Tenant Quotes

Inelligence is a tenant in the house of wisdom. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

At the Annexe, at this early hour, I delete you, my darling, my beloved, with your wide soft mouth against my neck. I would rather scrub your bones and place them in the open air, scrub your sternum, labour at your spine, scrub and scrub, with love, each vertebra, as particular as a nose, and lay you in the grass amongst the bluebells. There on your secret triangle of land I would be your most submissive tenant, would lie beside you until rain, wind storms raced, threaded like shoelaces through our missing eyes. ~ Peter Carey

Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle.
Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch' s one-woman show.
Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What's in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again. ~ Woody Allen

Greg was a supernice guy and a good tenant."
"I met him only once, but he seemed pretty cool," I said. "Of course, the neighbor across the street was convinced he was up to no good."
"Oh, my God, that racist bitch? I swear, I wanted to rent the place out to a black Jewish gay couple just to piss her off, but then I figured it wouldn't be fair to the black Jewish gay couple. ~ Diana Rowland

On my mother's side, I come from Midlands engineers and, on my father's, from tenant farmers near Oxford. ~ John Sulston

By the report which he hastened over to Kellynch to make, Admiral Croft was a native of Somersetshire, who having acquired a very handsome fortune, was wishing to settle in his own country, and had come down to Taunton in order to look at some advertised places in that immediate neighbourhood, which, however, had not suited him; that accidentally hearing
(it was just as he had foretold, Mr Shepherd observed, Sir Walter's concerns could not be kept a secret,)
accidentally hearing of the possibility of Kellynch Hall being to let, and understanding his (Mr Shepherd's) connection with the owner, he had introduced himself to him in order to make particular inquiries, and had, in the course of a pretty long conference, expressed as strong an inclination for the place as a man who knew it only by description could feel; and given Mr Shepherd, in his explicit account of himself, every proof of his being a most responsible, eligible tenant. ~ Jane Austen

The row of villas which lines Western Avenue is like a row of pink graves in a field of grey; an architectural image of middle age. Their uniformity is the discipline of growing old, of dying without violence and living without success. They are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labour on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave. ~ John Le Carre

'Venus in Fur' is very Polanski: you have the knife of 'Rosemary's Baby'; you have Thomas disguised as a woman as in 'The Tenant,' when Vanda puts makeup on him, it's like 'Cul de Sac'; the dress of Tess and other details that are very Polanski. He fell in love with the play because it was so much him. ~ Emmanuelle Seigner

The relation of landlord and tenant is not an ideal one, but any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality. ~ George William Russell

In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university. ~ James Hansen

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process...And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realize the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.
And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on...The land so much needed by men was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I did what I thought was best.'
And so you kidnapped me,' she said bitterly.
'If you recall I offered you the option of residing with my relatives. You refused.'
'I want to be independent.'
'One doesn't have to be alone to be independent.'
Victoria couldn't think of a suitable rebuttal to that statement, so she remained silent.
'When I marry you,' Robert said softly, 'I want it to be a partnership in every sense of the word. I want to consult you on matters of land management and tenant care. I want us to decide together how to raise our children. I don't know why you are so certain that loving me means losing yourself. ~ Julia Quinn

Here's my life - I have to mine it, farm it, trade it, tenant it, and when the lease is up it cannot be renewed. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Facebook's headquarters is a two-story building at the end of a quiet, tree-lined street. Zuckerberg nicknamed it the Bunker. Facebook has grown so fast that this is the company's fifth home in six years - the third in Palo Alto. There is virtually no indication outside of the Bunker's tenant. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Crime in the cities is very discouraging. Apartment house dwellers have locks, bolts, chains and bars on their doors. It takes a tenant longer to get out than a burglar to get in. ~ Sam Ewing

A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. ~ William S. Burroughs

Everything in nature has its own intrinsic charm, as the work of its Creator's hand; but the chief beauty of the whole lies in its suggested relations to humanity. Things announce and wait for persons. The house would not have been thus beautifully built and furnished, except for an expected tenant. ~ Lucy Larcom

I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey's "Lovin' Touchin', Squeezin'" was playing on the radio.

