Dwellers Quotes

• The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.

  John Muir

  Strong, Adventure, Men

  John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Henry Bugbee Kane (2001). “The Wilderness World of John Muir”, p.321, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  America, People, House

  Theodore Roosevelt (1954). “Letters: The days of Armageddon, 1909-1914”

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• Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Law, Cities

  Attributed to Margaret Mead in Caroline Adams Miller "Bright Words for Dark Days: Meditations for Women Who Get the Blues" (p. 10), 1994.

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• But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Loyalty, Men, America

  Theodore Roosevelt (1941). “Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia”

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• A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

  Walter Bagehot

  Air, Civilization, Luxury

  Walter Bagehot, Richard Holt Hutton (1891). “Literary studies ; Religious and metaphysical essays ; Letters on the French coup d'état”

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• Happiness, the goal to which we all are striving is reached by endeavoring to make the lives of others happy, and if by renouncing the luxuries of life we can lighten the burdens of others.... surely the simplification of our wants is a thing greatly to be desired! And so, if instead of supposing that we must become hermits and dwellers in caves in order to practice simplicity, we set about simplifying our affairs, each according to his own convictions and opportunity, much good will result and the simple life will at once be established.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Happiness, Opportunity, Simple

  Mahatma Gandhi (2012). “The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas”, p.62, Vintage

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• I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

  John Sandford

  Cities, Strange, Countryside

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• He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom.

  Anton Chekhov

  Nature, Freedom, Autumn

  "Gooseberries". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1898.

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• To Nature the dweller in the Nile valley linked all that was dear to him: his happiest fetes, poetry, and love - all were bound up with the garden and its products, especially flowers. Few Oriental nations can think of a festival without flowers, but nowhere are they so completely a part of human life, and so essential, as in [Ancient] Egypt.

  Marie-Luise Gothein

  Life, Nature, Flower

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• Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Rivers, Doors

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.92, Penguin

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• Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Night, Light

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• The cave-dweller's wife complained that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in months.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Women, Wife, Caves

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• Actors are cave dwellers in a rich darkness which they love and hate.

  Iris Murdoch

  Hate, Darkness, Caves

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.50, Penguin

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• Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Night, Years

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.120, Ballantine Books

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• I was a dweller amid shadows grim: Till FREEDOM touched my yearning eyes, and lo! Life in a shining circle, rounding rose, As heaven on heaven goes up the jewell'd night. New floods of passionate life swirl'd at my heart, Like Ocean-surges rolling round the world: And FREEDOM was my glittering Bride.

  Gerald Massey

  Freedom, Ocean, Heart

  Gerald MASSEY (Poet.) (1854). “Poems and ballads ... Containing the Ballad of babe Christabel ... Revised and corrected by the author”, p.26

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• Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance... to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man... The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

  James G. Frazer

  Philosophy, Men, Sight

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

  William S. Burroughs

  Government, Law, Cities

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.416, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happy Life, Passionate, Source

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.35, Courier Corporation

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• Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!

  Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

  Sea, Land, Voice

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• There was however, a group of 507 individuals who were permanent street dwellers [in Miami.] These 507 were not indigent, down-on-their-luck families. They were single people and every one of them was mentally ill.

  Pete Earley

  People, Luck, Groups

  Pete Earley (2007). “Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness”, p.103, Penguin

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• I have committed myself to joy. I have come to realize that those who make space for joy, those who prefer nothing to joy, those who desire the utter reality, will most assuredly have it. We must not be afraid to announce it to refugees, slum dwellers, saddened prisoners, angry prophets. Now and then we must even announce it to ourselves. In this prison of now, in this cynical and sophisticated age, someone must believe in joy.

  Richard Rohr

  Believe, Reality, Space

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• Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you've got left is your belief in the imagination.

  Ben Okri

  Ghetto, Imagination, Vibrancy

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• Things that live by night live outside the realm of 'normal' time and so suggest living outside the realm of good and evil, since we have moralistic feelings about time. Chauvinistic about our human need to wake by day and sleep by night, we come to associate night dwellers with people up to no good at a time when they have the jump on the rest of us and are defying nature, defying their circadian rhythms.

  Diane Ackerman

  Sleep, Night, People

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales”, p.40, Vintage

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• I also remember a line from a song by Smog [Bill Callahan], which seems to describe the experience of a town-dweller moving to the country: "I was raised in a pit of snakes/Blink your eyes - I was raised on cake."

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Country, Song, Moving

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• A book or a letter may institute a more intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.

  John Dewey

  Book, Letters, May

  John Dewey, (2013). “Democracy and Education - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education”, p.13, Read Books Ltd

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