Cages Quotes

The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered. ~ H.L. Mencken

Sportswriters are a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks, a gang of vicious monkeys jerking off in a zoo cage ... more disgusting by nature than maggots oozing out the carcass of a dead animal. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

This is a sport where you get your ego checked on a regular basis, whether it's in the cage or it's at practice. ~ Carlos Condit

In the cage there is food, not much, but there is food-outside are only great stretches of freedom. ~ Nicanor Parra

Oh, September. Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like. [ ... ] If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless. But you are stubborn, and do not listen to your elders. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Nearly every female that crossed Cage's path fell immediately into a big bucket of fucking stupid. ~ Madeline Sheehan

Those who use language and have nothing but language to express themselves live in a cage that cannot feel comfortable. ~ Martin Walser

Mosquitoes, how wonderful! No one puts them in cages or makes pets out of them. ~ Marty Rubin

That was Genus Homo, species Whowantstofuckus, subspecies Headup Hisassia. Let us move on to the cages with the interesting animals.
Jacob to Ben describing JT ~ Z.A. Maxfield

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries
escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky
usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins ~ Joanne Harris

I don't use cages - I've been surrounded by 150 to 200 sharks, not once ever been close to being bitten. ~ Michael Muller

Freedom and wildness, that which we were born into, is a grand mystery and miracle that creates a openness reserved not for barring us in but for keeping us out of cages. It is our ability to find the truth that has been a survival tool for our species both individually and corporately. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

Just because we have birds inside us, we don't have to be cages. ~ Dean Young

That?" I glanced back to the door where JT had disappeared. "That was Genus Homo, species Whowantstofuckus, subspecies Closeted Headup Hisassia. Let us move on to the cages with the interesting animals."
Jacob "Yasha" Livingston ~ Z.A. Maxfield

I think a bird is the worst present you can give somebody because it's guilt-ridden. This animal has the gift of flight, and you put it in a cage and watch it not do that until it dies. ~ Kyle Dunnigan

This isn't a bargain, it's a deal."
"I'm not in the business of striking deals with girls in cages."
I twist my lips into a cruel smile. "Then by all means, let me out."
Elian laughs, pulls a pistol out, and shakes his head once again.
"You know," he says, approaching the cell, "I think I might like you. Thing is" – he taps his gun against my prison – "there's a difference between liking someone and trusting them."
"I wouldn't know. I've never done either. ~ Alexandra Christo

Just because we have birds inside is, we don't have to be cages. -from Instant Recognition between Strangers ~ Dean Young

A Prayer for The Wild at Heart

A prayer for the wild at heart
Kept in cages
I know how you long
To run wild and free
To feel your blood pumping
To hear your heart beating faster
Yet you can't
For you are locked inside a prison
One that you will never escape
I can hear your howls of pain
And your growls of frustration
Pacing back and forth
Clawing at the bars
Tearing at your skin
Begging to be set free
Your eyes are wild of full hate
You face bears no smile
Only a snarl of anger

Blood drips from your hands
Blood from the people
Who didn't understand
Your fearful whimpers fill the air
As you look to the full moon
And let out a mournful howl
Your voice gets louder
As I and the others join in
We let our pleads fill the night
As we sit in our cold cages
Praying someone will hear

- Tennessee Williams ~ Tennessee Williams

Whenever I visit a market and see the chickens crowded together in tiny cages that give them no room to move around and spread their wings and the fish slowly drowning in the air, my heart goes out to them. People have to learn to think about animals in a different way, as sentient beings who love life and fear death. I urge everyone who can to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet. ~ Dalai Lama

The prisoners stand on the other side, three of whom require their own cages. He hands out the Eucharist through a sort of mail slot in the grate. They have slots in each cage, he tells me, and when they do the sign of peace, they can reach out to each other. One time an inmate held up his fingertip to a tiny hole in the grate. Fr. Williams placed his hand against the grate as well. "It really sums up the whole thing. You have this human being reaching through a cage to touch another human being within a bigger cage, within a prison. ~ Kerry Weber

You drew a bird that was here, a kind of sweet chanticleer. But with a terrible fear that the cage couldn't tame ~ Aimee Mann

What exists beneath the sea?
I'd always pictured it in colors of emerald and aquamarine, where black velvet fish with sequined eyes swim among plankton.
But, when my eyes adjust, I see gray stones, lost anchors, wet wood, buttons, hooks, and eyes, the salem witches who wouldn't float, stars and stripes, missing vessels, windup toys, the souls of Romeo and Juliet, peaches, cream, pistons, screams, cages of ribs and birds, tunnels, nutcracker soldiers, satin bows, drugstore signs, Pandora box ripped open at its hinges. ~ Kelly Easton

