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room quotes

  • And my parents finally realize that I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: they rent out my room.

    -Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg Allen
    Quoted in Eric Lax Woody  Allen and His Comedy (1975).

  • Perdre Mais perdre vraiment Pour laisser place a'   la trouvaille Perdre La vie pour trouver laVictoire. To lose But really to lose And make room for discovery To lose Life so as to discover Victory.

    -Kostrowitzki
      Calligrammes,'Toujours'.

  • There is room in the west for wolves.

    - Bruce Edward Babbitt
      Statement atYellowstone National Park in Wyoming,12 Jan, to the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, on the controversial restoration of wildlife.

  • Is there any room at your head, Sanders? Is there any room at your feet? Or any room at your twa sides, Where fain, fain I would sleep? There is nae room at my head, Margaret, There is nae room at my feet; My bed it is the cold, cold grave; Among the hungry worms I sleep.

    -Ballads
    'Clerk Sanders'.

  • There is no event so commonplace but that God is present in it, alwayshiddenly, alwaysleaving you roomto recognize him or not to recognize him† Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the heavenlyand hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

    - (Carl) Frederick Buechner
      Now and Then.

  • If I were a Mexican, I would tell you,'Have you not enough room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and hospitable graves.'

    -Thomas Corwin
      Speech to the Senate against the  American^Mexican War,11 Feb.

  • My Minister's room is like a padded cell, and in certain ways I am like a person who is suddenly certified a lunatic and put safely into this great, vast room, cut off from real life.Of course they don't behave quite like nurses, because the Civil Service is profoundly deferential'Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!'

    - Richard Howard Stafford Crossman
      The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol.1 (1975), 22 Oct.

  • Mrs Crupp had indignantlyassured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr Dick justly observed to me† 'You know,Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!'

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^50  David Copperfield, ch.35.

  • Since I am coming to that holy room Where, withThy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be madeThy Music, as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think now before.

    -John Donne
    c.1623  'Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness'.

  • In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      The Mill on the Floss, bk.4, ch.3.

  • For I have known them all already, known them all Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

  • When lovely woman stoops to follyand Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. See Goldsmith 361:47.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Waste Land, pt.3,'The Fire Sermon'.

  • He must teach himself that the basest of all things isto be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop foranything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomedlove and honour and pityand compassion and sacrifice.

    -William Harrison Faulkner
      Nobel prize acceptance speech.

  • A Room with aView.

    - E(dward) M(organ) Forster
       Title of novel.

  • Billy, in one of his nice new sashes, Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes; Now, although the room grows chilly, I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.

    - Harry Graham
      Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes,'Tender- Heartedness'.

  •    The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth.

    - Sir Wilfred Grenfell
      A Labrador Logbook.

  • I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat.

    - George Grossmith
      The Diary of a Nobody (with Weedon Grossmith), ch.7.

  • Um esta   sempre no escuro, so   no u ltimo derradeiro e   que clareiam a sala. Oneisalwaysinthedark, and it isonlyatthelast moment that they turn on the lights in the room.

    -Joa‹  o Guimara‹  es Rosa
      Grande Serta‹  o: Vere  das (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands,1963).

  • Death is nothing at all; it does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.

    - Henry Scott Holland
     Sermon, Whit Sunday.

  • The escalator from the Social Predestination Room† One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existenceso called.

    - Aldous Leonard Huxley
      Brave New World, ch.1.

  • No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned† A man in a jail has moreroom, better food, and commonly bettercompany.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,16 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen. I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.

    - Immanuel Kant
      Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), preface to 2nd edn (translated by N Kemp Smith).

  • There was silence in the room. Then a voice, stunning as thunder, clear and common as a trainwhistlethe voice of a ball-park announcer: 'If you build it, he will come.'

    -W(illiam) P(atrick) Kinsella
      'Shoeless  Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa', a short story later expanded into the novel Shoeless Joe (1982) and filmed as Field of Dreams (1989).

  • Get yourroom full of good air, thenshut up thewindows and keep it. It will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let them rest.

    - Stephen Butler Leacock
      Literary Lapses,'How to Live to Be 200'.

  • Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself uponhishorse and rode madly off in all directions.

    - Stephen Butler Leacock
    Nonsense Novels,'Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen'.

  • With a heavy step Sir Matthew left the room and spent the morning designing mausoleums for his enemies.

    - Eric Robert Linklater
    Juan in  America, prologue.

  • The perpetual struggle for room and food.

