window
page 5

Matthew Hayden photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Nguyễn Du photo

“West Lake flower garden: a desert, now.
Alone, at the window, I read through old pages.
A smudge of rouge, a scent of perfume, but
I still weep.
Is there a Fate for books?
Why mourn for a half-burned poem?
There is nothing, there is no one to question,
and yet this misery feels like my own.
Ah, in another three hundred years
will anyone weep, remembering my fate?”

Nguyễn Du (1765–1820) Vietnamese poet

"Reading Hsiao-ch'ing", in The Harpercollins World Reader: The Modern World, eds. Mary Ann Caws and Christopher Prendergast (HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), ISBN 978-0065013832, p. 1411
Hsiao-Ching was "a seventeenth-century poet who was forced to become a concubine to a man whose jealous primary wife burned almost all of her poems" — David Damrosch, "Global Scripts and the Formation of Literary Traditions", in Approaches to World Literature (2013), p. 98

Benjamin Jowett photo

“Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door.”

Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893) Theologian, classical scholar, and academic administrator

On the interpretation of Scripture http://www.bible-researcher.com/jowett1.html

RuPaul photo

“We had a very hostile period [towards drag] after 9/11, especially in America, that was very fear based. And right now, we are enjoying an open window, politically and culturally. But don’t be fooled – all of this is cyclical. I’ve seen the window open in my lifetime and I’ve seen it close.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Owen Myers in The subversive genius of RuPaul http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24914/1/the-subversive-genius-of-rupaul (2015)

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes", William Shakespeare, Richard III, act v. sc. 3.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Jeff Foxworthy photo
Charles Stross photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Federico García Lorca photo

“The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd broke the windows
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!”

Las heridas quemaban como soles
a las cinco de la tarde,
y el gentío rompía las ventanas
a las cinco de la tarde.
A las cinco de la tarde.
¡Ay qué terribles cinco de la tarde!
¡Eran las cinco en todos los relojes!
¡Eran las cinco en sombra de la tarde!
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Camille Pissarro photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Nikolai Gogol photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Richard Rumelt photo
Jane Roberts photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“A breeze, a forgotten summer, a smile, all can fit into a storefront window.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Things,” p. 87
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Game”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders photo

“On a certain day I packed my things and went to Oosterbeek [c. 1834-36]. I saw a man lying out of the window somewhere. Farmer! are there rooms for rent nearby? - Yes sir, even here. - I went in, saw a beautiful, suitable painting room; that satisfied me, I ask for nothing more. One hundred fifty guilders was the rent [per year]. I offered a hundred sixty when he also worked the garden and planted a lot of red cabbage, because I like to see that.”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Ik pakte mijn rommeltje en ging op een goeden dag naar [c. 1834-36]. Daar zag ik ergens een man uit het venster liggen. Boer! zijn hier in de buurt ook kamers te huur? - Jawel meneer, hier zelfs. - Ik ging naar binnen, zag een mooie, geschikte schilderkamer; dat was mij genoeg, ik vraag naar niets meer. Honderdvijftig gulden was de huur [per jaar]. Ik bood honderdzestig als hij dan ook den tuin bewerkte en vooral veel roode kool plantte, want die zie ik graag.
p. 78
1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900)

George Ade photo

“MORAL: When Wealth walks in at the Door, the Press Agent comes in through the Window.”

George Ade (1866–1944) American writer, newspaper columnist and playwright

The Through Train http://books.google.com/books?id=YVMhAAAAMAAJ&q=%22MORAL+When+Wealth+walks+in+at+the+Door+the+Press+Agent+comes+in+through+the+Window%22&pg=PA133#v=onepage, Knocking the Neighbors (1912)

Henry Adams photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“I had felt sick before and had been saved by Sekt. Now I was beginning to feel sick of the Sekt. I would, I knew, shortly have to vomit…. I started gently to move towards one of the open windows. The aims of the artistic policy enunciated by the National Chamber of Film might, said Goebbels, be expressed under seven headings. Oh Christ. First, the articulation of the sense of racial pride, which might, without reprehensible arrogance, be construed as a just sense of racial superiority. Just, I thought, moving towards the breath of the autumn dark, like the Jews, just like the. This signified, Goebbels went on, not narrow German chauvinism but a pride in being of the great original Aryan race, once master of the heartland and to be so again. The Aryan destiny was enshrined in the immemorial Aryan myths, preserved without doubt in their purest form in the ancient tongue of the heartland. Second. But at this point I had made the open window. With relief the Sekt that seethed within me bore itself mouthward on waves of reverse peristalsis. Below me a great flag with a swastika on flapped gently in the night breeze of autumn. It did not now lift my heart; it was not my heart that was lifting. I gave it, with gargoyling mouth, a litre or so of undigested Sekt. And then some strings of spittle. It was not, perhaps, as good as pissing on the flag, but, in retrospect, it takes on a mild quality of emblematic defiance…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

