Bell Jar Quotes

An unfree mind is just like a windmill inside the bell jar! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not. ~ Sylvia Plath

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. ~ Sylvia Plath

We were talking about The Bell Jar, because we were sixteen, and we wanted to be depressed in New York. ~ Deborah Willis

It was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar. ~ Sylvia Plath

In the infinitesimal glow of the stars,
the trees and flowers were strewing
their cool odos. There was no moon. ~ Sylvia Plath

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. ~ Sylvia Plath

I kind of don't believe in actors directing themselves. Obviously some people have done it well, but I don't see how I could. It's funny that you ask, because I've just been thinking that maybe I'd rather direct The Bell Jar than act in it. It's a huge leap to go from a short to a feature, so I'm tentative - I'm like, Well, that's just so triple-type-A personality of you. ~ Julia Stiles

There was a beautiful time... ~ Sylvia Plath

I collected men with interesting names. ~ Sylvia Plath

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into
ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.
The same thing happened over and over:
I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all.
That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth
of July rocket. ~ Sylvia Plath

All cultures have things to learn from all other cultures. Don't get stuck in your culture! Go beyond it! Get out of your aquarium; get out of your farm; get out of your castle; break your bell jar! Give chance to other cultures and to other opinions! This is the best way for you to see the insufficiencies, absurdities and stupidities in your culture! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences ~ Sylvia Plath

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers
goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me at every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.
I thought it must be the worst thing in the world.
New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat. ~ Sylvia Plath

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it. ~ Sylvia Plath

I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together. ~ Sylvia Plath

Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter anymore.I don't know them. I have never known them and I am very pure. ~ Sylvia Plath

Esther knows nothing about alcohol, and says, "My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful. ~ Sylvia Plath

I don't know how long I kept at it ...
I felt reasonably safe, streched out on the floor, and lay quite still.
It didn't seem to be summer any more ~ Sylvia Plath

I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead. ~ Sylvia Plath

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it. ~ Sylvia Plath

She looked terrible, but very wise. ~ Sylvia Plath

Depression has descended like a bell jar around me. ~ Kristin Hannah

Religion is a bell jar; you cannot find God in that jar, because it is your bell jar, you have created it! Break the glass prison and get fresh air, elevate your intelligence! Wake up and open your eyes; see the truth beyond your prison! If you can't break the glass, don't worry; science will do it for you! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get. ~ Sylvia Plath

Ready for a new life ~ Sylvia Plath

We'll take up where we left off, Esther', she had said, with her sweet martyr's smile. 'We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.'
A bad dream.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.
A bad dream.
I remembered everything. ~ Sylvia Plath

What do you have in mind after you graduate?"
What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate
school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write
books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had
these plans on the tip of my tongue.
"I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true. ~ Sylvia Plath

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape. ~ Sylvia Plath

Once you decide on the best poison for the termination, you must work out the correct concentration. For instance, I know that five milligrams of cetratranic acid dropped into a bell-jar with a single moth will take about three seconds to stun it. I know that seven milligrams will anaesthetize it and ten is enough to kill it, providing the moth does not weight more than 3.5 grams. I also know that to kill fifty moths you need five times the concentration or volume of killing fluid, but to kill seven thousand you'd need only two hundred times the concentration. I know that potassium chloride could never kill a larger moth and potassium sulphide would only ever be strong enough to anaesthetize it. I know that cyanide kills anything. But what I don't know right now is the precise amount I will need to kill Vivien. ~ Poppy Adams

Sylvia Plath is there for me when actual living people upon who I have depended upon my whole life, are not. What I mean to say is, without her words, I'd be exponentially more messed up than I am already. ~ Arlaina Tibensky

The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society? ... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time? ~ Fernand Braudel

I didn't know what I was doing in New York. ~ Sylvia Plath

Sometimes I wondered if I had made Joan up. Other times I wondered if she would continue to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been, and what I had been through, and carry on her own separate but similar crisis under my nose. ~ Sylvia Plath

