Building Walls Quotes

You think you're smart enough, because you've spent your whole life building walls In order to protect yourself from monsters.
But those monsters were close enough not to be reached,
Sometimes they are family
They are friends
And most times; monsters are those who claimed to love you more than they even love themselves. ~ Samiha Totanji

Perhaps it's easier: being alone. Building walls. A solitary life with no one to lose. No one to break your heart. ~ Shea Ernshaw

In the building of walls to protect ourselves - we have managed to keep ourselves from the best in this life. And so the line is drawn whether to live and to be broken and unbroken or to breathe but not live at all. Perhaps there is no such thing as brokenness, afterall. Perhaps it is all just called living. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I told him I had once lost everything I had, too, and that I think that can be God's way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him. ~ Kimberly Novosel

We have to remember, when we forgive we're not doing it just for the other person, we're doing it for our own good. When we hold on to unforgiveness and we live with grudges in our hearts, all we're doing is building walls of separation. ~ Joel Osteen

In the 21st century, we can't create security by building walls. ~ James G. Stavridis

None of the threats to the global commons will be solved by building walls. ~ James G. Stavridis

Everything I want to say and everything I've wished to say begins to take shape, falling to the floor and scrambling upright. Paragraphs and paragraphs begin building walls around me, blocking and justifying as they find ways to fit together, linking and weaving and leaving no room for escape. And every single space between every unspoken word clambers up and into my open mouth, down my throat and into my chest, filling me with so much emptiness I think I might just float away. ~ Tahereh Mafi

The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong. ~ John Muir

The problem with letting people tear your walls down, is that you never know who wants to take down those walls just for the fun of it. For amusement purposes. Just to say that he knew that he could. At the end of the day ... the things you build should stay built. And you are no scapegoat for the sins of other people, in anyone's life. How dare anyone take down your walls not in order to see you; but only in order to feed their ego. In order to make you pay for sins not done by your own hands. ~ C. JoyBell C.

For years I was so busy building walls I did not see I was imprisoning myself behind them, and did not recognize this pattern as being addiction. My addictive thinking and behavior became the bars of my cell. Denying feeling empty inside, I constantly looked for new things to acquire, people to be around, substances to take, and new goals to achieve in order to feel better about myself. Over the last four decades I have focused on healing my addictive mind and helping others do the same. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

Start building walls, and people begin to wonder what you're hiding. ~ Leigh Bardugo

We are not going to build a pressure in Mexico. We're not building walls to retain our people. ~ Vicente Fox

Instead of building walls, we should be building bridges. ~ Vicente Fox

It seems as though the only things causing pain around here are these ridiculous walls we keep building. ~ Patrick Carman

These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength.

Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life - with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long - and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls.

Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm.

Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling.

Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

When humans began cultivating the land, they thought that the extra work this required will pay off. 'Yes, we will have to work harder. But the harvest will be so bountiful! We won't have to worry any more about lean years. Our children will never go to sleep hungry.' It made sense.

If you worked harder, you would have a better life. That was the plan.

The first part of the plan went smoothly. People indeed worked harder. But people did not foresee that the number of children would increase, meaning that the extra wheat would have to be shared between more children.

Neither did the early farmers understand that feeding children with more porridge and less breast milk would weaken their immune system, and that permanent settlements would be hotbeds for infectious diseases.

They did not foresee that by increasing their dependence on a single source of food, they were actually exposing themselves even more to the depredations of drought. Nor did the farmers foresee that in good years their bulging granaries would tempt thieves and enemies, compelling them to start building walls and doing guard duty. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

It's not that love lacks power. Rather, it's that we're too frightened to submit to a power that will demand vulnerability when we've invested the whole of our lives building walls. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Accept each other. Love. Even if it is messy. Live with no regrets. Remember that diversity is our strength. We shouldn't be building walls, we should be tearing them down. Accept each other no matter who we love, how we pray or how we look. ~ Johnny Corn

Politicians could talk about building walls and changing laws to keep people out, but in the end they were just symbols. Neither would stop the tide any more than the rock jetties at the mouth of the port did. Nothing could stop the tide of hope and desire. Bosch ~ Michael Connelly

The twenty-first century is a key century for us on this planet. Either we make a world, where all seven billion people have a fair chance in this century - or forget it. If we can't do this, I don't think we are going to make it as a species. Despair is the fuel of terrorism, and hope is the fuel of civilization, so we have to put more hope into the world than despair. Hatred and separation and building walls is not the way to progress. Going backward is not the way to go forward. ~ Eddie Izzard

He spent so long building walls to protect his privacy that I think he forgot to build a door. ~ J. Kenner

