Bent Quotes - page 13

Really," said the poet, without enthusiasm. "Mm-you say 'Really,' young man?" said the secretary. "That is undeniably a rather peculiar reply. Might I ask what you mean by that word?" "I mean that I'm such an insignificant poet that it isn't worthwhile getting me to compose a poem," said Ólafur Kárason modestly. The secretary gave the poet a stern and searching look and finally said, "I no longer understand young people nowadays. It's as if nothing serious or important makes any impression on young people any longer. The modern craze seems to be to squander money needlessly if possible. But luckily it isn't possible. Even you, young man, who are said to have a poetic bent, yes, and some say you even possess a modicum of intelligence, you just say 'Really' when you're invited to take part in a ceremony which is destined to revolutionize the religious, scientific, and moral life of the nation. (Halldór Laxness)
My own mystic bent leads me to believe that musical variations, collage, reiteration and process, or evolution, are beautiful. Life is worth living and beauty is worth making. View quote
Beth Anderson
My body is damaged from music in two ways. I have a red irritation in my stomach. It's psychosomatic, caused by all the anger and the screaming. I have scoliosis, where the curvature of your spine is bent, and the weight of my guitar has made it worse. I'm always in pain, and that adds to the anger in our music. View quote
Kurt Cobain
Let early education be a sort of amusement you will then be better able to find out the natural bent. View quote
Plato
Those born blind cannot see similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions. View quote
Chanakya
Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel? View quote
Isaac Newton
Bull Morgan was just the right man for the job, a man who found the law useful in how far it could occasionally be bent to save a friend. View quote
Robert Asprin
Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer... View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Do you conceive of your Lord as less because? He shows that humiliation is the best road to exaltation (cf. Mt. 23:12); because He humbles Himself for the sake of the soul that is bent down to the ground, that He may even exalt within Himself that which is bent double under a weight of sin?... If so, you must blame the physician for stooping over suffering and putting up with evil smells in order to give health to the sick? View quote
Gregory of Nazianzus
He had seen trances before - wise men far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts. But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence. Presences... View quote
Charles de Lint
I have never concealed...that my sympathies were always democratic and progressive... [M]y upbringing, my sympathy, my whole bent of mind is democratic... I was concerned for the difficulties of this land, education for the people, housing difficulties, disarmament, peace with Ireland, liberty to Irishmen, and more liberty in India. These are not things that sound well in Mayfair, and they do not make especial appeal to Belgravia. And the revolt began. You have only got to follow out what I have said, and you will see the revolt began there. (David Lloyd George)
The political horizon would be greatly clarified if the voters were offered the choice of three parties representing three strategies: A conservative party committed to the preservation of individualism, perhaps in a highly modified form; a communist party bent upon revolutionary changes through violent seizure of power, confiscation, and a proletarian dictatorship; and a radical party seeking to socialize the basic industries and to move toward an equalization of economic privilege through purchase, taxation, and drastic regulation, without resorting to confiscation or armed seizure of power. View quote
Kirby Page
An instant's visitor the godhead shone. On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve. Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense, It wrote the lines of a significant myth Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns, A brilliant code penned with the sky for page. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
But something terrible had happened - she had become old. The decades of her marriage had curdled her gaiety into scorn, transformed her charming impertinence into sarcasm, bent her back, whitened her hair, and withered her limbs. View quote
Michael Nava
Like a great big meaty stew,' Gallimard of the 32nd kept saying. In the sauce-coloured Nile blown corpses floated gently seaward, to be fished out with bent bayonets. There were good pickings here, since each Mameluke carried his gold about him. On the shore lay ornate pommels, daggers, pistols, all encrusted with pearl and jewels, worth a fucking fortune....he started to harpoon out a sogged and bloated dreaming Mameluke or Turk or whatever he was. 'Poor bugger's in paradise now, drinking sherbet, poor bugger. View quote
Anthony Burgess
I get especially angry when I see how people are treated when they come up here looking for work, especially the farm workers...I challenge any prep school white boy to spend an hour picking strawberries in the full sun where you're bent over and somebody sprays pesticide on you. And without them, we can't eat. View quote
Linda Ronstadt
I thinke that like as the Kinges Maieste cannot better or more hieghly advaunce thonour of god ne more prudently prouide for his owne suretie and the tranquilitie of his Realme domynyons and subgietes thenne in the discrete and charitable punishment of suche as doo by any meane Labour and purpose to sowe sedicion, diuision & contention, in opinion amonges his people contrary to the trouthe of goddes worde and his graces most christien ordenaunces... And therefore myne opinion is that you shal by all meanes diuise howe with charyte and myld handeling of thinges to quenche this slaunderous Bent as moche as you maye ever exhorting men discretely and without Rigour or extreame dealing to knowe and serue god truely and their prince and Souereign Lorde with all humilite and obedyence. View quote
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex
"You will understand,” said the Weaponeer, "that a pattern for events exists. It is the function of such as myself to shape events so that they will fit the pattern.” He bent, with a graceful sweep of arm, and seized a small jagged pebble. "Just as I can grind this bit of rock to fit a round aperture.” Kergan Banbeck reached forward, took the pebble, tossed it high over the tumbled boulders. "That bit of rock you shall never shape to fit a round hole.” The Weaponeer shook his head in mild deprecation. "There is always more rock.” "And there are always more holes,” declared Kergan Banbeck. View quote
Jack Vance
If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination. In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before deciding how to cast our vote. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Descartes was an eminent mathematician, and it would seem that the bent of his mind led him to overestimate the value of deductive reasoning from general principles, as much as Bacon had underestimated it. View quote
Francis Bacon
Our code must be framed to speed the absorption of immigrants into our economy, culture and society; to fuse the returning tribes into a homogeneous national and cultural unit; to forward our physical and moral healing and the cleansing of our lives from the trivia and dross which gathered upon us in dependence and exile. To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic State, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion. Laws which lag behind development, merely a digest of experience and the lessons of the past, are useless to us. We need to anticipate the character of the times, discern embryonic forms emergent or renewed, and clear the path for circumstantial change. (David Ben-Gurion)
We invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe.... This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him (Vladimir Putin). My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible. View quote
John Mearsheimer
"Yachappa Nayak, the Hindu noble to whom I have referred earlier in my narrative, on seeing that the Mughal army after repeated orders from the Emperor, was bent on the destruction of the Hindu temples, left Mughal service and entered the territory of Gingee with his men. From there, he wrote to all the Hindu Princes, urging them to unite against the enemy of their community and religion.” ( p. 1256) View quote
Aurangzeb
Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew Gave the sad presage of his future years,- The child of misery, baptized in tears. View quote
John Langhorne (poet)
This boy may not possess the color of Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays, but he has enough natural ability to be spoken of along with any of those fellows. I suppose I have a peculiar attachment to Robert [sic]. That's because we got him for a "steal," you might say. I was with the Dodgers when we acquired Clemente after scouting him in Puerto Rico. So I was thoroughly acquainted with the boy when the major league draft came up in the winter of 1954, after I had come to Pittsburgh from Brooklyn. The Dodgers were apparently bent on "hiding" Robert when they transferred him to the Pacific Coast League. But since I knew what he could do, and that he was somewhere in their farm system, I withheld the Pirates' draft selection until I found the boy. We got him for the relatively small draft price-perhaps the biggest steal in baseball. View quote
Roberto Clemente