Mcgintys Wood Quotes

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. ~ W. H. Auden

For three thousand years it had been the concent's policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo. ~ Neal Stephenson

Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain. ~ Terry Pratchett

19. Before the divine fire is introduced into the substance of the soul and united with it through perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds the soul by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which he disposes it for divine union and transformation in God through love. The very fire of love that afterward is united with the soul, glorifying it, is what previously assailed it by purging it, just as the fire that penetrates a log of wood is the same that first makes an assault on the wood, wounding it with the flame, drying it out, and stripping it of its unsightly qualities until it is so disposed that it can be penetrated and transformed into the fire. Spiritual writers call this activity the purgative way. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

What we call barbecuing in this country is actually direct grilling. In many countries, it also means cooking in an enclosed box with a heat source, ideally wood, all year round. ~ Jamie Oliver

Indeed, if their wristbands asked them the question: "What-Would-Jesus-Buy" - well now, that could very well revolutionize the Christian church in America. ~ Geoffrey Wood

You want to know why you felt that way about me even though you didn't love me. ~ Haruki Murakami

We mark the days by chores that need to be done, the way farm families have always done. Al feeds the hens and horses and pigs, splits wood in the fall, slaughters a pig when the weather turns cold, cuts ice in the winter. I collect eggs from the laying hens and Al drives me into town to sell them. He times the planting so that by the Fourth of July we'll have new peas and by September there's a whole field of corn. Gulls lunge for a feast, ravaging the crop, so Al kills a few and hangs them from poles as warning. During haying season in midsummer, I see him from the dining room window in his visored cap, scything the hay by hand with six hired men walking abreast, forking the newly mown hay onto the hayrack. They haul the hay to the barn, where a block-and-tackle hoist lifts it into the mow. ~ Christina Baker Kline

Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity. ~ Gordon S. Wood

Sweep the garden, any size, said the roshi. Sweeping, sweeping alone as the garden grows large or small. Any song sung working the garden brings up from sand gravel soil through straw bamboo wood and less tangible elements Power song for the hands Healing song for the senses what can and cannot be perceived of the soul. ~ Olga Broumas

She'd never broken a bone, had surgery. But the worst damage didn't leave a mark. When Hellie died, it was as if someone had cut into Alex's chest, cracked her open like balsa wood. What if it really had been like that and she'd had to walk down the street bleeding, trying to hold her ribs together, her heart and her lungs and every part of her open to the world? Instead, the thing that had broken her had left no mark, no scar for her to point to and say, This is where I ended. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I feel no emotional connection to these outwardly human gestures.
I am not there, because I never left Afghanistan. ~ Jake Wood

I would like to see it go back to the wood racquets. To see the touch put back in tennis. ~ Jana Novotna

But artists didn't need to achieve "firsts", and Hughes wanted to be an artist. ~ Diane Wood Middlebrook

Even then, Vanderbilt was the premiere place for clinical pharmacology. ~ Alastair Wood

Love in the Daytime

My lover
Shines like the sun.
I may be burned
Black as a frying pan,
Sweating buckets
And keeling over
With vertigo,
But why worry?
My lover
Shines like the sun.
She pours over my body
And breathes into my soul.
It feels so good
When she lights
My love on fire
Like dry wood.

Translated from Tigrinya by Charles Cantalupo with Ghirmai Negash ~ Reesom Haile

It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange ... How shall a man judge what to do in such times?'
'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

When I'm left on my own I'm my own worst enemy. ~ Ron Wood

Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same? ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

He made sure to miss Josephina's lips by a wide mark. A moment later, the lights extinguished and Tabitha cal ed for a ten-minute break while the stage crew refil ed the rain machine. That night, James had the dream one more time, although this time he felt that it was a true dream and not a direct vision into someone else's reality. It began as always with the flash and whicker of blades and the rattle of old wood. The figure in the dream walked toward the rippling pool and looked in. As always, two faces swam up out of the depths, a young man and a young woman. This time, however, they looked different. He recognized them vaguely as his own long dead grandparents, his dad's mum and dad. They didn't seem to be looking at the girl with the long dark hair. Instead, they seemed to be looking directly at James, where he floated in the darkness next to her. Their faces seemed grave and worried, and although they couldn't speak, they communicated with their eyes : Beware, grandson; watch closely and step lightly. Beware… ~ G. Norman Lippert

I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle. ~ G.K. Chesterton

We've got a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden - a luxury, I know, but it's one of the best investments I've ever made. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