How in the world are we supposed to engage life when we spend all of our life building walls to protect ourselves from the very thing that we say we want to engage? The answer is, I think, understanding that God doesn't need walls but we need Him. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I am not a theologian, nor am I a priest or a minister, but I think building walls is fundamentally contrary to what made this country what it is. We're a pluralistic society in its functions. ~ Joe Biden

Maybe building walls around our hearts will lock the monsters out, but won't it also keep the kings away? Self sabotage is a dangerous path, our wounds don't heal by catering to them and labelling them as our past. ~ Nikki Rowe

A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far. ~ Jon Meacham

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status. ~ Isabel Paterson

As I enter the small intestine I get squeezed by muscles. Its dark and the walls look like slimey crushed velvet theres pancreas juice on me help me I am disintigrating. ~ Lynda Barry

You cannot go around in grief and panic every day; people will not let you, they will coax you with tea and tell you to move on, bake cakes and paint walls. [ ... ] So what you do is you let them coax you. You bake the cake and paint the wall and smile; you buy a new freezer as if you now had a plan for the future. And secretly
in the early morning
you sew a pocket in your skin. At the hollow of your throat. So that every time you smile, or nod your head at a teacher meeting, or bend over to pick up a fallen spoon, it presses and pricks and stings and you know you've not moved on. You never even planned to. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

Readers have no doubt noticed how seldom builders live in houses of their own construction. You will find a town or village expanding in all directions with their masterpieces of modernity in the way of houses and bungalows; but the builder himself you will usually find living nearer the heart of things, snugly and comfortably housed in some more substantial, if less convenient, building of less recent date. ~ Flora Thompson

People of peace, men and women of desire, such is the splendor of the Temple in which you will one day have the right to take your place. Such privilege should astonish you less, however, than your ability to commence building it down here, your ability, in fact, to adorn it at every moment of your existence. Remember the saying 'as above, so below', and contribute to this by making 'as below, so above'. ~ Louis Claude De Saint-Martin

You have spent all these years building a list of the things you can't stand about yourself. You have been trying to hide the deepest parts of you because you are afraid of someone getting close. But there are only so many seasons you can spend with locks on your door. Because eventually someone will walk in and they will want to know you more and more. ~ Courtney Peppernell

When we started out, we were among the first. Beijing had no and Shanghai had very few large buildings. At that time, it was all about building, building, building - and then selling, selling, selling. We were working like a manufacturer. Soon, however, we realized that land was running out in Beijing and Shanghai. So we started keeping our buildings, and managing and renting them out. We became landowners. That was the second act. ~ Zhang Xin

There once was a little mouse. He was a very clever little mouse. He lived in the walls of a house with ~ Paul Ramage

I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead. ~ Jojo Moyes

Those who grieve frequently find themselves alone. Missed is the laughter of children, the commotion of teenagers, and the tender, loving concern of a departed companion. The clock ticks more loudly, time passes more slowly, and four walls can indeed a prison make. I extol those who, with loving care and compassionate concern, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and house the homeless. He who notes the sparrow's fall will not be unmindful of such service. ~ Thomas S. Monson

In short, avoiding the scourge of unemployment may have less to do with chasing after growth and more to do with building an economy of care, craft and culture. And in doing so, restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society. ~ Tim Jackson

De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some "incomplete joy of this world" and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry. ~ Timothy Keller

It is no fun lining up in your own building - as the hockey players say - and touching the hands of fellow stubbly louts who have just sent you off to the proverbial cabin on the lake. ~ George Vecsey

There are fashions in building. Behind the fashions lie economic and technological reasons, and these fashions exclude all but a few genuinely different possibilities in city dwelling construction at any one time. ~ Jane Jacobs

Yes, yoga may make your company a better place to work for people who like yoga. It may also be a great team-building exercise for people who like yoga. Nonetheless, it's not culture. ~ Ben Horowitz

To write, for a lesbian, is to learn to take down the patriarchal posters in her room. It means learning to live with bare walls for a while. It means learning how not to be afraid of the ghosts which assume the color of the bare wall. ~ Nicole Brossard

Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box. ~ Robertson Davies

It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian Nights marvels. ~ Edith Wharton

When the Bennington was built, in 1872, it was said that the architect, who had descended from a long line of witches, fashioned the building on ancient occult principles so that it would always be a sort of magnet for the otherworldly. So as I said, don't pay any mind to the odd sounds or sights you might experience. It's just the Bennington, dear. ~ Libba Bray

Her bedroom walls are covered with magazine pictures, so that the walls don't end at the walls. They go outward, to a dream of somewhere else. ~ Ava Dellaira

I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as well as building a country. ~ John Ensign

One night he sits up. In cots around him are a few dozen sick or wounded. A warm September wind pours across the countryside and sets the walls of the tent rippling.

