Old Dog Quotes

It is hard to teach an old dog tricks. ~ William Camden

The greatest trick you can teach an old dog is how to learn new tricks. ~ J.S. Davey

You can't teach an old dog new dog new tricks. Now,you can give an old dog new toys. And we've got one here! ~ Si Robertson

What I feel in that kitchen is the way humans are so flawed and so perfect, and I want to share bodies. You know your old dog? That's how I feel - I want to climb on people, breathe their breath, lick the inside of stranger's mouths. I don't know these two, but who do we ever know, really, past the skin? How do we get there? ~ Monica Drake

I like dogs
Big dogs
Little dogs
Fat dogs
Doggy dogs
Old dogs
Puppy dogs
I like dogs
A dog that is barking over the hill
A dog that is dreaming very still
A dog that is running wherever he will
I like dogs. ~ Margaret Wise Brown

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart. ~ Erica Jong

The house stank; a stench all its own pervaded every corner. It was a threnody in the key of Cat minor, with a ground-bass of Old Dog, and modulations of old people, waning lives, and relinquished hopes. ~ Robertson Davies

Cerise! Come and kiss me, you red haired harpy," Izrayl bellowed. She smiled and moved to kiss his stubbly cheek. He held her tight and squeezed.
"How goes it Old Dog," Cerise said fondly to her temporary captor.
"Still alive," he grinned salaciously at her. "And still young enough to learn some new tricks if you are the one doing the teaching."
"Try it and I will neuter you," Cerise threatened and tugged on his braid. "You dogs, all you think of is hunting, fighting and fucking."
"What else is there?" Izrayl growled in the back of his throat and raised an eyebrow at her suggestively. ~ Amy Kuivalainen

A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can't get it by breeding for it, and you can't buy it with money. It just happens along. ~ E.B. White

He was a funny old dog. He liked strawberries. ~ Margaret Wise Brown

No matter how much you screw up your own life by the wrong decisions that you make, it's never too late to do the right thing and change your ways and you can teach old dogs new tricks. ~ Will Ferrell

I have had a great misfortune; my dear old dog is dead. ~ Mary Russell Mitford

In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair like an old dog and saying: 'Dickie, my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight? ~ Donna Tartt

The ego is like a tired old dog. We can never kill it, so put it out on the back porch, let it rest there, and step around it. ~ Carlos Castaneda

I think I want a house of my own," I start, the words a discovery as they leave my mouth. "Something small, so I don't have much housework, but enough room for a proper library. I want a lot of books. And I wouldn't mind a good old dog to walk with me. And a bakery I go to every morning where they know my name. ~ Mackenzi Lee

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news. ~ Charles A. Dana

Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played tricks on me enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can;t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a-laying up sin and suffering for the both of us, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart almost breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hooky this evening, and I'll just be obleeged to make him work tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child. ~ Mark Twain

They hacked down trees widening rings around their central halls and blistered the land with peasant huts and pigeon fences till the forest looked like an old dog dying of mange. they thinned out the game, killed birds for sport, set accidental fire that would burn for days. their sheep killed hedges, snipped valleys bare, and their pigs nosed up the very roots of what might have grown. hrothgar's tribe made boats to drive farther north and west. there was nothing to stop the advance of man. huge boars fled at the click of a harness. wolves would cower in the glens like foxes when they caught that deadly scent. i was filled with a wordless, obscurely murderous unrest. ~ John Gardner

He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant. ~ Gene Hill

You can teach an old dog new tricks. You just don't want to see the dog doing them. ~ Bill Cosby

She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. (last lines) ~ Kate Chopin

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

I haven't fought with anyone else in over two thousand years. (Kyrian)
Well, you're never too old to learn. (Amanda)
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. (Kyrian)
There's no time like the present. (Amanda)
Time is of the essence. (Kyrian)
God helps those who help themselves. (Amanda)
You're not going to let me win this, are you? (Kyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm an old dog; I don't get too excited. I don't get caught up in all the mass hysteria. ~ Tim Howard

There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you. I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you.
- Miles Vorkosigan ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Come on cats, let's go.
Let's teach those old dog cheap trick beatniks some new kicks and bottle up and blow. ~ Harry Whitewolf

