Custodian Quotes

Many building custodians across the country would tell you that UCLA left the shower and dressing room the cleanest of any team. We picked up all the tape, never there soap on the shower floor for someone to slip on, made sure all the showers were turned off and all towels were accounted for. The towels were always deposited in a receptacle, if there was one, or stacked nearly near the door. It seems to me that this is everyone's responsibility-not just the mangers's. Furthermore, I believe it is a form of discipline that should be a way of life, not to please some building custodian, but as an expression of courtesy and politeness that each of us owes to his follow-man. These little things establish a spirit of togetherness and consideration that help unite the team into a solid unit. ~ John Wooden

You are the treasure custodian, cleaning the moon for me, scouring the sky so the stars would shine bright. ~ Lisa Loeb

Doomed and knew it, accepted the doom without either seeking or fleeing it. Loved her brother despite him, loved not only him but loved in him that bitter prophet and inflexible corruptless judge of what he considered the family's honor and its doom, as he thought he loved but really hated in her what he considered the frail doomed vessel of its pride and the foul instrument of its disgrace, not only this, she loved him not only in spite of but because of the fact that he himself was incapable of love, accepting the fact that he must value above all not her but the virginity of which she was custodian and on which she placed no value whatever: the frail physical stricture which to her was no more than a hangnail would have been. Knew the brother loved death best of all and was not jealous, would (and perhaps in the calculation and deliberation of her marriage did) have handed him the hypothetical hemlock. Was two months pregnant with another man's child which regardless of what its sex would be she had already named Quentin after the brother whom they both (she and her brother) knew was already the same as dead... ~ William Faulkner

A garden was one of the few thing in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom. ~ Nelson Mandela

Perhaps we have failed as human beings. Perhaps we have embarrassed ourselves to the natural world. We have been rigorous and willful in all the wrong ways. But it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe you don't want to deal with (marching), the permanent marker and poster board. But try something else. Carry someone's groceries. Chat with the custodian in your office building. Donate blood. Live in Rwanda for a year. Write letters to the Department of Buildings. Learn to knit. It is only going to get better from here on out. ~ Sufjan Stevens

At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world. ~ John O'Donohue

Parliament is more than procedure - it is the custodian of the nation's freedom. ~ John Diefenbaker

When I first wrote 'Papa Hemingway,' there were too many people still alive, and the lawyers for Random House didn't want to OK it. But now all that's been filtered away by the passage of all these people. And having the fortune of surviving, I now feel that I am the custodian of what Ernest wanted the world to know about him and these women. ~ A. E. Hotchner

You are the custodian of your own happiness. What other people say, do or think does not create a basis for your happiness. It is you who decides your own happiness, just like forgiveness. ~ Stephen Richards

I did grow up poor. My mom managed to get a job as a custodian at our church, and it was really just a favor for her, and my dad's an electrician - just a blue-collar family, and the house was usually falling apart. ~ Crystal Bowersox

I have been supremely lucky in my life in that I have known great love, and of course I am the temporary custodian of some incredible and beautiful things. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

As the publisher of FSG and the custodian of its legacy, I have an interested insider's view. ~ Jonathan Galassi

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It is easy enough to see why women came to object to the role of Blondie, a mostly decorative custodian of a degraded, consumptive modern household, preoccupied with clothes, shopping, gossip, and outwitting her husband. But are we to assume that one may fittingly cease to be Blondie by becoming Dagwood? Is the life of a corporate underling - even acknowledging that corporate underlings are well paid - an acceptable end to our quest for human dignity and worth? ~ Wendell Berry

When I discovered that I had been made custodian of this gift, in my earliest childhood, I pledged myself to God to be worthy of it, but I have received uncovenanted mercies all my life. The custodian has too often kept faith on his all-too-worldly terms. ~ Igor Stravinsky

I was taught that a lawyer was supposed to be a custodian of the community's legal and ethical sense. ~ Joe Jamail

Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honour, and in these respects, man always has yielded woman the palm. ~ Maria Montessori

herself - as if he wanted to chase her, seize her, fell her, then consume her, methodically and thoroughly, enjoying every moment of the hunt and the pursuit, and savoring every last mouthful once he caught her. And my, but it seemed warm in her office today. Hannah was going to have to talk to the custodian about her thermostat. The school one, she meant. Her personal thermostat was something to discuss with her doctor at her earliest convenience. Almost thirty-six was way too young for a woman to be experiencing hot flashes. Even if the woman in question had just had a man like Michael Sawyer enter her orifice. Office, she quickly corrected herself. Enter her office. ~ Elizabeth Bevarly

And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

if a man chooses to be promiscuous, he may still turn up his nose at promiscuity. He may still demand a woman be faithful to him, to save him from his own lust. But women have lust, too. Why should they be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, feeder of soul,body and pride of man? ~ Sylvia Plath

Like an ethereal presence
You hang out everywhere.
Not a naughty or scary goblin,
Rather, an inquisitive observer,
A concerned, caring custodian,
Visiting every niche and closet
Where we stuff the undesired
Of our messy, blemished lives,
You haunt territories we ignore,
Hoping we will find you there. ~ Joyce Rupp

She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body. She ~ Elliott Chaze

Still, it makes sense that his insight echoes through my soul when I'm teetering at the edge of insecurity, considering he's Wonderland's wisdom keeper, the custodian of all things mad and daring. ~ A.G. Howard

