The Pedestrian Quotes

I'm the Saint praying on a balcony - like peaceful beasts grazing along the Sea of Palestine.
I'm the scholar in a plain reading chair. Branches and rain beat the library windows.
I'm the pedestrian on the high road through the stunted woods; the sound of floodgates drowns out my footsteps. I stare at the melancholy wash of another golden sunset...
The path is harsh. The hillocks are weed. The air is still. How far we are from birds and streams. The end of the world must be just ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Just as legendary rivers were used to represent the flow of life, so Mount Athos is a handy image to show human vulnerability. Its minerals themselves reminding us that ours is a planet constituted around Nature's awesome violence! Struggling to survive then, is integral to our existence. Literature on these issues, transforming rock and boulder into a subjective mountain, where fleshly mountaineers set forth, in the blinding brilliance of an alpine dawn, to ascend their own transgressions, remains telling. Breathing in, when nearing the top, to smell the pure air of spiritual comprehension: of heady intrinsic freedom, only to descend, once more, into the obscure and the pedestrian; albeit existentially transformed! In this way, indeed, Mount Athos transfigures many a man. ~ David William Parry

Go to any police-and-community meeting in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Harlem, and you will hear pleas such as the following: Teens are congregating on my stoop; can you please arrest them? SUVs are driving down the street at night with their stereos blaring; can't you do something? People have been barbecuing on the pedestrian islands of Broadway; that's illegal! The targets of these complaints may be black and Hispanic, but the people making the complaints, themselves black and Hispanic, don't care. They just want orderly streets. ~ Heather Mac Donald

I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride. ~ John Burroughs

[William] Coxe expresses ... both the pedestrian's advantage of complete freedom of movement, and the inspiring effect of the combination of continual change of scene with maximum time for appreciation that characterises the mobile gaze of the pedestrian traveller. If not a peripatetic by profession, Coxe is clearly one by choice. ~ Robin Jarvis

Sunset's the best time to take a stroll down Mouffetard, the ancient Via Mons Cetardus. The buildings along it are only two or three stories high. Many are crowned with conical dovecotes. Nowhere in Paris is the connection, the obscure kinship, between houses very close to each other more perceptible to the pedestrian than in this street.

Close in age, not location. If one of them should show signs of decrepitude, if its face should sag, or it should lose a tooth, as it were, a bit of cornicing, within hours its sibling a hundred metres away, but designed according to the same plans and built by the same men, will also feel it's on its last legs.

The houses vibrate in sympathy like the chords of a viola d'amore. Like cheddite charges giving each other the signal to explode simultaneously. ~ Jacques Yonnet

Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place ... and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another. ~ Geoff Nicholson

Your drive to produce hard-edged opinions stoked by hostility is likely a sign that you've been brainwashed by the pedestrian influences of pop nihilism. ~ Rob Brezsny

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that graze down to the sea of Palestine.
I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves at the windows of my library.
I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy wash of the setting sun.
I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.
The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be the end of the world ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Flying daggers don't kill people, Chloe thought, leaping sidewise at the last minute to avoid one, grabbing the pedestrian rail. People kill people. ~ Celia Thomson

Dai Tregarron had called her Olwen, had spoken to her as if she were a creature capable of escape from the commonplace, not the pedestrian, middle-aged woman everyone else saw, incapable of imagination, even less of passion. He had seen who she wanted to be and given the dream a moment's life. ~ Anne Perry

All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations ... In reality the modern urbanist regards the city as a gigantic centre of production, geared to the efficient transport of workers and goods, to the accommodation of people and the storage of wares, to industrial and commercial activity. The rest, that is to say creativity, life, is optional and comes under the heading of recreation and leisure activities. ~ Tom McDonough

Some popular quotations smell of airless closets. They exhale the stale imagination of the intellectual lower middle class. "Suspension of disbelief" has become one of them. Dressed up as a scintillating double negation, it serves the pedestrian notion of art as illusion. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

By 1950, he had come to view the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species capable of foretelling things to come - if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, it would be an early indicator that broader freedoms of thought and action were also at risk. ~ Jonathan Eller

