Left Quotes
 
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Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.
paramahansa yogananda— Ch. 44 - With Mahatma Gandhi At Wardha
My dear fellow, a unique evening! I wouldn't have left a turn unstoned.
— After watching a vaudeville show. Quoted in E Short FiftyYears of Vaudeville (1946).
For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?
thomas gray— Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, lines 5-8 (1751).
Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the "country" mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.
bernard bailyn— Chapter II, SOURCES AND TRADITIONS, p. 36
Don't think about what you've left behind, the alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. "Everything is written in the Soul of the World, and there it will stay forever."
paulo coelho— p. 130 (The Alchemist (1988))
When I left, Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie-crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty until her mother came into the space with a broad homely smile on her face to watch me drive away. I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.
Raymond Chandler— The High Window, chapter 36 (1942)
So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.
— Isocrates, Panegyricus, 50
I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"
bill hicks— Rant in E-Minor (released posthumously, 1997).
If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game? In a world haunted by thehydrogenand napalm bomb, thefootball field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.
— 1952 Quoted in Bryon Butler The Official History of the Football Association (1986).
He was never in one spot for more than half a second, all my punches were aimed and timed properly but they always wound up hitting empty air. He'd jump in and out, slamming me with a left and whirling me around with his right or the other way around. My arms were plastered with leather and although I jabbed, hooked and crossed, it was like fighting an octopus.
gene tunney— Former boxing great Gene Tunney on Harry Greb[[1]]
This is the ECW World Championship, and I will wear it proudly. [Points to the WWE Championship on his left shoulder] And look at this one—it spins!
rob van dam— ECW, June 13, 2006: after being proclaimed the new ECW World Champion and opting to keep the WWE Championship as well.
[E]veryone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
jesus christ— 19:29
When we exclude part of the community, we deny ourselves the participation and contribution of those left out. We allow the possibility of conflict in some future time, neither scenario we can afford. Everyone, irrespective of ethnicity, has a contribution to make no matter how humble or small.
ratu joni madraiwiwi— Opening address to the Leadership Fiji 2006 program, 9 March 2006
As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own
Margaret Mead— p.1 (Coming of age in Samoa, 1928)
Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.
david mitchell— Cloud Atlas, "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish" (2004, pg. 155)
We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting and they demanded blood was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third what will we have left in the Party?
joseph stalin— Speech at The Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (December 1925)
There's a pawnshop on a corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, And I walk up and down 'neath the clock By the pawnshop on a corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, But I ain't got a thing left to hock.
— Guy Mitchell, Song Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel.Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good.
Robert Louis Stevenson— 1881 Virginibus Puerisque, 'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.2.
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.
randolph sinks foster— P. 305. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.
theodore kaczynski— The Road to Revolution, Letter to M. K. (2008)
The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.
miriam makeba— As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left.
joseph pisani— Television Interview, Aeschbacher April 4, 2008, Swiss Television SF1
Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
william wordsworth— Robert Browning "The Lost Leader", line 1 (1845)On Wordsworth's acceptance of the Poet Laureateship.
Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion to say nothing of the shape of his sentences are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness.
jacques barzun— II (Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943))
I think Miss Moore was right to cut “The Steeple-Jack” the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much... The reader may feel like saying, “Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it’s hers, isn’t it?” No; it’s much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody’s, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David’s left leg.
Randall Jarrell— “Her Shield”, p. 177
There is now a desperate need for a London-wide left caucus of those interested in the GLC and local councils so that we can compare and discuss what is happening in each borough.
Ken Livingstone— As quoted in Socialist Organiser, the newspaper of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory (March 1979)
Something about first love defies duplication. Before it, your heart is blank. Unwritten. After, the walls are left inscribed and graffitied. When it ends, no amount of scrubbing will purge the scrawled oaths and sketched images, but sooner or later, you find that there’s space for someone else, between the words and in the margins.
Tammara Webber— Where You Are, Chapter 1 (2011)