Justice! Custodian of the world! But since the world errs, justice must be custodian of the world's errors. ~ Ugo Betti

Funnel

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost-new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. The children honored their
separate arts; two became moderately famous,
three married and fattened their delicate share
of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was
a concert pianist. She had a notable career
and wore cropped hair and walked like a man,
or so I heard when prying a childhood car
into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan.
One died a pinafore child, she stays her five
years forever. And here is one that wrote-
I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive
words and scratch out my short marginal notes
and finger my accounts.
back from that great-grandfather I have come
to tidy a country graveyard for his sake,
to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun
and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake.
I like best to think of that Bunyan man
slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale
for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan
of culture to do it big. On this same scale
he built seven arking houses and they still stand.
One, five stories up, straight up like a square
box, still dominates its coastal edge of land.
It is rented cheap in the summer musted air
to sneaker-footed families who pad through
its ro ~ Anne Sexton

Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That's the whole mystery of writing and language and expression - that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things. ~ John O'Donohue

It could be said that a liberal education has the nature of a bequest, in that it looks upon the student as the potential heir of a cultural birthright, whereas a practical education has the nature of a commodity to be exchanged for position, status, wealth, etc., in the future. A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past. The practical educators assume that human society itself is the only significant context, that change is therefore fundamental, constant, and necessary, that the future will be wholly unlike the past, that the past is outmoded, irrelevant, and an encumbrance upon the future -- the present being only a time for dividing past from future, for getting ready.

But these definitions, based on division and opposition, are too simple. It is easy, accepting the viewpoint of either side, to find fault with the other. But the wrong is on neither side; it is in their division...

Without the balance of historic value, practical education gives us that most absurd of standards: "relevance," based upon the suppositional needs of a theoretical future. But liberal education, divorced from practicality, gives something no less absurd: the specialist professor of one or another of the liberal arts, the custodian of an inheritance he has learned much about, but nothing from. ~ Wendell Berry

On the occasion of a visit to Jane Austen's childhood home in Steventon, Hampshire:

"I put my hand down on Jane's desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day. ~ Barbara Pym

The word 'feminine,' as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity. Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out. ~ Marion Woodman

What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an imitation, a thing that is said or unsaid. Sometimes it's who's at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life. But if you are, for any length of time, custodian of the point-- in art, in court, in politics, in lives, in rooms-- it turns out there are rear-guard actions everywhere. To see a thing clearly, and when your vision of it dims, or when it goes to someone else, if you have a gentle nature, keep your silence, that is lovely. Otherwise, now and then, a small foray is worthwhile. Just so that being always, complacently, thoroughly wrong does not become the safest position of them all. The point has never quite been entrusted to me. ~ Renata Adler

About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility. ~ George Wald

If indeed the universe posessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk. ~ Steven Erikson

How you treat:
-the mailman
-the cashier
-the garbage man
-the usher
-the custodian
-the receptionist
-the uber driver
says A LOT about you. ~ Germany Kent

The Masonic movement ... is the custodian of the law; it is the home of the Mysteries and the seat of initiation. It holds in its symbolism the ritual of Deity, and the way of salvation is pictorially preserved in its work. It is a far more occult organization than can be realised, and is intended to be the training school for the coming advanced occultists. In its ceremonials lie hid the wielding of the forces connected with the growth and life of the kingdoms of nature and the unfoldment of the divine aspects in man. ~ Alice Bailey

The Fool in the Tarot deck frequently depicted a boy with a dog at his heels, staring at the sky while he walked blithely off a cliff, burdened only by a bundle on a stick. The diabolist had admitted a relationship to the card.

No single detail was quite right, but much as something might appear similar if one were to unfocus their vision…

The young diabolist walked with the sparrow at his shoulder, eyes on the windows without looking through the windows, walking forward as if he were afraid to stop. His burden here was the gas containers.

No, he was burdened not just by the gas containers, but by some notion of responsibility.

A man, when facing death, aspires to finish what he started.

What had the custodian of the Thorburn estate started? What drove him?

She knew he sought to do good and to vanquish evil, and she could surmise that both good acts and the existence of evil had touched him deeply.

The Fool card was akin to the ace. Depending on the game being played, it was often the lowest card or the highest. Valueless or highly valued. Powerless or powerful.

It all depended on context. He sought to kill the demon, and he would either catastrophically fail or succeed.

This Fool sought to slay the metaphorical dragon. He felt his own mortality, which was quite possibly her fault, in part, and now he rushed to finish the task he'd set for himself. To better the world.

Wildbow

Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom. ~ Charles Dickens

I think when you're working with a character that another writer is acting as - for lack of a better word - custodian of, your obligation as a professional is to not do anything that violates that 'primary' take. ~ Greg Rucka

I'm fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family, and I will be it's custodian and I promise you that I will polish him, and wait on him hand and foot. ~ Eddie Redmayne

Pride begins when someone starts to assume that s/he is the custodian of all truths and attempts to be right in all circumstances, which is IMPOSSIBLE! ~ Assegid Habtewold

No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest. ~ John O'Donohue

… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define.

Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be.

And by the way of the rural what may we say?
A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say.

Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp.

(Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled) ~ Richard McSweeney

The truth is that you are nothing more than the custodian of your inner and outer wealth while you are on this planet. All you have to decide is what kind of custodian do you want to be? Do you want to be a good custodian of your inner and outer wealth? Or a bad custodian? ~ Suze Orman