key quotes

Life is rather like a tin of sardineswe're all of us looking for the key.

- Alan Bennett
  Beyond the Fringe.

Woeuntoyou, lawyers! for yehavetakenaway thekeyof knowledge.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Luke11:52.

I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation 9:1.

   The true aristocracyand the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

- Karen, Baroness pseudonym Isak Dinesen Blixen
  Out of  Africa, pt.5, ch.1.

'Getting into the key of C sharp,' he said,'is like an unprotected female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants togo to.How isshe ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction?'

- Samuel Butler
  The Way of  All Flesh.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.But perhaps there is a key; that key is Russian national interest.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
  Radio broadcast,1 Oct.

Welcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.

-John Dryden
  Cleopatra speaking of love.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 5, sc.1.

Perhaps it is indeed time that I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, whenwethink about it, it isnot sucha foolishthing to indulge inparticularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.

- Kazuo Ishiguro
  The Remains of the Day,'Day SixEvening'.

   Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

-John Keats
  'To Sleep'.

For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain'the sublime' In the old sense.Wrong from the start No, hardly, but seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date.

- Ezra Loomis Pound
  Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, pt.1.

Un sourire est souvent l'essentiel. On est paye   par un sourire. On est re  compense   par un sourire.On est anime par un sourire. Et la qualite   d'un sourire peut faire que l'on meure. A smile is often the key thing.One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded with a smile.One is brightened by a smile. And the quality of a smile can make one die.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupe  ry
  Lettre a'   un otage.