I'm like an old dog, I hate to be run off from home. ~ Doc Watson

Gideon, you old dog, you have taken a mate," the Prince accused with humor sparkling from those fathomless eyes. "And I believe she finds me quite attractive."
Gideon heard Legna gasp in shock and tried to repress a feral smile as he became aware of the burning blush she sprouted.
"I would not cross that particular line even as a joke, Damien," Gideon warned him smoothly.
"My apologies. I could not resist." Damien looked steadily into Gideon's eyes for a moment. "She must be young, not to realize I would be able to read her presence within your mind."
"She is young, but I would not underestimate her if I were you. ~ Jacquelyn Frank

He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother's arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it. ~ Kate Atkinson

Death is like an old dog. He always knows when you are at his door. ~ Pseudonymous Bosch

I went to a Radiohead concert with Mr. Aaron Paul and became instantly hip. He's a great tweeter and took a photograph of the two of us. He said, 'Man, look at this! We've already got 800 hits in five minutes!' So this old dog became hip. ~ Pierce Brosnan

I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young dog, or better still, an old dog. But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu, etc. These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks. ~ Samuel Beckett

The farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog. ~ Jane Bowles

The old dog barks backward without getting up I can remember when he was a pup. ~ Robert Frost

THE MISCHIEVOUS DOG
There was once a Dog who used to snap at people and bite them without any provocation, and who was a great nuisance to every one who came to his master's house. So his master fastened a bell round his neck to warn people of his presence. The Dog was very proud of the bell, and strutted about tinkling it with immense satisfaction. But an old dog came up to him and said, "The fewer airs you give yourself the better, my friend. You don't think, do you, that your bell was given you as a reward of merit? On the contrary, it is a badge of disgrace."
Notoriety is often mistaken for fame. ~ Aesop

At first, when she started to lose weight, everyone commented on how great she looked. Finally, those last ten, ugly pounds were gone. But then the weight just kept coming off. She was left with sagging jowls and eyes that had lost their glimmer, like an old dog relegated to a sleepy corner. ~ Jennifer Valoppi

The way an old dog finds his way back over miles and miles to his home when somebody trues to shove him off on a farm someplace, that is how I find my way back to the library. It's my place, even more than my place is. ~ Chris Lynch

Betty Knot was sitting on the porch now with her old mongrel dog. Both of them fast and peacefully asleep in the shade, almost comically so, the widow leaning in her rocker with her mouth open wide and the old dog sprawled at her feet. And seeing them there made him smile and then unexpectedly saddened him with a sudden forceful clarity. It was as though he had looked behind the scene on the porch across the street into some terrible scene in the future. Because they each were all the other had in the world by way of comfort and it was possible for him to understand in that moment the cruel eventuality that was blooming there. They were both so damn old. He sensed a sort of fate about them and sensed too that it would descend upon them soon, that soon either the woman would lose the dog or the dog would lose the woman and they had been together since the dog was a pup. When death came to one the other would be left alone, no familiar hand to pat the dog or cool wet nose to nuzzle the hand, and there would be no consoling either dog or woman, something fragile lost forever in some awful rending. ~ Jack Ketchum

From Orient Point

The art of living isn't hard to muster:
Enjoy the hour, not what it might portend.
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her

unless they're in the here and now, and just her
willing largesse free-handed to a friend.
The art of living isn't hard to muster:

groom the old dog, her coat gets back its luster;
take brisk walks so you're hungry at the end.
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her

to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept. Till then, pretend
the art of living isn't hard to muster.

Cooking, eating and drinking are a cluster
of pleasures. Next time, don't go round the bend
when someone makes you promises. Don't trust her

past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend.
The art of living isn't hard to muster.