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage. ~ David Mitchell

Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return. ~ Suzanne Collins

How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? ~ William Blake

I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams. ~ Anais Nin

Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage ~ Richard Paul Evans

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Being kind to animals is not enough. Avoiding cruelty is not enough. Housing animals in more comfortable, larger cages is not enough. Whether we exploit animals to eat, to wear, to entertain us, or to learn, the truth of animal rights requires empty cages, not larger cages. ~ Tom Regan

To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage. ~ Julian Assange

She once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear. ~ Katie Roiphe

Those blue eyes that had stopped my heart the first time she looked at me found me in the crowd. -Cage ~ Abbi Glines

There's a difference between unspoken and unsaid," Jaycee says. "Just because chimpanzees cannot speak doesn't mean they have nothing to say; the ability to vocalize thoughts is not the same as the ability to acquire and use language ... Language is really just a systematic means of communication through symbols or sounds. Almost all animals use language. The problem is that when it comes to the issue of language, humans are incredibly narcissistic. Since we literally hold the key to their cages, our language is the only one that counts. ~ Neil Abramson

I scroll past images every bit as violent and beautiful as Jeb's paintings: luminious, rainbow-skinned creatures with bulbous eyes and sparkly, silken wings who carry knives and swords; hideous, naked hobgoblins in chains who crawl on all fours and have corkscrew tails and cloven feet like pigs; silvery pixielike beings trapped in cages and crying oily black tears. ~ A.G. Howard

Dear Francesca, tell me, is this a succesful party, in your view? Is this the best we can do? I know that you have always wanted to meet Kong; now that you have met him and he has said whatever he has said to you (I saw you smiling), can we go home? I mean you to your home, me to my home, all these others to their own homes, cells, cages? I am feeling a little ragged. What made us think that we could escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholism, being dissapointed, having children? Say 'No,' refuse me once and for all, let me try something else. Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what 'right' was. Is it really important to know that this movie is fine, and that one terrible, and to talk intelligently about the difference? Wonderful elegance! No good at all! ~ Donald Barthelme

I don't want to lose ever. I don't want to lose at anything. I want to make weight faster than the guy that I'm fighting if we both go into the sauna at the same time. When we're doing interviews I want to have quicker wit so that I can make him feel stupid. I want to drink my water faster. And then when we get in the cage I want to beat him up. I don't think people really truly understand the extent that I go to try not to use. ~ Daniel Cormier

I don't like cages, ~ Richelle Mead

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. ~ Khalil Gibran

A 5'5", 182-pound, 43-year-old man wearing khaki shorts and a UCLA sweatshirt runs to Nicolas Cage in a manner he will spend the rest of the night describing to his slightly bored but equally boring date as "ambushing." No one else is on the street and Nicolas Cage is unable to avoid the man, who wants a picture with his "brand new Droid." As the man, who actually seems to be vibrating and hovering in an almost hummingbird-like way, adjusts his stance for the third attempt at a picture his crotch lightly brushes Nicolas Cage's upper thigh, causing his face to shift from "bemused resignation" to, strangely, "serene bliss," for what will become the man's inaugural Facebook profile picture. ~ Megan Boyle

The heart is pure theater throbbing in its cage palpably as any nightingale. ~ Richard Selzer

I'll get a nice little break, after doing Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Whether I'm in [his show], I don't know, but there's The Defenders. ~ Mike Colter

You speak to me in locked cages.
In open sentences with closed meanings.
In riddles I can never seem to understand.

Around you Nkem, I feel lost.
Un-at-home. Dismembered.

In many small bits.
And in tiny minuscule pieces. ~ Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

Tires. Drums. Steel cages.
Your place is like Disneyland! ~ Geonard Yleana

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves. ~ Margaret Atwood

Friends don't build cages for each other. ~ Karen Marie Moning

It is the silence between the notes that makes the music; it is the space between the bars that cages the tiger. ~ Zen Saying

Far too often, people are woefully predictable. And I know many things. It's a curse. Here's something else I know: You are not doomed to be your parents. You can break the cycle. You can be whoever you want to be. But you will pay a price. You parents and everyone else will punish you if you choose to be you and not them. That's the price of your freedom. The cage is unlocked, but everyone is too scared to walk out because they whack you when you try, and they whack you hard. They want you to be scared, too. They want you to stay in the cage. But once you are a few steps beyond the trapdoor, they can't reach you anymore, so the whacking stops. That's another secret: They're too afraid to follow. They adore their own cages. ~ Matthew Quick

There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner. ~ William Shakespeare

I love Nic Cage. He was so much fun to work with. ~ Diane Kruger

I imagine him grown up and finished with med school, patients lying on the operating table - reaching inside people's rib cages, fixing their broken hearts. ~ Katie Cotugno

This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony.