"What?" I asked.

"You secretly hate me, don't you." He gestured toward the radio. "You can't stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You're torturing me with this sappy stuff."

"It's Journey. I love this song."

Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge.

"You're joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?"

There's gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment.

"A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD," I lied. "For my birthday."

Wyatt snorted. "It's a good thing you're a terrible liar. Otherwise, I'd be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens."

He continued to thumb through the CDs. "Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I'm wrong here. It's an Air Supply cover band in Spanish." He waved the offending CD in my face. "Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?"

"Some tenant left it behind," I told him. "We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I've got a Barry Manilow in there ~ Debra Dunbar

Sharecropping is the dirty little secret at the root of America's wealth - along with slavery itself. The immense profits generated by the industrious yet impoverished Black "sharecroppers" and "tenant farmers" financed Europe's and America's Industrial Revolution, including the building of their railroads, factories, mills, and their entire infrastructure. It is truthfully asserted that the major cities of America and the Western world were "built with bricks of cotton." Today the debt traps designed to ensnare the working poor and middle class in a lifelong cycle of debt - the high-cost installment loans that charge usurious interest rates of 100% or more, the "payday" loans that charge 400% interest, the extortionate credit card multi-charges, the subprime mortgages with ballooning interest rates, and the home equity loan swindles - are the bastard children of the sharecropping American South. It ~ Reclamation Project

If I am not the legal resident of the apartment you cannot evict me. You cannot evict Mrs. Tuttle, who is the legal resident of the apartment, because she is not living here. Unless you accept my check you are not going to receive any rent for the apartment at all because you cannot rent it to anyone else while I am living here because you cannot evict me so they could move in. Mrs. Tuttle will not pay the rent because she is not living here. Sincerely, Marian Griswold ~ Shirley Jackson

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy
sun, wind and tide. I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Dear Daniel,
How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"?
Lily
Charlotte, NC

Dear Lily,
The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this.

And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." ~ Daniel Handler

[In] NIVO 1, LLC v. Antunez, 217 Cal.App.4th Supp. 1 (2013) The Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court held that a tenant may not be evicted for failure to buy renter's insurance even if the lease requires purchasing insurance. ~ Madeline Howard

Former Sony CEO Amy Pascal - they threw her out of the headquarters, but they gave her a new office on the lot. But she can't move into it because it reeks of pot smoke. Apparently, this is true, the former tenant was Seth Rogan. And he, as we know, smokes so much weed, when he finally exhales, it looks like there's a new pope. ~ Peter Sagal

I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind
and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town. ~ William Faulkner

When I was in my early twenties I was doing tenant organizing - rent strikes, specifically - in my building. I think that was how I started doing poster art. It was something very concrete. ~ Eric Drooker

Fear will always be a tenant in your mind, but do not make fear the landlord of your mind. ~ Wisdom Primus

Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Moreover, with aggrandized police powers, what it does not control directly it bans or mandates by regulation. ~ Mark R. Levin

It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton warehouse ~ Nancy B. Brewer

