Height Quotes - Page 38

• Old New York City is a friendly old town From Washington Heights to Harlem on down There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down It's hard times in the city Livin' down in New York town

  Bob Dylan

  New York, Hard Times, Cities

  Song: Hard Times in New York Town

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• Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Too Much, Novelists

  "The war on drugs and alcohol is a war against human nature" by Lewis Lapham, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2012.

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• [I would like to be] one of [the first pop singers to perform in a free Cuba]. I know the list is huge. And it would be hard to pull off -- I'd have a lump as big as a tostone [fried green plantain] in my throat. But oh my God, what a dream -- it would be the height of my personal and professional career.

  Gloria Estefan

  Dream, Careers, Cuba

  "Gloria Estefan: 'Like Coming Home, But Not to the Old Cuba'". Interview with Jesse Kornbluth, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 6, 2007.

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• Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state -- admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological -- in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

  Sigmund Freud

  Love, Men, Ego

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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• Wickedness comes to its height by degrees. He that dares say of a less sin, Is it not a little one? will ere long say of a greater, Tush, God regards it not!

  Anne Bradstreet

  Long, Littles, Degrees

  Anne Bradstreet, Jeannine Hensley (1967). “The Works of Anne Bradstreet”, p.278, Harvard University Press

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• Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolves into the beauty of an abstraction.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Distance, Cities, America

  "Money And Class In America: Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion" by Lewis H. Lapham, (Chapter 3, The Golden Horde, p. 58), 1989.

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• The lotus' stem is as long as the depth of water,
  So men's height is just as great as their inner strength.

  Thiruvalluvar

  Men, Long, Water

  "Tirukkural". Book by Thiruvalluvar, 1840.

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• Strange is the vigour in a brave man's soul. The strength of his spirit and his irresistible power, the greatness of his heart and the height of his condition, his mighty confidence and contempt of danger, his true security and repose in himself, his liberty to dare and do what he pleaseth, his alacrity in the midst of fears, his invincible temper, are advantages which make him master of fortune.

  Thomas Traherne

  Heart, Greatness, Men

  "The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D". Book edited by Bertram Dobell, London: Bertram Dobell, p. LVII, "Christian Ethicks" (1675), 1903.

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• Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.

  Anthony de Mello

  Names, Earth, Spirit

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• Despite the mythic heights to which he was raised, Azikiwe was nothing if not pragmatic, a realist always conscious of his limits and ever eager to extract all that was possible from that limited horizon.

  Nnamdi Azikiwe

  Horizon, Limits, Realist

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• Consider paint a film of light reflecting/absorbing material, and a colored paint a material which gives a particular, characteristic transmission of light via differential absorption and reflection. Call this reflected quality 'luminance' and measure it in millilamberts. This measure is as real and present as height, breadth, depth; and I find the phenomenon equally sumptuous and convincing. . . . Painted light, not color, not form, not perspective, or line, not image, or words, or equations, is painting. I make paintings which do not represent light, they are light.

  Jo Baer

  Real, Reflection, Light

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• But come, hear my words, for truly learning causes the mind to grow. For as I said before in declaring the ends of my words: Twofold is the truth I shall speak; for at one time there grew to be the one alone out of many, and at another time it separated so that there were many out of the one; fire and water and earth and boundless height of air, and baneful Strife apart from these, balancing each of them, and Love among them, their equal in length and breadth.

  Empedocles

  Fire, Air, Water

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• When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river's reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat.

  Alexander Blok

  Blood, Land, Rivers

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• Earthly joy can take but a bat-like flight, always checked, always limited, in dusk and darkness. But the love of Christ breaks through the vaulting, and leads us up into the free sky above, expanding to the very throne of Jehovah, and drawing us still upward to the infinite heights of glory.

  Frances Ridley Havergal

  Break Through, Sky, Drawing

  Frances Ridley Havergal (1892). “Golden Thoughts from the Life and Works of Frances Ridley Havergal ...”

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• (I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.. ...rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.

  Marsden Hartley

  Clouds, Climbing, Mountain

  "Marsden Hartley". Book by Gail R. Scott, p. 8, 1988.

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• While the fashion industry may, at least at the top end, be thriving, the notion of fashion itself is becoming more and more meaningless. Any discipline in fashion has long since evaporated; the idea of a single fashionable skirt length, or heel height, is incomprehensible. The definition of the fashionable has become so skimpy that it refers not to the mode of dress of everyday people--the clothes that have sufficiently caught the popular imagination to be worn in a widespread manner--but only to the styles that momentarily excite members of the fashion caravan.

  Rebecca Mead

  Fashion, Ideas, Clothes

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• In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips The soul of light and memory, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain-heights a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall.

  Clark Ashton Smith

  Death, Memories, Fall

  Clark Ashton Smith, “The Unremembered”

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• I love chess, but it's the height of decadence.

  Jennifer Shahade

  Chess, Decadence

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• Therefore, be islands unto yourselves. Be your own refuge. Have recourse to none else for refuge. Hold fast to the Dharma as a refuge. Resort to no other refuge. Whosoever, either now or after I am gone, shall be islands unto themselves, shall seek no eternal refuge, it is they, among my disciples who shall reach the very topmost height! But they must be keen to progress.

  Gautama Buddha

  Islands, Independence, Progress

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• Norbit operates on the principle that vulgarity is automatically funny. Crassness doesn't need a joke attached because it is (in and of itself) the height of hilarity.

  James Berardinelli

  Vulgarity Is, Principles, Needs

  "Norbit (United States, 2007)". Movie Review, www.reelviews.net.

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• If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas... Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy... Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer's... Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Alzheimer's, Race

  Fourth Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 12 February 2013, Washington, D.C.

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• Here when the labouring fish does at the foot arrive, And finds that by his strength but vainly he doth strive; His tail takes in his teeth, and bending like a bow, That's to the compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw: Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand, That, bended end to end, and flerted from the hand, Far off itself doth cast. so does the salmon vaut. And if at first he fail, his second sommersault He instantly assays and from his nimble ring, Still yarking never leaves, Until himself he fling Above the streamful top of the surrounded heap.

  Michael Drayton

  Rivers, Feet, Lakes

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• It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Children, Octopus, Eight

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.206, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.

  Jesse Owens

  Sports, Horse, Athlete

  Jesse Owens, Paul G. Neimark (1978). “Jesse, a spiritual autobiography”

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• When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.

  Herman Melville

  Dog, Eye, Wish

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