This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They a ~ Arved Mark Ashby

Some people live in cages with bars built from their own fears and doubts. Some people live in cages with bars built from other people's fears and doubts; their parents, their friends, their brothers and sisters, their families. Some people live in cages with bars built from the choices others made for them, the circumstances other people imposed upon them. And some people break free. ~ C. JoyBell C.

You get hit by one of those right hands or an uppercut or a left hook by Mark Hunt, then you know that **** is on and that cage is locked, and there's nowhere to go. ~ Bill Goldberg

The world was becoming a zoo, without cages. ~ James Patterson

Cages are still cages,
even when they're designed to look just like castles.
- illusionist ~ Amanda Lovelace

As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy. ~ Peter Singer

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages. ~ Alain De Botton

If there was anything she had learned from her mother, it was the painful understanding that cages come in all sizes - some even have white picket fences, four walls, and a front door. ~ Jamie Ford

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words. ~ John Wyndham

I couldn't handle the rules the Queen has to live by at all, and very few of us could. It's a golden cage, really. You're never alone in that role - you are always surrounded by security. ~ Helen Mirren

The truth of the matter is, the soul is a monstrous beast. The heart a most unwieldy and a fair weather friend. Why else woud ribs be cages ~ Anonymous

it seems a shame to have to sneak to get to the truth.To make the truth such a dirty old nasty thing.You gotta sneak to get to the truth, the truth is condemned.The truth is in the gas chamber.The truth has been in your stockyards.Your slaughterhouses.The truth has been in your reservations, building your railroads, emtying your garbage.The truth is in your ghettos.In your jails.In your young love,not in your courts or congress where the old set judgement on the young.What the hell do the old know about the young?They put a picture of old George on the dollar and tell you that he's your father, worship him.Look at the madness that goes on, you can't prove anything that happened yesterday.Now is the only thing that's real.Everyday, every reality is a new reality.Every new reality is a new horizon,a brand new experience of living.I got a note last night from a friend of mine.He writes in this note that he's afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his reality, as i save mine.You can't prove anything.There's nothing to prove.Every man judges himself.He knows what he is. You know what you are, as i know what i am,we all know what we are.Nobody can stand in judgement, they can play like they're standing in judgement.They can play like they stand in judgement and take you off and control the masses, with your human body.They can lock you up in penitentiaries and cages and put you in crosses like they did in the past,but it doesn't amount to anything. What they're doing i ~ Charles Manson

Although a million black men can be found in prisons and jails, public acknowledgment of the role of the criminal justice system in "disappearing" black men is surprisingly rare. ... Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages. They did not walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs. ~ Michelle Alexander

Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free ... It's a dangerous world out there, filled with predators ... What would you prefer? A comfortable, safe, warm, cosy life in a cage, or an uncertain life of freedom. ~ Scarlett Thomas

There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it! ~ Jeffrey Hunter

Everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions-everyone but a school bus driver. ~ Laurence J. Peter

I will teach them what it means to put a lion in a cage, Cersei thought. ~ George R R Martin

Every time it starts to get cool, I mean in the middle of autim, I start gettin nutty ideas like I was thinkin about what was forein and diffrent, like for exsample how I'd like to turn into a swallow and get away and fly to countrys where it gets hot, or be an ant so's I could get deep into a cave and eat the stuff I stored away durin the summer or be a snake like what they got in the zoO, the ones they keep lockt up in glass cages thats heated so's they don't get stiff from the cold, which is what happens to poor human beans who cant buy no close cause the price is to high, and cant keep warm cause theys no keroseen, no coal, no wood, no fule oil and besides theys no loot, cause when you go around with bocoo bread you can go into any bar and get some sneaky pete that can be real warmin, even tho it aint good to overdo it cause if you overdos it it gets to be a bad habbit and bad habbits is bad for your body just like they is for youre selfrespeck, and when you start goin downhill cause your actin bad in everythin, they aint nobody or nothin can stop you from endin up a stinkin piece of human garbidge and they never gone give you a hand to haul you up outen the dirty muck you rollin around in, not even if you was a eaglE when you was young and could fly up and over the highest hills, but when you get old you like a highflyin bomber thats lost its moral engines and fall down outen the sky. I jes hope what I been writin down hear do somebody some good so he take a good look at ~ Julio Cortazar