His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Only when architect, bricklayer and tenant are a unity, or one and the same person, can we speak of architecture. Everything else is not architecture, but a criminal act which has taken on form. ~ Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Kindness is a tenant is in the house of love. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occured one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12 gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter, and crashing glass. Yet the neighbors reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the noise and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fires, and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Intelligence is a tenant in the house of wisdom.
Knowledge is a tenant in the house of nature.
Insight is a tenant in the house of understanding.
Wealth is a tenant in the house of risk.
Mastery is a tenant in the house of discipline.
Patience is a tenant in the house of virtue.
Tolerance is a tenant in the house of freedom.
Awareness is a tenant in the house of experience.
Rest is a tenant in the house of sleep.
Laughter is a tenant in the house of joy.
Hope is a tenant in the house of faith.
Contentment is a tenant in the house of peace.
Kindness is a tenant in the house of love.
Harmony is a tenant in the house of order.
Humility is a tenant in the house of honor.
Caution is a tenant in the house of prudence.
Speech is a tenant in the house of silence.
Certainty is a tenant in the house of conviction.
Expectation is a tenant in the house of desire.
Need is a tenant in the house of want.
Truth is a tenant in the house of reality.
Chance is a tenant in the house of fate.
Time is a tenant in the house of eternity.
Life is a tenant in the house of death.
Nature is a tenant in the house of God. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Lawyers, before any other group, must continue to point out how the system is really working-how it actually affects real people. They must constantly demonstrate to courts and legislatures alike the tragic results of legal nonintervention. They must highlight how legal doctrines no longer bear any relation to reality, whether in landlord and tenant law, holder in due course law, or any other law. In sum, lawyers must bring real morality into the legal consciousness ~ William J. Brennan

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp. ... The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister. ~ James Joyce

Actually, they were very strange parents,' I told her. 'Neither of them were what you might call conventional people. And they had an extremely peculiar approach to parenting. Sometimes I felt as if I were little more than a tenant in their house, as if they weren't entirely sure what I was doing there. But they never mistreated me, nor did they ever do anything to hurt me. And perhaps they loved me in their own way. The concept itself might have been slightly alien to them.'
'And did you love them?'
'Yes, I did,' I said without hesitation. 'I loved them both very much. Despite everything. But then children usually do. They look for safety and security, and one way or another Charles and Maude provided that.' (p. 556) ~ John Boyne

His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own; but, though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley was by no means unwilling to preside at his table - nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had married ~ Jane Austen

The Chosen Layla was what had changed everything for him, recasting the Brotherhood from target to tolerable, from enemy to co-existable tenant in the world. In ~ J.R. Ward

I think you have to be fair, Mr Greatrix. To treat people as kindly as you'd want those closest to you to be treated. I might be your tenant but I'm also your friend and neighbour.'
Someone once said to her that when she spoke she made people feel naked against the world. ~ Sunjeev Sahota

ATTENTION
ANTI-RENTERS! AWAKE! AROUSE! . . .
Strike till the last armed foe expires,
Strike for your altars and your fires-
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God and your happy homes! ~ Howard Zinn

Old One," the tenant said apologetically. "It is none of my business and I ought to die, but after all they are the children of your elder brother's son who after all is the first in the next generation after you. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Max raised the mallet. He stared into her face and wished he could say he was sorry, that he didn't want to do it. When he slammed the mallet down, with an echoing bang, he heard a high, piercing scream and almost screamed himself, believing for an instant it was her, still somehow alive; then realized it was Rudy. Max was powerfully built, with his, deep water-buffalo chest and Dutch farmer's shoulders. With the first blow he had driven the stake over two-thirds of the way in. He only needed to bring the mallet down once more. The blood that squelched up around the wood was cold and had a sticky, viscous consistency.

Max swayed, his head light. His father took his arm.

'Goot,' Abraham whispered into his ear, his arms around him, squeezing him so tightly his ribs creaked. Max felt a little thrill of pleasure - an automatic reaction to the intense, unmistakable affection of his father's embrace - and was sickened by it. 'To do offense to the house of the human spirit, even after its tenant depart, is no easy thing, I know.'

("Abraham's Boys") ~ Joe Hill

Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Disease is the tax which the soul pays for the body, as the tenant pays house-rent for the use of the house. ~ Ramakrishna

But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.'