    -Thomas Robert Malthus
      An Essay on the Principle of Population.

  • Thus methinks should men of judgement frame Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade, And as their wealth increaseth, so enclose Infinite riches in a little room.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1589  The Jew of Malta (published1633), act1, sc.1.

  • In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

    -John Edward Masefield
      'C.L.M.'.

  • Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth. Save the cricket on the hearth.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.79^82.

  • All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
      In the Paris Review, Summer.

  • Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre. The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

    - Blaise Pascal
    c.1654^1662  Pense  es, no.139 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

  • Books Do Furnish a Room.

    - Anthony Dymoke Powell
    Title of novel.

  • We have room in this country but for one flag, the Stars and Stripes.We have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the United States.We have room for but one language, the English language.

    -Theodore Roosevelt
      Message to theAmerican Defense Society two days before his death, 3 Jan.

  •    When I make a portrait,I cannot limit it tothe lines of the head, for that head belongs toa body, it exists ina setting which influences it, it is part of a totality that I cannot suppress. The impression you produce upon me is not thesame if I catchsight of youalone ina gardenor if Isee you in the midst of a group of other people, in a living room or on the street.

    - Medardo Rosso
    Quoted in Edmond Claris De l'impressionisme en sculpture, 'Medardo Rosso' (1902).

  • I should be the last person to say anything against temptation, naturally, but we have a proverb down here 'in baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse'.

    -Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
    The Square Egg,'The Infernal Parliament' (published1924).

  • How little room Do we take up in death, that, living know No bounds?

    -James Shirley
      TheWedding, act 4, sc.4.

  • Chosen bya group of men in a smoke-filled room.

    - Kirke L Simpson
    Of Warren G Harding, presidential candidate. Recalled on Simpson's death in the NewYorkTimes,17 Jun1972.The'smoke- filled room' became a common phrase in presidential nomination.

  • In a room of the palace Black Mrs Behemoth Gave way to wrath And the wildest malice.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade,'Black Mrs Behemoth'.

  • Here is all straight and narrow as a tomb Oh shut me not within a little room.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      Harold's Leap,'The Commuted Sentence'.

  • I am pent up in frowzy lodgings, where there isnot room enough to swing a cat.

    -Tobias George Smollett
      Letter from Matthew Bramble, 8 Jun, Humphrey Clinker, vol.1.

  • The light in the window seemed perpetual Where you stayed in the high room for me

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'The Room AboveThe Square'.

  • And as she looked about, she did behold, How over that same door was likewise writ, Be bold, be bold, and everywhere Be bold† At last she spied at that room's upper end Another iron door, on which was writ Be not too bold.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto11, stanza 54.

  • 'There is no terror, brotherToby, in its looks, but what it borrowsfromgroans and convulsionsand theblowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms ofcurtains, ina dying man'sroomStrip itofthese, what is it?''Tis better in battle than in bed,'said my uncle Toby.

    - Laurence Sterne
    ^67  Of death.Tristram Shandy, bk.5, ch.3.

  • As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I retired to my room.

    - Laurence Sterne
      A SentimentalJourney,'Preface. In the Desobligeant'.

  • Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not a sound; And thus it is that what I feel, Here in this room, desiring you, Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, Is music.

    -Wallace Stevens
      Harmonium,'Peter Quince at the Clavier', pt.1.

  • I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.11, stanza1.

  • America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

    - Arnold Joseph Toynbee
      Letter, 26 Oct.

  • The way to ensuresummer in England istohaveitframed and glazed in a comfortable room.

    - Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
      Letter toWilliam Cole, 28 May. In The Correspondence of HoraceWalpole (Yale edition,1937^8).

  • Lady Peabury was in the morning room reading a novel; 892 early training gave a guilty spice to this recreation, for she had been brought up to believe that to read a novel before luncheon was one of the gravest sins it was possible for a gentlewoman to commit.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      'An Englishman's Home'.

  • There is always room at the top.

    - Daniel Webster
    On being advised against joining the overcrowded legal profession, attributed.

  • She was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room.

    - Edith Newbold ne  e Jones Wharton
      The House of Mirth, bk.1, ch.2.

  • She keeps on being Queenly in her own room, with the door shut.

    - Edith Newbold ne  e Jones Wharton
      The House of Mirth, bk.2, ch.1.

  • Awoman must have moneyand a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

    - (Adeline) Virginia ne  e Stephen Woolf
      A Room of One's Own, ch.1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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