I try to be one of the exceptional people who can live with the complexity of things, who are at peace with the unknown and the unknowable, who leave all the cages open. I tell myself: There's so much that you don't know, you can't know, you aren't ever going to know. ~ Kelly Corrigan

It happens all the time! People are always talking about that explosive moment in their family history that sort of changed everything and rattled the cage, and more times than not it has nothing to do with trans issues. That's why people are relating to this show [Transparent], because our family is their family and they understand that dynamic. ~ Judith Light

People feeling the need to live inside of Faraday cages is a sad reflection on modern society that humans are devolving into living inside of safe spaces. ~ Steven Magee

Birds are not free since Men have invented cages. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable ... so that when we get our 15 minutes in the cage, we don't panic, we don't break down. ~ Greg Jackson

I hate cages. For most folks, they're built from fear and they do it to themselves. Not me. Mine were forged of helplessness. Most kids' are. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Low, a guy doesn't fall in love with you and have you love him back then just throw it away. You're too special. After being loved by you, he can't completely forget. He's haunted by it. I'd bet my life on it. -Cage York ~ Abbi Glines

The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom. ~ Jean Cocteau

I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies. ~ Mindy Kaling

Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. ~ Angela Davis

In this job it's like beasts of prey in a cage ~ Marcelo Rios

As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners, wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor, perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle of writing Antony and Cleopatra - But Shakespeare did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal. Smell remained. Now that they were established in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr. Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs. Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell. He threaded his path through main streets and back streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out, up and down, where they beat brass, where they bake bread, where the women sit combing their hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red stains on the pavement, where leather smells and harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and spit and dice - he ran in and out, always with his nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or with his nose in ~ Virginia Woolf

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage. ~ Charles Bukowski

When I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called 'extreme' shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I'm terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice. ~ Taylor Lautner

We fly into our own gilded cages and then bemoan the bars. ~ Angela Darling

The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us. ~ Frederick Buechner

Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring. ~ Dawn Powell

The most disgusting four letter word in the English language is 'cage'. ~ Philip Wollen

How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? ~ William Blake

Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called Christianity. ~ Rob Bell

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out. ~ Michel De Montaigne

She reminded Juliet of the parrot the shopkeeper owned. Both the woman and bird belonged in cages, preferably the same cage, so the bird could poop on all that velvet and lace. ~ Jordan Elizabeth Mierek

One good thing about being locked in a cage: No responsibility! ~ Kristen Schaal

A bird in a cage is safe but God didn't create birds for that. ~ Paulo Coelho

I'm sitting in a cage with my eye upon the clock. ~ Ray Davies

The freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow. ~ Noam Chomsky

A bird in a cage is not half a bird. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

This seemed to be happening more and more lately out in Greater Los Angeles, among gatherings of carefree youth and happy dopers, where Doc had begun to notice older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he'd seen before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everyone else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin. Like the operatives who'd dragged away Coy Harlingen the other night at that rally at the Century Plaza. Doc Knew these people, he'd seen enough of them in the course of business. They went out to collect cash debts, they broke rib cages, they got people fired, they kept an unforgiving eye on anything that might become a threat. If everything in this dream of prerevolution was in fact doomed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle, and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful and silent, out doing the shitwork, who'd make it happen.
Was it possible, that at every gathering--concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back east, wherever--those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?
'Gee,' he said to himself out loud, 'I dunno... ~ Thomas Pynchon

One must be chary of words because they turn into cages. ~ Viola Spolin

Feet scraped inside-out next to unblemished boots. Black-and-gold Kel uniforms braided into cracked rib cages. Gape-jawed, twisted skulls with eye sockets staring out their sides and strands of tendon knotted through crumbling teeth. A book of profanities written in every futile shade of red the human body had ever devised, its pages upended over the battlefield from horizon to horizon. ~ Yoon Ha Lee

We weren't so different, Finn and I. Cages come in lots of colors and shapes. Some are gilded, while others have a slamming door. But golden handcuffs are still handcuffs. ~ Amy Harmon