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther. ~ Sylvia Plath

I was supposed to be having the time of my life. ~ Sylvia Plath

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come. ~ Sylvia Plath

Someone once said that under the bell jar of compliance, the only thing that blooms is rage. ~ Jane Fonda

There I went again, building p a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few posy nothings. ~ Sylvia Plath

If you expect nothing from anybody, you're never disappointed. ~ Sylvia Plath

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream. ~ Sylvia Plath

That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
"Save them for my funeral," I'd said. ~ Sylvia Plath

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. ~ Sylvia Plath

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction
every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour. ~ Sylvia Plath

We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.
A bad dream.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
A bad dream.
I remembered everything.
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them.
But they were part of me. They were my landscape. ~ Sylvia Plath

Now, lying on my back in bed, I imagined Buddy saying, 'Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'
'No, what?' I would say.
'A piece of dust.'
Then just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.'
And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep. ~ Sylvia Plath

I read The Bell Jar, and then I read her memoir and her diaries, and a third book, an outside opinion. Just the way she made the pillows so neat on the oven door. It just seems to be the opposite of, if you're going to take your life, in a horrible rage it happens. ~ Paul Westerberg

I really like Caravan Palace's electro swing stuff. They incorporate the electronic, but when you see them live, they're all on stage playing live music. They're all playing their instruments. They drop these beats with the DJs that are so incredible. ~ Drake Bell

...Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,
For God has bid them share an equal fate;
And when at last defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars,
We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die. ~ W.B. Yeats

Man is somewhere in between God and animal. Jarod is somewhere in between Jar and Jason. (One of which I keep chained up in my freezer). ~ Jarod Kintz

If you leave, my heart goes with you. It belongs to you, like yours belongs to me. Leaving doesn't change that- it only rips us apart. ~ K.J. Bell

Since then he has said nothing and although from time to time I have thrown out what I hope were delicate hints and suggestions he has not seemed to notice them; and with a man Lucifer could not hold a book, bell or candle to for pride I cannot raise the subject directly. ~ Patrick O'Brian

If I am in London I like a quick get away to The Olde Bell in Hurley ... It's nearby and no stress - great food and beautiful walks. ~ Sadie Frost

Comedy Central does a really good job of finding totally different comedies. ~ Jillian Bell

Abroad it is our habit to regard all other travelers in the light of personal and unpardonable grievances. They are intruders into our chosen realms of pleasure, they jar upon our sensibilities, they lessen our meager share of comforts, they are everywhere in our way, they are always an unnecessary feature in the landscape. ~ Agnes Repplier

No level of individual self-actualization alone can sustain the marginalized and oppressed. We must be linked to collective struggle, to communities of resistance that move us outward, into the world. ~ Bell Hooks

Imagine walking into a grocery there is a jar sitting there with a lid on it saying it's not carbon. That is ridiculous. It's an empty jar. ~ William McDonough

I can't find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners. ~ Rob Bell

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with. ~ Paul Weller

All of my free time is made up of motor sports endeavors, be them motorcycles or off-road racing or track days. I just love anything with an engine. That is one of my main loves. Obviously, my other well-known love is Kristen Bell. ~ Dax Shepard

Ladies and gentleman, Tim said. May I present to you, our son, Jason Grant! ~ Jay Bell

One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae. ~ Daniel Bell

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. ~ Murdoc Niccals

She wonders how people can live this kind of life - trapped inside a house with windows everywhere showing you where else you could be. ~ Alden Bell

Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" "Dracarys!" they shouted back, the sweetest word she'd ever heard. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. ~ George R R Martin

Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else's image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself. School ~ Bell Hooks

There is a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no conventionality. ~ Harold Bell Wright

There are pockets of time, she thinks, where every sense rings like a bell, where the world brims with fleeting grace. ~ Dominic Smith