You never had her, so you haven't lost her
like spare house keys. Whatever she opens,
when someone makes you promises, don't. Trust your
art; go on living: that's not hard to muster. ~ Marilyn Hacker

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty. They depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big. ~ Erica Jong

A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates. ~ Josh Billings

Old dogs care about you, even when you make mistakes. ~ Tom T. Hall

Dad on Child-rearing: "There's no education superior to travel. Think of The Motorcycle Diaries, or what Montrose St. Millet wrote in Ages of Exploration: 'To be still is to be stupid. To be stupid is to die.' And so we shall live. Every Betsy sitting next to you in a classroom will only know Maple Street on which sits her boxy white house, inside of which whimper her boxy white parents. After your travels, you'll know Maple Street, sure, but also wilderness and ruins, carnivals and the moon. You'll know the man sitting on an apple crate outside a gas station in Cheerless, Texas, who lost his legs in Vietnam, the woman in the tollboth outside Dismal, Delaware, in possession of six children, a husband with black lung but no teeth. When a teacher asks the class to interpret Paradise Lost, no one will be able to grab your coattails, sweet, for you will be flying far, far out in front of them all. For them, you will be a speck somewhere above the horizon. And thus, when you're ultimately set loose upon the world..." He shrugged, his smile lazy as an old dog. "I suspect you'll have no choice but to go down in history. ~ Marisha Pessl

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. There are three faithful friends in our life,an old wife,an old dog and ready money. A real friend is one who always warms you.
Love is blind. Friendship close it eyes. ~ Benjamin Franklin

You can say any fool thing to a dog and the dog will just give you this look that says, 'My GOSH, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that! ~ Dave Barry

My little old dog
a heart-beat
at my feet ~ Edith Wharton

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made.
-The Gay Old Dog ~ Edna Ferber

There are three faithful friends, an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. ~ Benjamin Franklin

If the old dog barke he gives counsell.
[If the old dog barks, he gives counsel.] ~ George Herbert

Good quote: Lee was thirty-nine, still what we would consider a fairly young man, but for the dog-for all dogs- time dashes forward at a speed we humans can hardly perceive, until the day we realize that the puppy is no longer a puppy and has outpaced us. And yet a part of us lags behind, still seeing that old dog as a young dog even when he is standing at life's finish line.(less) ~ Susan Orlean

Maybe there wasn't, after all, a clear motivation for any of the things that people did. Maybe they just did them for no reason at all or because of stupidity or selfishness or cowardice or anger or for reasons that made no rational sense - because the clouds happened to be a particularly gloomy shade of gray that day, because the barking of an old dog chained to a sycamore tree just happened to sound exactly like the crunch of soldiers' boots on gravel or the hum of bees like an engine in the head driving you mad. ~ John Gregory Brown

Let's just say that if you were stealing TVs instead of thoughts, you would have been caught by a half-deaf, mostly blind, fifteen year old dog three robberies ago. ~ Elizabeth Chandler

And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing. ~ Mary Oliver

Who's this - alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I - It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most - we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks ~ William Camden

that there was more life in the old dog, Atari then sold the newly designed 2600 as the Atari 2600 Jr for less than 50 dollars, as well as the 7800 that had been gathering dust in storage for over a year. Videogames were, once again, the big thing, and in ~ Imagine Publishing

Hey, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Now, you can give an old dog new toys! And, hey, we've got one here. ~ Si Robertson

I made a sudden decision. "and my dog has followed me from town and cought up with us here. I left him with friends, but he must have chewed his rope. here, boy, come to heel."
I'll chew your heel off for you, Nighteyes offerd savagely, but he came, following me out into the cleared yard.
"Damn big dog," Nick observed. He leaned forward. "looks more than half a wolf to me."
"Some in Farrow have told me that. It's a buck breed. We use them for harding sheep."
You will pay for this. I promise you.
In answer I leaned down to pat his shoulder and then scratch his ears. Wag your tail, Nighteyes.
"He's a loyal old dog. I should have known he wouldn't be left behind."
The things i endure for you. He wagged his tail. Once. ~ Robin Hobb

Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I can't think of anything that brings me closer to tears than when my old dog - completely exhausted after a hard day in the field - limps away from her nice spot in front of the fire and comes over to where I'm sitting and puts her head in my lap, a paw over my knee, and closes her eyes, and goes back to sleep. I don't know what I've done to deserve that kind of friend. ~ Gene Hill

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. ~ Henry David Thoreau

A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but also when they are old and past service. ~ Plutarch

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming , no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming, she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear. ~ Amy Tan

My mother's people are Old Order Mennonite - horse and buggy Mennonite, very close cousins to the Amish. I grew up in Lancaster County and lived near Amish farm land. ~ Beverly Lewis

We're so arrogant, aren't we? So afraid of age, we do everything we can to prevent it. We don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old with someone. Someone who doesn't drive you to commit murder or doesn't humiliate you beyond repair. ~ Cecelia Ahern

