Ruth Phillips Quotes

Julian presented the food. A fillet of sea bass with perfect griddle marks and a scattering of fennel picked from a nearby hedgerow. There were caramelized carrots, baby la ratte potatoes and a garnish of roasted tomatoes that had made a brief appearance in a painting that afternoon. ~ Red Ochre Press

Q: What can people do to defend their civil liberties?

Phillips: I'm a pacifist, but the most American thing you can do is to dissent, and the most un-American thing you can do is to stifle dissent. When you feel threatened by the suppression of your liberties, you exercise them to the nth degree, you scream your head off every chance you get. You talk to people you don't agree with. Really good advice: Every day, talk to at least two people who don't agree with you. It's the only way it is going to get done. ~ Utah Phillips

The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people ~ Wendell Phillips

I don't care what a lot of anonymous strangers think about restaurants. ~ Ruth Reichl

There were angry clouds building up behind the moutains, black-gray clouds, great clumps of them colored just like cotton balls after Aunt Ruth cleaned off her eye makeup from a big night out, all gunky with mascara and eye shadow. (p 378) ~ Emily M. Danforth

I intend to live as a happy man, though I am not quite ready to live as one, which means I'm not quite ready to die; whatever it is, I'm working on it, trust me ~ Glen Phillips

Just love me, Harry. That's what I wanted to say. Love me like you used to. Like I was special instead of a cross you have to bear. Like the differences between us are good things instead of something awful. I want it to be the way it used to be when you looked at me as though you couldn't believe I was yours. Like I was the most wonderful creature in the world. I know I don't look the way I did then. I know I have stretch marks everywhere, and I know how much you used to love my breasts, and now they're halfway to my knees, and I hate this, and I hate that you don't love me like you used to, and I hate the fact that you're making me
beg! ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died. ~ Ruth Stout

Let's be clear: I love singing at the Met. ~ Susanna Phillips

She loved nothing in the world except this woman's son, wanted him alive more than anybody, but hadn't the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her. Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own [ ... ] Ruth heard the supplication in her words and it seemed to her that she was not looking at a person but at an impulse, a cell, a red corpuscle that neither knows nor understands why it is driven to spend its whole life in one pursuit: swimming up a dark tunnel toward the muscle of a heart or an eye's nerve end that it both nourished and fed from. ~ Toni Morrison

The Ghost

Like angels fierce and tawny-eyed,
Back to your chamber I will glide,
And noiselessly into your sight
Steal with the shadows of the night.
And I will bring you, brown delight,
Kisses as cold as lunar night
And the caresses of a snake
Revolving in a grave. At break
Of morning in its livid hue,
You'd find I had bequeathed to you
An empty place as cold as stone.
Others by tenderness and ruth
Would reign over your life and youth,
But I would rule by fear alone. ~ Roy Campbell, Poems Of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

In a faraway city where the palette was pure and bright, Ruth stirred in her sleep, and smiled ~ Amruta Patil

The play of sunlight is amusement enough for a lazy man ... ~ Walter J. Phillips

A beverage of leisure is a serious business," Shane Bowermaster was known to declare. "There can be no product of pleasure without the inverse on the end of the producer. ~ Jeff Phillips

She can hear the crazy thoughts that are going through your mind before you can even find them. ~ Ruth Ozeki

A landscape painting is essentially emotional in origin. It exists as a record of an effect in nature whose splendour has moved a human heart, and according as it is well or ill done it moves the hearts of others. ~ Walter J. Phillips

Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring. ~ Amy Tan

I decided that it wasn't pretty that I felt, but confident. ~ Ruth Reichl

She was a great cook, but she cooked more for herself than for other people, not because she was hungry but because she was comforted by the rituals of the kitchen. ~ Ruth Reichl

Hey, she's a piratey soul
Full a' vinagar and glitter
She is a song of her own
From down the wrong end of the river
Wild, like the lily-a-passion
Have you ever had the honors
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no
Hey, when your carnival rose
Sows the kiss of belladonna
There aint no takin' it slow
For the avalanches' daughter ~ Grant-Lee Phillips

If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s. ~ Ruth Reichl

Captain Blood, Robin Hood, Don Juan -Flynn had played them all. Sometimes if the mood struck him, he'd even played them well. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Once the next life - the better life, the fuller life - has to be in this one, we have a considerable task on our hands. Now someone is asking us not only to survive but to flourish, not simply or solely to be good but to make the most of our lives. It is a quite different kind of demand. The story of our lives becomes the story of the lives we were prevented from living. (…)
Because we are nothing special - on a par with ants and daffodils - it is the work of culture to make us feel special. (…) This, essentially, is the question psychoanalysis was invented to address: what can of pleasures can sustain a creature that is nothing special? Once the promise of immortality, of being chosen, was displaced by the promise of more life - the promise, as we say, of getting more out of life - the unloved life became a haunting presence in a life legitimated by nothing more than the desire to live it. For modern people, stalked by their choices, the good life is a life lived to the full. We become obsessed, in a new way, by what is missing in our lives: and by what sabotages the pleasures that we seek. ~ Adam Phillips