Listen, all creeping things, the bell of transience. ~ Kobayashi Issa

A lot of who I am is in the work I do. ~ Drake Bell

My enemies defeated, and yet the sorrow remained, keener, more true, more clean, for I had always owned it. It echoed back to the thorns, the tone of a bell resounding through the years. We're fashioned by our sorrows - not by joy - they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting. ~ Mark Lawrence

Changing how we see images is clearly one way to change the world. ~ Bell Hooks

Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight's play of light, when your name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl's breast. ~ Yasunari Kawabata

I'm not sure that there's anything much more dangerous when it comes to faeryland than a magic mirror. ~ Alex Bell

Ali Bell doesn't play hide-and-seek," Lucas said. "She plays hide-and-pray-I-don't-find-you."
Mackenzie smiled. "When Ali Bell gives you the finger, she's telling you how many seconds you have to live."
Cole chuckled, saying, "Fear of spiders is arachnophobia, and fear of tight spaces is claustrophobia, but fear of Ali Bell is just called logic."
"Oh, oh." Kat clapped excitedly. "There used to be a street named after Ali Bell, but it was changed because nobody crosses Ali Bell and lives. True story. ~ Gena Showalter

People aren't static; they're dynamic - endlessly complex and capable of tremendous surprise and change. ~ Rob Bell

And the barman asked me if I was alright? Simple little question. And i said I was. And he said he'd make me a sandwich. And I said okay. And I nearly started crying--because you know, here was someone just...And I watched him. He took two big slices off a fresh loaf and buttered them carefully, spreading it all around. I'll never forget it. And then he sliced some cheese and cooked ham and an onion out of a jar, and put it all on a plate and sliced it down the middle. And, just someone doing this for me. And putting it down in front of me. 'Get that down you, now,' he said. And then he folded up his newspaper and put on his jacket, and went off on his break. And there was another barman then. And I took this sandwich up and I could hardly swallow it, because of the lump in my throat. But I ate i tall down because someone I didn't know had done this for me. Such a small thing. But a huge thing. In my condition. ~ Conor McPherson

This is a book about seeing, about becoming more and more alive and aware, orienting ourselves around the God who I believe is the ground of our being, the electricity that lights up the whole house, the transcendent presence in our tastes, sights, and sensations of the depth and dimension and fullness of life, from joy to agony to everything else. ~ Rob Bell

You Can't Unring a Bell. ~ David Foster Wallace

He leans down, his dark eyes simmering, and kisses me until neither of us wants to come up for air. Only the ringing of the bell tears us apart.

"Damn bell," he says softly. He places his hand along the scar that rides my face from temple to chin. A slash of purple, it's never going to disappear. But it doesn't bother me. ~ Elsie Chapman

I was getting old, man. I was staring 27 in the face. ~ Charlie Bell

I don't want a door bell. I don't want anyone ringing my door bell ... seems to be intrusive. They can call me on their cell phones. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence. ~ Bell Hooks

I got out my jar of ointment. I knew animators who had special containers for the ointment. Crockery, hand-blown glass, mystical symbols carved into the sides. I used an old Mason jar that had once held Grandma Blake's green beans.
Larry fished out a peanut butter jar with the label still on it. Extra-crunchy. Yum-Yum. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I'm convinced being generous is a better way to live. I'm convinced forgiving people and not carrying around bitterness is a better way to live. I'm convinced having compassion is a better way to live. I'm convinced pursuing peace in every situation is a better way to live. I'm convinced listening to the wisdom of others is a better way to live. I'm convinced being honest with people is a better way to live. ~ Rob Bell

For many men the moment of violent connection may be the only intimacy, the only attainable closeness, the only space where the agony is released. ~ Bell Hooks

So truth created the ultimate lie. Was this what the world was like for wizards? This thorny, gray tangle where right and wrong were so mixed there was no telling them apart? ~ Hilari Bell

To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else's image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself. ~ Bell Hooks

Ultimately the men who choose against violence, against death, do so because they want to live fully and well, because they want to know love. These are the men who are true heroes, the men whose lives we need to know about, honor, and remember. ~ Bell Hooks