I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ 'No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead. ~ Homer

The heart is a demanding tenant; it frequently makes a strong argument against common sense. ~ Julie Kibler

It is long settled in California that a landlord who resorts to self-help [such as removing a tenant's personal belongings and changing the locks, even though the tenant is still in legal possession of the property] instead of invoking the unlawful detainer procedure commits a forcible entry and detainer, and is liable for actual and, sometimes, punitive damages (see Jordan v Talbot (1961) 55 C2d 597), regardless of any lease provision giving the landlord the right to reenter on default (55 C2d at 604) or any lien the landlord may wish to exercise (55 C2d at 609). ~ Myron Moskovitz

It's not your imagination. I hear it, too." Another shriek made Matt pause. "I'll talk to you later." He put the phone down and walked to the door. The only other tenant on this side of the L-shaped building was a single woman he had yet to meet. He opened the door, but there was no one there. Actually, there ~ Barbara Freethy

Some rent control ordinances permit a landlord to evict a tenant in order to rehabilitate a unit. [....] Such evictions are usually conditioned on the landlord's obtaining all necessary permits before the eviction. Some ordinances require that the tenant be given (1) the right to occupy any vacant unit that the same landlord owns within the city, (2) the right to reoccupy the vacated unit on the completion of the rehabilitation work, or (3) a payment to defray the costs of relocation. [....]
A landlord who refuses to allow the tenant to reoccupy the vacated unit is subject to liability under the governing ordinance. ~ Myron Moskovitz

Knowledge is a tenant in the house of wisdom. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Following

Someone is always falling in love with you:
men and women, infants and children,
octogenarians and adolescents.
A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep
hopes you will wave your hand in passing.
Where you stood just now a white bird
has flown into a ponderosa pine
and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers.

People would like to discuss you, but hold back.
Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear.
Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed
not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight.
Even on a day of fog or light rain.
Even after sunset.

When you are not present, you still walk quietly
through our minds, and we tell ourselves little stories
or small poems about you, like this one.
When a bird sings, we listen carefully
hoping your name will be mentioned. ~ Virginia Adair

Ah . . . listen. It's better for your case, and your fancy lawyers would back me up, if you and I aren't seen running around together. Primary investigator and defendant. It doesn't look good." "You mean I can't - " Mavis shut her mouth, regrouped. "All right then, we won't go running around together. Leonardo can work here. Roarke won't mind, will you?" "On the contrary." He took a satisfied drag on his cigarette. "I think it's a perfect solution." "One big happy family," Eve mumbled. "The primary, the defendant, and the tenant of the murder scene, who also happens to be the victim's former lover and the defendant's current. Are you all insane? ~ J.D. Robb

We have probed the earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it ... That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-month basis, we would have been evicted long ago. ~ Rose Bird

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed, included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college. ~ Rick Perry

Code of Civil Procedure §1161(2) prevents the landlord from claiming rent due more than a year before the service of the 3-day notice. See Fifth & Broadway Partnership v Kimny, Inc. (1980) 102 CA3d 195, 202. An argument could also be made on the ground of laches that it is inequitable for a landlord to wait a full year before demanding overdue rent. That argument was successfully made in Maxwell v Simons (Civ Ct 1973) 353 NYS2d 589, which held that it was unconscionable for a landlord to permit the tenant to fall more than 3 months behind in rent before bringing an unlawful detainer action based on the total arrearage. New York law required the tenant to pay the arrearage within 5 days or return possession. The court held that the landlord could base his eviction action only on the last 3 months' nonpayment of rent and would have to recover the balance in an ordinary action for rent. See also Marriott v Shaw (Civ Ct 1991) 574 NYS2d 477 and Dedvukaj v Mandonado (Civ Ct 1982) 453 NYS2d 965. In California, this reasoning, along with the cases cited above on "equitable" defenses, might be used to attack a 3-day notice to pay or quit demanding more than three months' back rent. ~ Myron Moskovitz

But," comes the reply, "I am being driven from the farm which my father and grandfather owned!" Well? Who owned the land before your grandfather? Can you explain what people (I will not say what person) held it originally? You did not enter upon it as a master, but merely as a tenant. And whose tenant are you? If your claim is successful, you are tenant of the heir. The lawyers say that public property cannot be acquired privately by possession;11 what you hold and call your own is public property - indeed, it belongs to mankind at large. ~ Seneca.