Quotes--love, war, racism, politics, and so much more.

Here are a few quotes I absolutely adore on tons of topics. Each can be interpreted and argued several different ways, so don't hold back--I want to see just how bold your mind can be.



The quotes:

"Did a man go to war as a lover, to a war he didn't believe in and knew they couldn't win, to suicide of an already dying country, broken and old, and young again every year, only to escape his life, or did he go because he no longer cared?" --Mary Lee Settle, Know Nothing

"No, you let me be a slave, Marse Johnny. I ain't fitten fer nothin else. I'll jes play nigger, nigger boy till I'm ole, but underneath whar your people cain't git, I'll be a man, and you'll know it, anyhow."--Know Nothing, said by a slave to his master trying to free him.

"You ain't got no more freedom than we got. Tears, and people leanin on you--free, white, and twenty-one!" Know Nothin

"Paper! Paper money, paper politicians, paper notes--the word as ephemeral as what it stood for"--Know Nothing

"The human heart," he murmured, "is the tomb of many feelings." John Galsworthy Fraternity

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial." Philip James Bailey Festus

"To believe in the heroic makes heroes." Benjamin Disraeli Coningsby

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" Lucy Maud Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

"Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold."--Albert Camus, The Plague

"For rats died in the street; men in their homes. And newspapers are concerned only with the street." -- The Plague

"There can be no peace without hope." -- The Plague

"Man is an idea. And a precious small idea once he turns his back on love."--The Plague

"Whatever is strong enough to rise from torment, whatever is left over from mutilation, whatever happens not to be destroyed will be healthy enough."--Glenway Wescot, Apartment in Athens

"Where there is memory there is hope."--Apartment in Athens

"The lawn was the world."--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"The fine rain, the gentle rain, poured equally over the mitred and the bareheaded with an impartiality which suggested that the god of rain, if there were a god, was thinking Let it not be restricted to the very wise, the very great, but let all breathing kind, the munchers and chewers, the ignorant, the unhappy, those who toil in the furnace making innumerable copies of the same pot, those who bore red hot minds through contorted letters, and also Mrs. Jones in the alley, share my bounty." Virginia Woolf, The Years

"'What awful lives children live!... Don't they, Rose?' 'Yes,' said Rose, "And they can't tell anybody.'"--The Years

"They are aware of each other; they live in each other; what else is love."-- The Years

"We cannot help each other... we are all deformed."--The Years

"What do they mean by Justice and Liberty, he asked... something's wrong... there's a gap, a dislocation, between the word and the reality."--The Years

"Leave life's ugliness at the door. Let's choose to be happy inside."--Vanora Bennett, Portrait of an Unknown Woman

"I got used to living with loneliness a long time ago. And it takes time to unlearn the habits of loneliness, you know; to remember to bring to light the pieces of the past you've buried. To learn to trust."--Portrait of an Unknown Woman

"Then I remembered that if you pricked the poor, they bled just like the next man."--Portrait of an Unknown Woman

"God is like love or the wind, beyond our comprehension, infinite enough to bear being worshiped in an infinite number of ways, merciful enough to not to care whether people pray to him in church or under a hedgerow, in Latin or English or Greek, crying or laughing."--Portrait of an Unknown Woman

"The world is nothing but mind and what is the mind? The mind is nothing but the world, goddammit." Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums

"Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?"--Dharma Bums

"I spread my bag out under a pine in a dense thicket across the road from cute suburban cottages that couldn't see me and wouldn't see me because they were all looking at television anyway."--Dharma Bums

"Don't gauge yourself by the mistakes you make, but by how you handle them; let them make you stronger, wiser... resilient."--Me.



Be forewarned, I closed my last contest because there were only three entrants and I committed points be awarded to the top five. So, if I feel there isn't a large enough selection or high enough quality of selection I will close this contest because I'm not about to throw over a thousand points down the flusher to undeserving poets. However, enter damn good pieces of writing and there will be no issue.

Rules:
-Two (2) entries per person allowed
-No Prewrites
-Place quote in A/N
-This is anonymous, don't reply to me, etc.
-Don't enter crap
-Spell check, re-read, revise or I'll most likely ignore.
-Be polite and considerate to your fellow poets. If you want people to comment/criticize your work, start the cycle.

Thanks for popping in, hope you're adequately inspired.