Native Quotes - Page 19

• She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone save her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Moving, Soul, Feelings

  9 Copy quote

• I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Country, Growing Up, Moving

  Banana Yoshimoto (1995). “N.P.: A Novel”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.

  Wallace Stegner

  Home, Optimistic, Quality

  "Wallace Stegner, the Rural West, and Me" by John McChesney, web.stanford.edu. July 05, 2011.

  107 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

  Winona LaDuke

  Teaching, White, Differences

  55 Copy quote

• And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.

  Tim Wise

  Song, Fighting, Winning

  13 Copy quote

• Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Mastery, Tongue

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I looked around at us all: me in my nightgown, Kiyo bare-chested, Dorian in his extravagant robes, and Tim in his Native getup. God, I muttered, standing up, we all look like the village people.

  Richelle Mead

  People, Looks, Village

  4 Copy quote

• The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Purpose, Assignments

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I didn't want to die - not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Reading, Want, Return

  Siegfried Sassoon (1949). “The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Views, Quality, Divergent

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.9, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.

  Wilma Mankiller

  Teacher, Native American, School

  Wilma Mankiller, Gloria Steinem (2016). “Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women”, p.73, Fulcrum Publishing

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him I follow but myself; Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am

  William Shakespeare

  Heart, Long, Judging

  1603-4 Iago. Othello, act1, sc.1, l.60-5.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Couple, Kids, Air

  4 Copy quote

• The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.

  Herman Wouk

  Mistake, Common Sense, Finding Yourself

  "Herman Wouk to publish first memoir aged 100" by Claire Armitstead, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hypocrite, Land, People

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.165, Diversion Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Mother, Fear, Children

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “The Brothers Karamazov”, p.1064, First Avenue Editions

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

  Raymond Chandler

  Brother, Couple, Divorce

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.87, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. . . . Children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving. . . . The Indians in their simplicity literally give away all that they have—to relatives, to guests of other tribes or clans, but above all to the poor and the aged, from whom they can hope for no return.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Children, Native American, Generosity

  34 Copy quote

• This land, although not my native land, Will be remembered forever. And the sea's lightly iced, Unsalty water. The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk, The air is heady, like wine, And the rosy body of the pines Is naked in the sunset hour. And the sunset itself on such waves of ether That I just can't comprehend Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world, Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Wine, Sunset, Air

  5 Copy quote

• When Europeans arrived on this continent, they blew it with the Native Americans. They plowed over them, taking as much as they could of their land and valuables, and respecting almost nothing about the native cultures. They lost the wisdom of the indigenous peoples-wisdom about the land and connectedness to the great web of life...We have another chance with all these refugees. People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America.

  Mary Pipher

  Native American, Land, Web Of Life

  23 Copy quote

• Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.

  William S. Burroughs

  Dog, Cat, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• Dreams are our only geography—our native land.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Dream, Land, Geography

  "Don Quixote". Poem by Dejan Stojanovic,

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just because I'm Native American doesn't mean I can track furniture through the wilderness." She deepened her voice: "'Yes, kemosabe. A three-legged table passed this way an hour ago.' Heck, I don’t know.

  Rick Riordan

  Native American, Mean, Voice

  "The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)". Book by Rick Riordan, August 14, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an old and very wise Native American saying: Every time you point a finger in scorn—there are three remaining fingers pointing right back at you.

  Alyson Noel

  Wise, Native American, Three

  Alyson Noel (2012). “Fated”, p.173, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.

  Edward Said

  Home, Sadness, Thinking

  Edward W. Said (2013). “Reflections On Exile: And Other Literary And Cultural Essays”, p.212, Granta Books

  122 Copy quote

  Show source