H. G. Wells photo
Enoch Powell photo

“She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. 'Racialist,' they chant.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

A quotation from a letter Powell said had been sent to him from Northumberland, referring to one of his constituents. (According to a BBC radio programme broadcast in January 2007, the person in question was Druscilla Cotterill. However, this is open to question as some of the personal characteristics of Mrs Cotterill were not identical to the description given by Powell; in contrast to the woman referred to by Powell, Mrs Cotterill was childless and did not have a telephone. Source: Document, Radio 4, 22 January 2007. A contemporary investigation by journalists from The Express and Star, a local newspaper, could find no trace of the woman, and the paper had itself received similar letters which it had traced back to the National Front. Source: " Enoch Powell was wrong http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9349376/Enoch-Powell-was-wrong.html", Ian Austin, The Telegraph, 22 June 2012.).
The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

John Banville photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

George Eliot photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
John Dos Passos photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“I was bruised and battered and I couldn't tell
What I felt.
I was unrecognizable to myself.
I saw my reflection in a window I didn't know
My own face.
Oh brother are you gonna leave me?
Wastin' away
On the streets of Philadelphia.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Streets of Philadelphia", from the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia (1994)
Song lyrics, Singles

Bel Kaufmanová photo
John Updike photo
Oscar Levant photo
Mitt Romney photo

“When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no — and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous….”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Fundraiser, Beverly Hills, , quoted in * 2012-09-24
Romney mocked for comment about jet windows
Xiaonan
Wang
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-jet-windows-20120924,0,3749461.story
2012-09-25
2012

Gary Johnson photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“But I have to tell you what I saw... I had entered a dark room [in the city Tunis], lit by a small, elongated horizontal window,.. The light cut sharply.... and drew itself on the stone floor... There behind the table was sitting the Jewish scribe with his arms forward, leaning on the parchment. He turned his lordly head in my direction... It was a beautiful head, delicate and translucent pale as alabaster, large and small wrinkles were lining along the small eyes and around the big curved hawk nose. A black cap covered the white skull and a low white-yellow beard lay in large tufts over the written parchment... two crutches lay slantingly on the floor beside him. How much I desired to get my sketchbook out.... but in front of the staring gaze of the scribe, I didn't find the courage to carry out my intention.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van de tekst van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Maar ik moet u vertellen wat ik zag.. Ik was een donkere ruimte binnengetreden, verlicht door een klein langwerpig horizontaal liggend raampje,.. .Scherp sneed het licht.. ..en tekende zich af op de stenen vloer.. .Daar zat achter de tafel de joodse wetschrijver met zijn armen voorover op het perkament geleund en draaide zijn vorstelijk hoofd naar mij toe;. ..Het was een prachtig hoofd, fijn en doorschijnend bleek als albast, rimpels, grote en kleine, liepen langs de kleine ogen en om de grote gekromde haviksneus. Een zwart kapje bedekte de witte schedel en een lage witgele baard lag in grote vlokken over het beschreven perkament.. ..twee krukken lagen naast hem schuin op de grond. Hoe gaarne had ik mijn schetsboek voor de dag gehaald,. ..maar voor de starende blik van de wetschrijver durfde ik mijn voornemen niet ten uitvoer te brengen.
Quote of Israëls from his text Spanje, een reisverhaal, publisher, Martinus Nijhoff, De Haag, 1899, p. unknown
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Alice A. Bailey photo
Arthur Travers Harris photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Channel 4 A plus 4 (15 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105764, referring to the Brighton bombing in which the IRA attempted to assassinate her.
Second term as Prime Minister

Greg Egan photo

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

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

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988)
Fiction

Wolfram von Eschenbach photo

“Day thrust its brightness through the window-pane.
They, locked together, strove to keep Day out
And could not, whence they grew aware of dread.
She, his beloved, casting her arms about
Her loved one, caught him close to her again.
Her eyes drenched both their cheeks. She said:
"One body and two hearts are we."”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Der tac mit kraft al durh diu venster dranc.
vil slôze sie besluzzen.
daz half niht: des wart in sorge kunt.
diu vriundîn den vriunt vast an sich twanc.
ir ougen diu beguzzen
ir beider wangel. sus sprach zim ir munt:
"zwei herze und einen lîp hân wir."
"Den Morgenblic bî Wahtærs Sange Erkôs", line 11; translation in Margaret F. Richey Essays on Mediæval German Poetry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) p. 99.

Epes Sargent photo

“The cold blast at the casement beats;
The window-panes are white;
The snow whirls through the empty streets;
It is a dreary night!”