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war. ~ Erica Jong

In the summer, it's short greens and tall greens and sometimes a smudge of other colors. In winter, it's squinty white,and sometimes deep when it looks flat. In early spring and late fall, the town gets brown and black, like an old photograph. ~ Blue Balliett

I introduced Nora as my wife, though that was a lie. Old people, that's what they wanted to hear. If you were married, you were mature, reliable, exactly like them, because in their day men and women didn't just live together
they made a commitment, they had children and went on cruises and built big houses on lakes and filled them with all the precious trinkets and manufactured artifacts they'd collected along the way. ~ T.C. Boyle

Poor Desdemona! I am glad thy father's dead.
Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief
Shore his old thread in twain. ~ William Shakespeare

It all seems like a dream, now.
Gray, old men ambling about a bookstore
in the old Jewish quarter of Paris.

As everything is suddenly soaked a dark stain,
we duck inside a door stoop.
I gently pull you closer
and look into your eyes,
azure pools that invite me to sink
into their sensuous depths.

Time slows as everything revolves around us
and planets, stars and constellations
slowly turn like clockwork,
as we dream our love,
our universe - together.

As darkness drains from the early morning sky,
I pull you up to my chest and whisper,
"Do you remember when we were caught in the rain in Paris?"
You squeeze my hand.

It all seems like a dream, now.
One love, one dream, one universe,
with only you and me,
together,
dreaming our love forever. ~ Jeffrey A. White

When you turn off onto whatever secondary road you need to take, and you're following its twists and turns back into the mountains, and the ground is steep to either side of you, opening every now and then on a meadow, or an old house, you think, 'Here, there are secret places. ~ John Langan

Life changes and that's cool. Growing older is amazing, I think. ~ Dane DeHaan

[From The Old Order]

The Grandmother always treated her animal friends as if they were human beings temporarily metamorphosed . . . ~ Katherine Anne Porter

I have the libido of a 15-year-old boy. My sex drive is so high. I'd rather have sex with Brian all the time than leave the house. He doesn't mind. ~ Megan Fox

We shall not benefit from reading the Old Testament unless we look for and meditate on the glory of Christ in its pages. ~ John Owen

The meal was breakfast: the subject, utility clothing. 'As for the stuff they're turning out for men nowadays,' said Mr Thwaites bitterly, 'I wouldn't give it to my Valet.'

Mr Thwaites' valet was quite an old friend. An unearthly, flitting presence, whose shape, character, age, and appearance could only be dimly conceived, he had been turning up every now and again ever since Miss Roach had known Mr Thwaites. Mostly he was summoned into being as one from whom all second-rate, shoddy, or inferior articles were withheld. But sometimes things were good enough for Mr Thwaites' valet, but would not do for Mr Thwaites. ~ Patrick Hamilton

I didn't get to hear the rest, as the skipper poked a red, peeling face out of the wheelhouse and told Billy Lee to get back to work or he wasn't getting paid. The guy looked to be a hundred years old and four feet tall, but when he opened his mouth, even I jumped. ~ Vincent H. O'Neil

Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels. ~ Desmond Tutu

Little by little old age renders the body less powerful. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Rid yourself of the old myth, if it has been plaguing you, that money is not important. It is important - vitally important! It is just as important as the food it buys, the shelter it provides, the doctor bills it pays, and the education it helps to procure. ~ Venita VanCaspel

Chester watched it shining clearly above the picnic grounds. Soon an astronaut would step down off the LEM of Apollo 11 and plant his foot on what had once been hallowed ground. Science would intrude on what for all known time had been the sole domain of poets and dreamers alone: the moon. After that, well
one thing was for certain: no matter what they found up there, it would never again be as easy for a father to tell his young son that the mysterious ball of light that appeared in the heavens each night was really just a hunk of old cheese floating in the sky. Nothing would ever be that simple again. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

