Quotes by Authors - P
Thomas Paine
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Dorothy Parker
(from a book review) This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
(telegram to a friend who had given birth) Dear Mary: We all knew you had it in you.
Thoughts for a Sunshiny Morning
It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"Your clan will pay me back one day."
One more drink and I'll be under the host.
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Love is like quick-silver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying --
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Charles H. Parkhurst
Sympathy: Two hearts tugging at one load.
Blaise Pascal
The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Linda Pastan, from The Five Stages of Grief
Marks
My husband gives me an A
for last night's supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.
My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.
My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass. Wait 'til they learn
I'm dropping out.
Boris Pasternak
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
George S. Patton
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Octavio Paz
What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity.
(from The Endless Instant) Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down; we don't move, today is today, always is today.
Charles Peguy
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
William Penn
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
Alexander Penney
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alan J. Perlis
(from Epigrams of Programming) A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Persian Proverbs
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
If fortune turns against you even jelly will break your tooth.
Laurence J. Peter
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teen-ager wondering about each other.
Marilyn Peterson
You don't die of a broken heart; you only wish you did.
Petrarch
To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.
Pablo Picasso
Everything you can imagine is real.
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
(last words) Drink to me.
Ron Picavet
Drive-thru banking was invented so cars could meet their true owners.
Marge Piercy - feminist writer - be sure to check out her homepage!
The grey flannel sexual harassment suit
The woman in the sexual harassment
suit should be a virgin
who attended church every Sunday
only ten thousand miles on her
back and forth to the pew.
Her immaculate house is
bleached with chlorine tears.
The woman in the sexual harassment
suit should never have known
a man other than her father
who kissed her only
on the cheek, and the minister
who patted her head
with his gloves on.
The woman in the sexual harassment
suit has never listened
to a dirty joke, never tussled
in a back seat, never
sneaked a look in her brother's
Playboy, never asked her girl
friend about condoms.
The woman in the sexual harassment
suit is visited by female
angels only, has a platinum
hymen protected by Brinks,
is white of course as unpainted
plaster, naturally blonde
and speaks only English.
The woman in the sexual harassment
suit wears white cotton blouses
buttoned to the throat, small
pearl clip-on earrings,
grey or blue suits and one-
inch heels with nylons.
Her nails and lips are pink.
If you are other than we have
described above, please do
not bother to complain.
You are not a lady.
A woman like you simply
cannot be harassed.
For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts
How dare a woman choose?
Choose to be pregnant,
choose to be childless,
choose to be lesbian,
choose to have two lovers or none,
choose to abort
choose to live alone
choose to walk alone
at night,
choose to come and to go
without permission
without leave
without a man.
Consider a woman's blood
spilled on a desk
pooled on an office floor,
an ordinary morning at work,
an ordinary morning of helping
other women choose
to be or not to be
pregnant
means she has fallen
into death.
A woman young and smiling
sitting at a desk
trying to put other women at ease
now bleeds from five
large wounds, bleeding
from her organs
bleeding out her life.
A young man is angry at women
women who say no
women who say maybe and mean no
women who won't
women who do and they shouldn't
If they are pregnant they are bad
because that proves
they did it with someone
they did it
and should die.
A man gets angry with a woman
who decides to leave him
who decides to walk off
who decides to walk
who decides
Women are not real to such men
they should behave as meat
such men drag them into the woods
and stab them
climb in their windows and rape them
such men shoot them in kitchens
such men strangle them in bed
such men lie in wait
and ambush them in parking lots
such men walk into a clinic
and kill the first women they see.
In harm's way:
meaning in the way of a man
who is tasting his anger
like a rare steak.
A daily ordinary courage
doing what has to be done
every morning, every afternoon
doing it over and over
because it is needed
put them in harm's way.
Two women dying
because a man chose that they die.
Two women dying
because they did their job
helping other women survive
Two women dead
from the stupidity of an ex altar boy
who saw himself
as a fetus
who pumped his sullen fury
automatically
into the woman in front of him
twice, and intended more.
Stand up now and say No More
Stand up now and say We
Stand up and say We will not be ruled
by crazies and killers
by shotguns and bombs and acid.
We will not dwell in caves of fear.
We will make each other strong.
We will make each other safe.
There is no other monument.
What are Big Girls Made of?
The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted, and redesigned
every decade.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
In the dark red lipstick of desire.
She visited in '68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
While I danced through Manhattan
in miniskirt
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horses mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
what ever has happened to poor Cecile.
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.
Look at the pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
A woman made of pain.
How superior we are now: see the modern woman
Thin as a blade of scissors
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food.
hungry, always hungry.
A woman made of pain.
A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.
If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy burbling babes in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge out softness,
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?
When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained.
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?
Miss Piggy
When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.
Never eat more than you can lift.
Pindar
O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life,but exhaust the limits of the possible.
Plato
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.
The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Pliny the Elder
In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Edgar Allen Poe
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven
Went envying her and me:
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we --
Of many far wiser than we --
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride;
In her sepulchre there by teh sea--
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were -- I have not seen
As others saw.
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
Henri Poincaire
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
Alexander Pope
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night. God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
Antonio Porchia
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Portuguese Proverb
Visits always give pleasure - if not the arrival, the departure.
Beatrix Potter
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife . . . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
Ezra Pound
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Colin Powell
There are no secrets to success: Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.
Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they're being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I'm black. I tell them, 'Don't stop now. If I shot somebody you'd mention it.'
Terry Pratchett
(from Small Gods) His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools - the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and he summed up all three of them in his famous phrase - "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there is nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.
(from Wyrd Sisters) It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn't a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.
His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts, his stomach stood at ease.
Richard Pratt
(from Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990) A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered: I don't know and I don't care.
George Dennison Prentice
It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.
Ivy Baker Priest
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
The Princess Bride
Death cannot stop true love. The worst it can do is delay it for a while.
Matthew Prior
They talk most who have the least to say.
A Reasonable Affliction
On his death-bed poor Lubin lies
His spouse is in despair;
With frequent cries, and mutual sighs,
The both express their care.
"A different cause," says Parson Sly,
"The same effect may give:
Poor Lubin fears that he may die;
His wife, that he may live."
Herbert Prochnow
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
Marcel Proust
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Alexander Pushkin
The lie that exalts us is dearer than a thousand sober truths.