Left Quotes - Page 31

• The whole town looks as if it had been left out in the rain too long and by mistake.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Mistake, Rain, Long

  Linda Ellerbee (1991). “Move on: adventures in the real world”, Putnam Pub Group

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• I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Past, Habit, Quaint

  "The Handmaid's Tale". Book by Margaret Atwood, 1985.

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• If thou desire to purchase honor with thy wealth, consider first how that wealth became thine; if thy labor got it, let thy wisdom keep it; if oppression found it, let repentance restore it; if thy parent left it, let thy virtues deserve it; so shall thy honor be safer, better and cheaper.

  Francis Quarles

  Parent, Honor, Desire

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• War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man.

  Germaine Greer

  War, Winning, Men

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

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• [On being asked in her later years if she were Tallulah:] I'm what's left of her, dahling.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Years, Age, Wit

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• Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It's really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Responsibility, Thinking

  Charlotte Templin, Erica Jong (2002). “Conversations with Erica Jong”, p.7, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.

  Muriel Spark

  Weapons, Honorable, Ridicule

  Muriel Spark (2018). “A Good Comb: The Sayings of Muriel Spark”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

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• Knowing cats, a lifetime of cats, what is left is a sediment of sorrow quite different from that due to humans: compounded of pain for their helplessness, of guilt on behalf of us all.

  Doris Lessing

  Pain, Cat, Knowing

  Doris May Lessing (1991). “Particularly Cats-- and Rufus”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• It is typical, in America, that a person's hometown is not the place where he is living now but is the place he left behind.

  Margaret Mead

  Roots, America, Typical

  Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1970). “A way of seeing”

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• Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Support, Ignorant, Asylums

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• Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

  Rebecca West

  War, Hands, Psychology

  Rebecca West (1952). “The meaning of treason”

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• I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Thinking, Hands

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• What depresses me is the inevitable way the second rate forges ahead and the deserving is left behind.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Depressing, Mediocrity, Way

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• When parents put gold into the hands of youth, when they should put a rod under their girdle--when instead of awe they make them past grace, and leave them rich executors of goods, and poor executors of godliness, then it is no marvel that the son being left rich by his father's will, becomes reckless by his own will.

  John Lyly

  Father, Son, Past

  John Lyly, Leah Scragg (2003). “John Lyly 'Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit' and 'Euphues and His England': An Annotated, Modern-Spelling Edition”, p.33, Manchester University Press

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• It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand; and their reason with their left.

  Jeremy Collier

  Hero, Hands, Use

  Jeremy Collier (1722). “Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects: In Two Parts. ...”

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• The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.

  Margaret Fuller

  Doors, Mind, Temples

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman”, p.71

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• Anyone who has raised more than one child knows full well that kids turn out the way they turn out - astonishingly, for the most part, and usually quite unlike their siblings, even their twins, raised under the same flawed rooftree. Little we have done or said, or left undone and unsaid, seems to have made much mark. It's hubris to suppose ourselves so influential; a casual remark on the playground is as likely to change their lives as any dedicated campaign of ours. They come with much of their own software already in place, waiting, and none of the keys we press will override it.

  Barbara Holland

  Children, Sibling, Kids

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• We're a shifty, sliding population. ... What we refer to as 'home' may be a place we haven't seen in years; a place where there's no one left who knows our name.

  Barbara Holland

  Home, Years, Names

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• To hint at a fault does more mischief than speaking out; for whatever is left for the imagination to finish will not fail to be overdone.

  Hannah More

  Imagination, Criticism, Faults

  Hannah More (1835). “The Works of Hannah More”, p.354

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• I keep remembering from my early student days how I would walk at night through the streets, my hands bunched into fists in the pocket of my coat, my head hunched deep into my collar, and how I used to say, 'I want to work, I shall work'--and then I would come back home and be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

  Etty Hillesum

  Determination, Home, Night

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.317, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Selfish, Competition, World

  "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education". Book by W. Edwards Deming, 1993.

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• Left unattended, problems only intensify.

  Mary Kay Ash

  Problem

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• One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.

  Madame de Stael

  Character, Long

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• Someone bent on suicide won't have much sense of humor left.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Suicide, Sense Of Humor, Bent

  Chuck Palahniuk (1999). “Survivor: A Novel”, Anchor

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• I had left home (like all Jewish girls) in order to eat pork and take birth control pills. When I first shared an intimate evening with my husband, I was swept away by the passion (so dormant inside myself) of a long and tortured existence. The physical cravings I had tried so hard to deny, finally and ultimately sated ... But enough about the pork.

  Roseanne Barr

  Girl, Husband, Passion

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