Werner's head swivels lightly on his neck. The wind is strong and gusting stronger, and the corners of the tent strain against their guy ropes, and where the flaps at the two ends come up, he can see trees buck and sway. Everything rustles. Werner zips his old notebook and the little house into his duffel and the man beside him murmurs questions to himself and the rest of the ruined company sleeps. Even Werner's thirst has faded. He feels only the raw, impassive surge of the moonlight as it strikes the tent above him and scatters. Out there, through the open flaps of the tent, clouds hurtle above treetops. Toward Germany, toward home.

Silver and blue, blue and silver.

Sheets of paper tumble down the rows of cots, and in Werner's chest comes a quickening. He sees Frau Elena kneel beside the coal stove and bank up the fire. Children in their beds. Baby Jutta sleeps in her cradle. His father lights a lamp, steps into an elevator, and disappears.

The voice of Volkheimer: What you could be.

Werner's body seems to have gone weightless under his blanket, and beyond the flapping tent doors, the trees dance and the clouds keep up their huge billowing march, and he swings first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed.

"Ernst," says the man beside ~ Anthony Doerr

Setting ... is accident. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger. ~ Willa Cather

Every time a child organizes and completes a chore, spends some time alone without feeling lonely, loses herself in play for an hour, or refuses to go along with her peers in some activity she feels is wrong, she will be building meaning and a sense of worth for herself and harmony in her family. ~ Barbara Coloroso

People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies. ~ Robert Mueller

Jerusalem above is a city whose builder and maker is God. Every grace, yea, every degree of grace, is a stone in that building, the topstone whereof is laid in glory, where saints shall more plainly see, how God was not only Founder to begin, but Benefactor also to finish the same. The glory of the work shall not be crumbled and piece-mealed out, some to God and some to the creature, but all entirely paid in to God, and he acknowledged all in all. ~ William Gurnall

The tree burst into color and we all gasped at the red, yellow, green, white and the blue lights boldly growing in the cold night, the only lights for miles around in the inmense darkness of the range. ~ Jeannette Walls

All deductions having been made, democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects. It gave to thought and science and enterprise the freedom essential to their operation and growth. It broke down the walls of privilege and class, and in each generation it raised up ability from every rank and place. ~ Will Durant

If you follow the suburban fashion in building a sumptuous- looking house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap, dear house. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The disgraceful and shameful construction of walls, the increasing enforcement of security systems and increasing violation of human rights and labor rights will not protect the economy of the United States. ~ Tucker Carlson

Science in its everyday practice is much closer to art than to philosophy. When I look at Godel's proof of his undecidability theorem, I do not see a philosophical argument. The proof is a soaring piece of architecture, as unique and as lovely as Chartres Cathedral. Godel took Hilbert's formalized axioms of mathematics as his building blocks and built out of them a lofty structure of ideas into which he could finally insert his undecidable arithmetical statement as the keystone of the arch. The proof is a great work of art. It is a construction, not a reduction. It destroyed Hilbert's dream of reducing all mathematics to a few equations, and replaced it with a greater dream of mathematics as an endlessly growing realm of ideas. Godel proved that in mathematics the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Every formalization of mathematics raises questions that reach beyond the limits of the formalism into unexplored territory. ~ Freeman Dyson

Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives. ~ Jim Hightower

In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth. Someone once told me, "Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished." In both Buddhist and Confucian writings of the philosophers of former times, there are also many missing chapters. ~ Yoshida Kenko

I see what other people do and what songwriters don't. They don't get out and take care of themselves. Producers turn themselves into a massive brand. Songwriters tend to be under someone else's umbrella. If you're building your own legacy, it can't be under an umbrella. ~ Ester Dean

The most important priority for every leader should be building relationships based on the principles of love. ~ Sunday Adelaja

They're my peace offering for starting over. I gave you one once before, only to deceive you in the most unimaginable way. But not this time, this time, I assure you, my intentions are pure."
"So, you're not trying to seduce me?" I asked, only to prolong what I knew was coming. I wasn't sure I was ready for it. His lids were getting heavy and I could feel the sexual tension building between us.
There was a gentle pressure at the back of my neck, pulling me closer, his face so close I could smell the wine we shared on his breath.
"I said my intentions were pure. That doesn't mean I don't intend to seduce you, Cassie. ~ L.J. Kentowski