I reached the privy and emptied the slop pail, and so forth.
And so forth, Grace? asks Dr.Jordan.
I look at him. Really if he does not know what you do in a privy there is no hope for him.
What I did was, I hoisted my skirts and sat down above the buzzing flies, on the same seat everyone in the house sat on, lady or lady's maid, they both piss and it smells the same, and not like lilac neither, as Mary Whitney used to say. What was in there for wiping was an old copy of the Godey's Ladies' Book; I always looked at the pictures before using them. Most were of the latest fashions, but some were of duchesses from England and high-society ladies in New York and the like. You should never let your picture be in a magazine or newspaper if you can help it, as you never know what ends your face may be made to serve, by others, once it has got out of your control.
But I do not say any of this to Dr. Jordan. And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he is entitled to. Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him. ~ Margaret Atwood

From my childhood, I remember a tiny old woman named Mary, made pale and almost translucent by time. Mary's childhood memories extended back to the confusing and violent finale of the Civil War, and she told stories of brutal murders in those days and refused to name some of the killers, as if dead men might still be prosecuted in the late 1950s. ~ Charles Frazier

It was one of those rare and beautiful days in winter when England remembers that there is a sun. The star of the day, pale but nevertheless still splendid, was setting in the horizon, glorifying at one the heavens and the sea with bands of fire, and casting upon the tower and the old houses of the city a last ray of gold which made the windows sparkle like the reflection of a conflagration. ~ Alexandre Dumas

I write in an old-school paneled study in the middle of a large farmhouse in rural Iowa. I have pine floors, a big cherry desk, and a small window. The room is cluttered with papers and books and gifts from friends. ~ Dean Bakopoulos

... imagine that the earth - four thousand six hundred million years old - [were] a forty-six-year-old woman ... . It had taken the whole of the Earth Woman's life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The Earth Woman was eleven years old ... when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was forty. She was over forty-five - just eight months ago - when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole of human civilization as we know it began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman's life ... . It was an awe-inspiring and humbling thought ... that the whole of contemporary history, the World Wars, the War of Dreams, the Man on the Moon, science, literature, philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge - was no more than a blink of the Earth Woman's eye. ~ Arundhati Roy

Discipline isn't about showing a dog who's boss; it's about taking
responsibility for a living creature you have brought into your world. ~ Cesar Millan

The process of healing also needs to include the pursuit of truth, not for the sake of opening old wounds, but rather as a necessary means of promoting justice, healing and unity. ~ Pope Francis

My name is Jack Reacher, and once I was a military cop, with heavy emphasis on the past tense. I have been out nearly as long as I was in. But old habits die hard. I had stepped into the bar the same way I always step anywhere, which is carefully. ~ Lee Child

Old radicals never changed. They just got law degrees and updated their bag of tricks. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Whereever you are in life, however old you are, begin thinking about every day as the first day of your life. ~ Chris Guillebeau

Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends. ~ James Thurber

Day-old bread? Sadly, in America a lot of day-old bread just becomes nasty. Italian day-old bread, not having any preservatives in it, just becomes harder and it doesn't taste old. What I would warn people about is getting bread that's loaded with other things in it, because it starts to taste old. ~ Mario Batali

A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'll die a crazy old man! ~ Conor McGregor

An old man emerged from the ditch, a creature
Of mud and wild autumn winds capering
Like a hare across a bouldered field, across
And through the stillness of time unhinged
That sprawls patient and unexpected in the
Place where battle lies spent, unmoving and
Never again moving bodies strewn and
Death-twisted like lost languages tracking
Contorted glyphs on a barrow door, and he
read well the aftermath, the disarticulated script
Rent and dissolute the pillars of self toppled
Like termite towers all spilled out round his
Dancing feet, and he shouted in gleeful
Revelation the truth he'd found, in these
Red-fleshed pronouncements - "There is peace!"
He shrieked. "There is peace!" and it was
No difficult thing, where I sat in the saddle
Above salt-rimed horseflesh to lift my crossbow
Aim and loose the quarrel, skewering the madman
To his proclamation. "Now," said I, in the
Silence that followed, "Now, there is peace. ~ Steven Erikson

Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people
are right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths,the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. ~ E.B. White

But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.[..]And if it is so, why is it? she asked, hostile.They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust?Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe.They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I've been in love with Kevin since I was sixteen years old, babe. There's no falling when I've never been able to get back up from it. ~ Posy Roberts

Whatever are the difficulties in believing that the Old and New Testaments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the Maker of the universe. He considered Butler's argument as conclusive against the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but what can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves. ~ Christopher Hitchens