Left Quotes - Page 32

• Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying... We've shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Unique, People, Roles

  "World’s Designated Shoppers Drop" by Barbara Ehrenreich, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 10, 2008.

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• We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority -- a small minority -- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Running, Thinking, Mirrors

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• Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

  Mahalia Jackson

  Music, Home, Wings

  Mahalia Jackson, Evan McLeod Wylie (1966). “Movin' on Up”, New York : Hawthorn Books

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• Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

  Fay Weldon

  Acceptance, Effort, Tides

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• Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
  Or what is worse, be left by it?
  Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly,
  Oh, man! ordain'd to die?
  Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
  Thou who art under ground to lie?
  Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see,
  For death, alas! is reaping thee.

  Abraham Cowley

  Art, Lying, Men

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.217

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• Take out the kernel of spiritual truth with any faith, and what is left is dogma.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Spiritual, Dogma, Kernel

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• Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers, always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and firstly, the dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of his pants, coat, necktie and vest - and worse still, the shape of his boots. This seems to me a great omission.

  Fanny Fern

  Ignorance, Omission, Color

  Fanny Fern (1870). “Ginger-snaps”, p.114

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• The void Papa's death left in me became a kind of cavity, into which later experiences were to be laid.

  Liv Ullmann

  Papa, Void, Kind

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• Say, ye oppress'd by some fantastic woes,
  Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
  Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
  With timid eye, to read the distant glance;
  Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,
  To name the nameless ever-new disease;
  Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
  Which real pain and that alone can cure;
  How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
  Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
  How would ye bear to draw your latest breath,
  Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?

  George Crabbe

  Prayer, Pain, Real

  George Crabbe, Reginald Heber, Robert Pollok (1857). “The Poetical Works of Crabbe, Heber, and Pollok: Complete in One Volume”, p.15

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• And a Famous Film Star who is left alone is more alone than any other person has ever been in the whole Histry of the World, because of the contrast to our normal enviromint.

  Anita Loos

  Stars, World, Normal

  Anita Loos (1951). “A Mouse is Born”

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• A part of all art is to make silence speak. The things left out in painting, the note withheld in music, the void in architecture - all are as necessary and as active as the utterance itself.

  Freya Stark

  Art, Silence, Void

  Freya Stark (2014). “The Zodiac Arch”, p.193, I.B.Tauris

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• I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

  Freya Stark

  Hate, Book, Wife

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• There's no dew left on the daisies and clover; there's no rain left in heaven.

  Jean Ingelow

  Rain, Heaven, Despair

  Jean Ingelow (1874). “The Poetical Works of Jean Ingelow”, p.56

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• O sleep! O sleep!
  Do not forget me. Sometimes come and sweep,
  Now I have nothing left, thy healing hand
  Over the lids that crave thy visits bland,
  Thou kind, thou comforting one.
  For I have seen his face, as I desired,
  And all my story is done.
  O, I am tired.

  Jean Ingelow

  Sleep, Healing, Tired

  Jean Ingelow (1874). “The Poetical Works of Jean Ingelow”, p.133

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• Satire, whilst envy and ill-humor sway
  The mind of man, must always make her way;
  Nor to a bosom, with discretion fraught,
  Is all her malice worth a single thought.
  The wise have not the will, nor fools the power,
  To stop her headstrong course; within the hour
  Left to herself, she dies; opposing strife
  Gives her fresh vigor, and prolongs her life.

  Charles Churchill

  Wise, Men, Giving

  Charles Churchill, “The Author”

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• Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time.

  Pablo Casals

  Music, Careers, Firsts

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• children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Children, Hands, Trouble

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• If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.

  Stephen Hawking

  Long, Would Be, Generations

  "Return of the time lord". Interview With Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2005.

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• the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Tyrants, Political

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• the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future - is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.

  Hannah Arendt

  Morning, Freedom, Decision

  Hannah Arendt (1978). “Willing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• every political structure, new or old, left to itself develops stabilizing forces which stand in the way of constant transformation and expansion. Therefore all political bodies appear to be temporary obstacles when they are seen as part of an eternal stream of growing power.

  Hannah Arendt

  Power, Political, Expansion

  Hannah Arendt (2017). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.198, Penguin UK

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• I've still got a lot left in the tank. I think people are starting to see I've got a lot left in the tank.

  LaDainian Tomlinson

  Thinking, Nfl, People

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• There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, People, Trying

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• All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

  Edward Snowden

  Nsa, Long, Able

  "5 takeaways from Edward Snowden's Washington Post interview" by Jethro Mullen, www.cnn.com. December 26, 2013.

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• Now hoppin'-john was F. Jasmine's very favorite food. She had always warned them to wave a plate of rice and peas before her nose when she was in her coffin, to make certain there was no mistake; for if a breath of life was left in her, she would sit up and eat, but if she smelled the hopping-john, and did not stir, then they could just nail down the coffin and be certain she was truly dead.

  Carson McCullers

  Mistake, Nails, Coffins

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