Railway Station Quotes

• I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.

  Sydney Brenner

  Travel, Morning, Home

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• So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.

  Robert Fripp

  Different, Orchestra, Ends

  61 Copy quote

• Railway stations can become growth points for the nearby villages.

  Narendra Modi

  Motivation, Growth, India

  40 Copy quote

• Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

  E. M. Forster

  Travel, Adventure, Sunshine

  Howards End ch. 2 (1910)

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• I wish you wouldn't walk in and out of my mind as though it was a railway station!

  Charlotte Lamb

  Understanding, Mind, Wish

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• And if you ever need self-validation, Just meet me in the alley by the railway station

  Steven Morrissey

  Self, Validation, Needs

  19 Copy quote

• Boys do not grow up gradually. They move forward in spurts like the hands of clocks in railway stations.

  Cyril Connolly

  Growing Up, Moving, Son

  10 Copy quote

• Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan.

  Kató Lomb

  Mistake, Italian, Bridges

  9 Copy quote

• Elgar's first symphony is the musical equivalent of St Pancras Railway Station.

  Thomas Beecham

  Music, Symphony, Firsts

  16 Copy quote

• One of the uses of poetry - one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances, ... or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night.

  E. Nesbit

  Sleep, Night, Poetry

  E. Nesbit (2013). “Delphi Complete Novels of E. Nesbit”, p.1027, Delphi Classics

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• In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms.

  Arundhati Roy

  Cities, People, Parks

  "Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution'". Interview with Arun Gupta, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• In 1910, eighty-two-year-old Leo Tolstoy flees from his wife and dies in a railway station of exposure.

  Jon Winokur

  Two, Years, Wife

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• I can never think of the time I spend idling in railway stations as lost; it's a waiting liberated from the three temporal vices of regret, anticipation or boredom, the weak echo of that bliss spent between lifetimes.

  Eric Morecambe

  Regret, Thinking, Echoes

  27 Copy quote

• I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking around with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Fashion, Names, Labels

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Lady chatterleys lover”, p.40, D. H. Lawrence

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• He has the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fence-post and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce.

  Fintan O'Toole

  Fence Post, Insult, Week

  8 Copy quote

• In England, they say that Manchester is the city of rain. It's main attraction is considered to the timetable at the railway station, where trains leave for other, less rainy cities.

  Nemanja Vidic

  Soccer, Football, Rain

  13 Copy quote

• It is often said that the Japanese are extremely clean at home, or inside any house or office, but dirty and untidy outside. 'Go and look at a railway station,' I was told, 'and you'll be horrified.' I went and was horrified; horrified by the cleanliness of the place.

  George Mikes

  Funny, Humorous, Dirty

  George Mikes (1970). “The land of the rising yen: Japan”, Harvard Common Press

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• I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.

  Robert Benchley

  Believe, Men, Numbers

  Robert Benchley (1954). “The Benchley Roundup”

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• The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths.

  Melina Marchetta

  Girl, Taken, Eye

  53 Copy quote

• libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Land, Feelings

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Beauty, Art, Voice

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1915). “The Bent Twig”

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• Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom

  Tahir Shah

  Reading, Doors, Water

  FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Apr 17, 2013

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• Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? (She made this remark in February 1936, at the railway station in Los Angeles upon her return from Chicago, when a Los Angeles police officer was assigned to escort her home)

  Mae West

  Home, Sassy, Police

  16 Copy quote

• The absurdity of public-choice theory is captured by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in the following little scenario: "Can you direct me to the railway station?" asks the stranger. "Certainly," says the local, pointing in the opposite direction, towards the post office, "and would you post this letter for me on your way?" "Certainly," says the stranger, resolving to open it to see if it contains anything worth stealing.

  Linda McQuaig

  Winning, Opposites, Office

  Linda McQuaig (2001). “All you can eat: greed, lust, and the new capitalism”, Viking

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