Shut Quotes - page 40
... they said, "Sir, we want to tell you a joke." I said, "You don't have time to tell me a joke." They said, "Oh, you gotta hear this one." So I came in, they shut the door, and they said, "Here's"- I said, "What's the joke?" I said, "What's the joke?" They said, "9/11. Saddam Hussein. If he didn't do it, too bad. He should've! Because we're gonna get him anyway." I said, "But that's not funny." I said, "That's not very funny." They said, "It sure isn't."
Saddam Hussein
He was like a deaf mute sitting apart from a circle, whose looks and gestures show that they are uttering and listening to music and eloquence, in producing or welcoming which he can be no sharer. Wisely, therefore, he dwelt apart, and bidding the world farewell, took the self imposed vows of a Scientific Anchorite, and, like the Monks of old, shut himself up within his cell. It was a kingdom sufficient for him, and from its narrow window he saw as much of the Universe as he cared to see. It had a throne also, and from it he dispensed royal gifts to his brethren.
Henry Cavendish
[There was a] long standing contention between the sees of York and Canterbury as to the right of either metropolitan to bear his cross erect in the province of the other. ...Peckham, on hearing that his brother [ William of Wickwane, Archbishop] of York had returned from abroad, and was intending to pass through his province with his cross erect, wrote a letter forbidding the clergy to show him any mark of respect, ordering them to shut the church-doors in his face, and threatening all persons, clerical and lay, with excommunication, who ventured to supply him with food, or render him the slightest service.
John Peckham
Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.... Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his "opinions."
José Ortega y Gasset