Epes Sargent (1813–1880) American editor, poet and playwright

The Heart's Summer, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Conor Oberst photo
Jean-François Millet photo

“I remember being awakened one morning by voices in the room where I slept. There was a whizzing sound which made itself heard between the voices now and then. It was the sound of spinning-wheels, and the voices were those of women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room danced in a ray of sunshine which shone through the high narrow window that lighted the room..”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote, c. 1870; as cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 12
taken from Millet's youth-memories, he wrote down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sensier]
1870 - 1875

George Harrison photo

“Without going out of your door,
You can know all things on earth.
Without looking out of your window you could know the ways of heaven.
The farther one travels. the less one knows, the less one really knows.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Inner Light (song) (1968), On Transcendental Meditation and teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Lyrics

Sarah Palin photo

“Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2006-10-22
Where they stand
Anchorage Daily News
http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/510378.html
2008-10-23
2008-09-01
http://web.archive.org/web/20080901211016/http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/510378.html
Posed question: Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?
2006

Steve Ballmer photo
Ann Coulter photo
John Scalzi photo
Emily Brontë photo
John Dos Passos photo
Vitruvius photo

“Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view.”
Delphicus Apollo Socratem omnium sapientissimum Pythiae responsis est professus. Is autem memoratur prudenter doctissimeque dixisse, oportuisse hominum pectora fenestrata et aperta esse, uti non occultos haberent sensus sed patentes ad considerandum. Utinam vero rerum natura sententiam eius secuta explicata et apparentia ea constituisset!

Preface, Sec. 1
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book III

Paul Thurrott photo

“Apple's fans are more interested in spending money than they are with facts. … That the lackluster iPhone 4S can sell so well in a market dominated by more capable Android handsets (not to mention Windows Phones) only bolsters that notion.”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

Apple Sells 4 Million iPhone 4S Handsets at Launch http://windowsitpro.com/windows/apple-sells-4-million-iphone-4s-handsets-launch in Windows IT Pro (17 October 2011)

M. R. James photo

“There was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning…He looked as if he was wet all over: and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive.”

M. R. James (1862–1936) British writer

"A School Story", from More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911); The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James (London: Edward Arnold, 1947) p. 188.

Leo Buscaglia photo
KatieJane Garside photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Garrison Keillor photo

“It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations‎ (1988) by James Beasley Simpson, p. 211

Anne Rice photo

“"I see..." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

first line
Interview With The Vampire (1976)

Theodore Dalrymple photo

“14:06> …Of course I made it quite clear to the women that I thought that that the way that they had been abused was terrible and completely unjustifiable. However, I thought that it was very important that they should understand their own complicity in it; so that, for example, they understood that the way they chose men, and their refusal to see signs (which they were capable of seeing) resulted in their misery… <14:40> To give you a concrete example, I would say to them, ‘This man of yours, who’s very nasty to you, and drags you across the floor, and puts your head through the window, and sometimes even hangs you out of the window by your ankles: How long do you think it would take me to realise he was no good, as he came through the door? Would it take me a second, or half a second, or an eighth of a second, or would I not notice that there was anything wrong with him at all?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, an eighth of a second, you’d know immediately.’ And I would say to them, ‘Well, if you know that I would know immediately, then you knew immediately as well.’ It’s a logical consequence, really. And they would accept that. ‘And yet, you chose to associate with him, knowing full well that he was no good; and I tell you this, because it’s very necessary you should understand your own part in the predicament you now find yourself in, because if you don’t understand it, or don’t think about it, you’re just going to repeat it.’ which is of course, a very, very common pattern.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Daniels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_(psychiatrist) on helping victims of abuse understand how they can help to break the cycle.
CBC Ideas Interview (podcast) (September 25, 2006)

James Jeans photo

“The motion of the stars over our heads is as much an illusion as that of the cows, trees and churches that flash past the windows of our train.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Source: The Stars in their Courses (1931), p. 3.

Colin Wilson photo
Philip Roth photo
Steve Ballmer photo

“All the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android.”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

Ballmer sees Mac as a main competitor, iPhone as just buzz http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/24/ballmer_sees_mac_as_a_main_competitor_iphone_as_just_buzz.html in AppleInsider (24 February 2009)
2000s

Octavio Paz photo

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Dave Matthews photo
Gary Johnson photo
Eddie Mair photo

“Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

From the PM Newsletter and Weblog
Source: Headlines http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2006/09/weather.shtml at bbc.co.uk, 22 September 2006.

Steven Wright photo
Robert Frost photo

“The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1910s, Home Burial (1914)

Karel Appel photo
Chris Rea photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo

“there is a mushroom cloud in the back garden
i did i tried to bring in the cat
but it simply came to pieces in my hand
i did i tried to whitewash the windows
but there weren't any”

Roger McGough (1937) British writer and poet

"Mother the Wardrobe is Full of Infantrymen", from The Mersey Sound (1967)

Van Morrison photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

<p>¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?</p><p>Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.</p>
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

W. H. Auden photo

“When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.”

"Postscript: Christianity & Art", p. 461
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Henry Adams photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Imre Kertész photo