RESPECT THE PEDESTRIAN, say the street signs of Metro Manila. As soon as Randy saw those he knew that he was in trouble. ~ Neal Stephenson

Ray's mom had always told him not to jaywalk, that it would surely end in heartbreak, but she had also told him that if you washed clothes on a Sunday it would kill you. Ray's mom issued mixed messages like a pagan god issues virgin sacrifice orders, so he eventually stopped listening to her altogether. It turns out the pedestrian never really has the right of way. ~ Randy X. Porter

From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. 'I can only meditate when I am walking,' wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his 'Confessions', 'when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.' Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself 'so overwhelmed with ideas' that he 'could scarcely walk'. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as 'employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy' and Wordsworth of his own 'feeling intellect'. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - 'Only those thoughts which come from 'walking' have a value' - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: 'Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.' In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing. ~ Robert Macfarlane

They looked at each other. Like they knew everything about each other. Like that. But what exactly did they know, these strangers who were so familiar and intimate? You fought a war with someone, and you knew them. But you only knew the part that was in the war, the part that knew how to fight. The other part, the pedestrian part that lived in the endless calmness of days, you didn't know that part. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

prosaic, pedestrian example, but everything ~ Daniel C. Dennett

We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people. Instead of building highways, we restricted car use. We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs and planted trees. All our everyday efforts have one objective: Happiness. ~ Enrique Penalosa

In Copenhagen, there's a long-term commitment to creating a well-functioning pedestrian city where all forms of movement - pedestrian, bicycles, cars, public transportation - are accommodated with equal priority. ~ Bjarke Ingels

Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It it a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you'll believe a word of it. ~ Jonathan Barnes

If you are a pedestrian, you are not mechanical enough to be of priority to traffic engineers. ~ Archimedes Muzenda

A man used to riding in a car cannot understand a pedestrian. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. ~ Abraham Maslow

You missed a pedestrian," I said. "You want to go back and hit her? ~ Rick Riordan

Everything in Louisiana is about layers. There are layers of race, layers of class, layers of survival, layers of death, and layers of rebirth. To live with these layers is to be a true Louisianian. This state has a depth that is simultaneously beyond words and yet as natural as breathing. How can a place be both other-worldly and completely pedestrian is beyond me; however, Louisiana manages to do it. Louisiana is spooky that way. ~ Don Lemon

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian. ~ James Laughlin

I've always found drugs and alcohol somewhat pedestrian. It's like, I don't need an external agent to open my mind. I'm here, conscious, alert, present. Why would I alter that? ~ Jimmy Buffett

say, this is literally a pedestrian ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

To dismiss basic contexts such as link colours, page layouts, navigation systems, and visual hierarchy as 'boring' or 'pedestrian' is akin to laughing at a car's steering wheel as unimaginative. ~ Jeffrey Veen

When they reached her house all its lights were blazing.
What's going on? Montag had rarely seen that many house lights.
Oh, just my mother father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time--did I tell you?--for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're MOST peculiar. ~ Ray Bradbury

In America, a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car. ~ Tom Vanderbilt

I've always had rock star envy. Unfortunately, writing is a pedestrian, tame occupation done while sitting in coffee-stained pajamas in front of a computer rather than prowling around a huge stage in sweaty leather pants, so I have to get my kicks vicariously. ~ Kate Christensen

To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art. ~ Horace Kephart

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary. ~ Tom Waits

When church becomes a club, parables become pedestrian. ~ Amy-Jill Levine

Also-and this is critical-you are not ugly."
She blinked.
Nick's eyes danced with amusement.
"Remember, Isabel. It was your brother who said it. I would not dare to take credit for such pretty words. I would have said something more pedestrian. It takes a great orator to come up with -"
"Not ugly." She gave a little shake of her head.
"What a lovely compliment. ~ Sarah MacLean

A pedestrian ought to be legally allowed to toss at least one hand grenade at a motorist every day. ~ Brendan Behan

Step back for a minute. Pretend you're from Mars. From a coldly rational point of view, pedestrian helmets aren't a crazy idea. ~ A. J. Jacobs

People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant. ~ Rick Bragg

A pedestrian is a man in danger of his life. A walker is a man in possession of his soul. ~ David McCord