I watched the Lost series in the US and it's great. ~ Elijah Wood

He was a soft-hearted man when it came to anyone he felt was less practically talented than himself, and this covered a lot of people. He would help a man split wood, build a house, or cut a hole in the right place in the ice, not to show off his superior skills but to save the man time. He did these things out of pure helpfulness, with kindness thrown in. ~ Kathleen Winter

The larch ... is not only preserved from decay and the worm by the great bitterness of its sap, but also it cannot be kindled with fire nor ignite of itself, unless like stone in a limekiln it is burned with other wood ... This is because there is a very small proportion of the elements of fire and air in its composition, which is a dense and solid mass of moisture and the earthy, so that it has no open pores through which fire can find its way ... Further, its weight will not let it float in water. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Once your best story's told it, can't be told again. It makes you, then it ruins you. ~ Benjamin Wood

The house felt haunted, like only I understood the way all of our shadows, the ones we'd left, had seeped into the wood and stained it. ~ Ava Dellaira

I'm not a star!!! A star is nothing but a ball of gas!!! ~ Elijah Wood

I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself. ~ Sam Taylor-Wood

Is one of the sins our unbridled economic self-interest, which turns its back on the common good in pursuit of individual wealth? Might it be our careless exploitation and waste of precious natural resources, which threaten future generations with scarcity of water, wood, minerals, clean air, and all those essential things we need to survive? ~ Joanna Leiserson

If I shut my eyes it returns: the evocation of a whole wood, a whole world of wood-darkness and flowers and birds and late summer silence, of a million leaves turning mellowly to death. It becomes then more than the mere memory of a wood, the first and the best wood I have ever known. It is the redistillation of another and more lovely world. ~ H.E. Bates

But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical military parlance, reflecting the ever more precise and technically removed means of killing, the 'enemy' becomes the 'target'. But for the soldiers who personally 'engage' these 'targets', these objects are colloquially 'slotted', 'dropped', 'hit', 'fragged', 'sawn in half', 'smashed' or just plain 'shot'.
Then the soldier will have achieved the noun of a 'kill'.
The author's supposition is that such words are used by the soldier in combat as an attempt to mentally dissociate himself from the reality of his actions, so he can continue to operate as a soldier - and perhaps, when all is finally said and done, as a human being back home. ~ Jake Wood

Chant to him: "An individual thinks for himself." Then roll that around in his head till it means: "If I didn't think of it, it has no bearing on my life. ~ Geoffrey Wood

Married life is absolutely brilliant. ~ Ronnie Wood

The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one ~ Edith Sitwell

And the thing which is missing is love, some feeling for, as well as some understanding of, the inclusive community of rocks and soils, plants and animals, of which we are a part. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only
weird fauna of the coal-seams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metal-workers were elementals, serving the element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and worms to dead wood. The anima of mineral disintegration! ~ D.H. Lawrence

They never lost their way or seemed even momentarily uncertain of their location. They traveled narrow paths cut through tuckamore and bog or took shortcuts along the shoreline, chancing the unpredictable sea ice. Every hill and pond and stand of trees, every meadow and droke for miles was named and catalogued in their heads. At night they navigated by the moon and stars or by counting outcrops and valleys or by the smell of spruce and salt water and wood smoke. It seemed to Newman they had an additional sense lost to modern men for lack of use. ~ Michael Crummey

All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms. ~ Louise Gluck

What is it, fundamentally, that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That a well-turned out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good. He has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in 'misfortune' nor in 'guilt': he comes to terms with himself, with others: he knows how to forget - he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And this totally normal conversation unspools from there, covering the basics: family, siblings, school, favorite composers, favorite movies, favorite wood (for carving puppets), the prehistory of the sandwich, and whether the ancient Romans got their togas caught in the spokes of their unicycles ~ Laini Taylor

You cow,' Estelle added. 'I heard that.' 'Give the woman the geriatric audiology medal,' Estelle said. 'I heard that, too', her mother said, from the other side of the door. ~ Fiona Wood

We'll rock till we drop. We have all agreed this won't be the last time. Everyone's rocking. ~ Ronnie Wood

Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. 'The only principled ground that the Islamic State's opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,' Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy. ~ Graeme Wood

You run into people who want to write poetry who don't want to read anything in the tradition. That's like wanting to be a builder but not finding out what different kinds of wood you use. ~ Gary Snyder