Annie, just once could you not give me a hard time?"
"Maybe someday, but not today."
"Annie, you're making Theo sad." Neither of them realized Livia had been paying attention to them. She peered around Theo's legs. "I think you should tell him your free secret."
"I don't!" She gave Livia a death glare. "And you'd better not, either."
Livia peered up at Theo. "Then you better tell your free secret."
He stiffened. "Annie doesn't want to hear my free secret."
"You have a free secret?" Annie asked.
"Yes, he does." Livia puffed up with four-year-old self-importance. "And I know it."
Now Theo was the one giving Livia the death glare. "Find some pinecones. A lot of them." He jabbed his hand toward the trees behind the gazebo. "Over there."
Annie could only stand so much. "Later," she said. "We need to get back to the cottage and see if mom's awake."
Livia's face turned into a thundercloud. "I don't want to go!"
"Don't give Annie a hard time," he said. "I'll finish the fairy house. You can see it later."
The fire had disrupted Livia's world. She hadn't had enough sleep, and she was as cranky as only an overstimulated four-your-old could be. "I'm not going!" she cried. "And if you don't let me stay, I'll tell your free secrets!"
Annie grabbed her arm. "You can't tell a free secret!"
"You absolutely can't!" Theo exclaimed.
"I can!" Livia retorted. "If they're both the same! ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

An intensive human rights education for all communities needs to be provided to overcome the old prejudices. ~ Ruth Manorama

I want a real life partner. One who makes me feel like a valuable part of his team. A treasured piece of his life. ~ Ruth Cardello

If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. ~ Babe Ruth

I created my own party. It's called the Sloth and Indolence Party, and I'm running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I've studied the presidency carefully. ~ Utah Phillips

I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can. ~ Babe Ruth

Mountains are personal. They belong to the viewer, the hiker, the skier, the climber ~ Ruth Rudner

Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of what is going on in someone else's head. To me, that is the great mystery of life: what is everyone else thinking? ~ Arthur Phillips

I think that the reason why 'Goats' is called 'Goats' is because you can't give direction to goats. They do what they want. That's the point of this film. ~ Graham Phillips

Ruth, if you don't want to go to law school, you have the best reason in the world and no one would think less of you," Morris said. "But if you really want to go to law school, you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. You will find a way. ~ Irin Carmon

As you emphasize your life, you must localize and define it ... you cannot do everything. ~ Phillips Brooks

It is God's world still. It has been given to man not absolutely, but in trust, that man may work out in it the will of God; given-may we not say?-just as a father gives a child a corner of his great garden, and says, "There, that is yours; now cultivate it." ~ Phillips Brooks

I don't mind the risk, because the risk makes it more interesting ~ Ruth Ozeki

Constance and Merricat are indeed "two halves of the same person," together forming one identity, just as a man and a woman are traditionally supposed to do in marriage. Not finding that wholeness in marriage, Jackson sought it elsewhere … Indeed, the novel, in its final version, is not about "two women murdering a man." It is about two women who metaphorically murder male society and its expectations for them by insisting on living separate from it, governed only by themselves. ~ Ruth Franklin

I know why we lost the Civil War. We must have had the same officials. ~ Bum Phillips

The weight is off my shoulders. I don't live in the past anymore. I look forward, instead of back. ~ Mackenzie Phillips

I just don't accept that there is a trade off between trade and democracy ... what we've got now is an institution that has utterly outgrown its roots which were noble ... the real difference was the introduction of the euro. ~ Ruth Davidson

Very well. May I offer you a glass of champagne?" She indicated a tray on a small table by the entrance, and I nodded and took a frosted flute. I knew I should keep a clear head for tomorrow, but one glass for Dutch courage couldn't hurt ~ Ruth Ware

There you are," he said when she bobbed up. "I was getting worried."
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting till you're ready to drown." He smiled and eased back down on the seat. "And then I'm going to save your life. Dan did it for Phoebe and I'm going to do it for you."
"Dan didn't try to murder her first!" she screamed.
"I go the extra mile. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The best way to keep your daughter out of hot water is to put some dishes in it. ~ Bob Phillips

To make a movie about mayhem, sometimes you have to go to mayhem. ~ Todd Phillips

You never get mad," she said when their server left the table. "Except at me."
"That's not true," he said tightly. "Torie can get me going."
"Torie doesn't count. You were obviously her mother in a previous life. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Like all true eccentrics, he thought other people very odd. ~ Ruth Rendell

We all know the Red Sox did not win a World Series for 86 years after unloading Ruth, and the Cubs just might be carrying some heavy weight for past karmic transgressions. ~ George Vecsey