Quotes4study

Religions are different roads converging on the same point.

'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi

You must be content sometimes with rough roads.

Proverb.

Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchent=--Rivers are moving roads.

_Pascal._

When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.

Charles de Lint

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.

Stanisław Lem

Rivers are roads which travel, and which carry us whither we wish to go.

_Pascal._

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly Before they're forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Bob Dylan

It is in the path where God has bade us walk that we shall find the angels around us. We may meet them, indeed, on paths of our own choosing, but it will be the sort of angel that Balaam met, with a sword in his hand, mighty and beautiful, but wrathful too; and we had better not front him! But the friendly helpers, the emissaries of God's love, the apostles of His grace, do not haunt the roads that we make for ourselves.--_Alex. McLaren._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,-- Therefore on him no speech! And brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walk'd along our roads with steps So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 1775-1864.     _To Robert Browning._

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

Philosophy:  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce

Zwei sind der Wege, auf welchen der Mensch zur Tugend emporstrebt, / Schliesst sich der eine dir zu, thut sich der andre dir auf, / Handelnd erreicht der Gluckliche sie, der Leidende duldend; / Wohl ihm, den sein Geschick liebend auf beiden gefuhrt=--There are two roads on which man strives to virtue; one closes against thee, the other opens to thee; the favoured man wins his way by acting, the unfortunate by endurance; happy he whom his destiny guides him lovingly on both.

_Schiller._

>Roads are many; authentic finger-posts are few.

_Carlyle._

The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads."

Stephen Crane ~ (born 1 November 1871

Perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything.

Clifford D. Simak

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.

Stanisław Lem

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.--_Lavater._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be travelled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.

_Goldsmith._

There are but three political-economic roads from which we can choose…. We could take the first course and further exacerbate the already concentrated ownership of productive capital in the American economy. Or we could join the rest of the world by taking the second path, that of nationalization. Or we can take the third road, establishing policies to diffuse capital ownership broadly, so that many individuals, particularly workers, can participate as owners of industrial capital.… The choice is ours. There is no way to avoid this decision. Non-action is a political decision in favor of continued, and indeed increased, concentrated ownership of productive capital. [Debates on converting the eastern rail system into an employee-owned company, December 11, 1972.]

Long, Senator Russell B.

My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.

Giacomo Casanova

Footpaths give a private, human touch to the landscape that roads do not. They are sacred to the human foot. They have the sentiment of domesticity, and suggest the way to cottage doors and to simple, primitive times.

_John Burroughs._

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I \x97 I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Emily Saliers, the Indigo Girls

We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.

Pope Francis

Level roads run out from music to every side.

_Goethe._

"Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture,

an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads."

        -- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_

Fortune Cookie

    By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in

the South, were of the present standard gauge.  The southern roads were

still five feet between rails.

    It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,

in one day.  This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May

of 1886.  For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the

axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which

could run on the new track as soon as it was ready.  Finally, on the day set,

great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn.  Everywhere one

rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its

new position.  By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate

over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere

was possible.

        -- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957

Fortune Cookie

Philosophy:  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

        -- Ambrose Bierce

Fortune Cookie

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads</p>

lead down.

        -- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"

Fortune Cookie

Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:

    "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour

unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a

drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can."

Fortune Cookie

I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals.  I

don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected

with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger,

the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier

in the summer.

        -- Brendan Behan

Fortune Cookie

It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road

less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a

pleasant day.

        -- Larry Wall in <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

...and report cards I was always afraid to show

Mama'd come to school

and as I'd sit there softly cryin'

Teacher'd say he's just not tryin'

Got a good head if he'd apply it

but you know yourself

it's always somewhere else

I'd build me a castle

with dragons and kings

and I'd ride off with them

As I stood by my window

and looked out on those

Brooklyn roads</p>

        -- Neil Diamond, "Brooklyn Roads"

Fortune Cookie

After a while you learn the subtle difference

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean security,

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes open,

With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads</p>

On today because tomorrow's ground

Is too uncertain.  And futures have

A way of falling down in midflight,

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting

For someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong,

And you really do have worth

And you learn and learn

With every goodbye you learn.

        -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn"

Fortune Cookie

            Pittsburgh driver's test

(9) Roads are salted in order to

    (a) kill grass.

    (b) melt snow.

    (c) help the economy.

    (d) prevent potholes.

The correct answer is (c). Road salting employs thousands of persons

directly, and millions more indirectly, for example, salt miners and

rustproofers.  Most important, salting reduces the life spans of cars,

thus stimulating the car and steel industries.

Fortune Cookie

A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems

best.  That's dangerous.  Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to

serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the

schools as 'standards'?  Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to

work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if

not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,

elitist.  ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such

stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be

supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real

professionals.  Those texts are called 'reading material.'  They are the

academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,

and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating

resource centers along the roads.

        -- The Underground Grammarian

Fortune Cookie

"Teresa uttered a cry of joy, and, without inquiring whence this attire came, or even thanking Luigi, darted into the grotto, transformed into a dressing-room. Luigi pushed the stone behind her, for on the crest of a small adjacent hill which cut off the view toward Palestrina, he saw a traveller on horseback, stopping a moment, as if uncertain of his road, and thus presenting against the blue sky that perfect outline which is peculiar to distant objects in southern climes. When he saw Luigi, he put his horse into a gallop and advanced toward him. Luigi was not mistaken. The traveller, who was going from Palestrina to Tivoli, had mistaken his way; the young man directed him; but as at a distance of a quarter of a mile the road again divided into three ways, and on reaching these the traveller might again stray from his route, he begged Luigi to be his guide. Luigi threw his cloak on the ground, placed his carbine on his shoulder, and freed from his heavy covering, preceded the traveller with the rapid step of a mountaineer, which a horse can scarcely keep up with. In ten minutes Luigi and the traveller reached the cross-roads. On arriving there, with an air as majestic as that of an emperor, he stretched his hand towards that one of the roads which the traveller was to follow.--"That is your road, excellency, and now you cannot again mistake."--'And here is your recompense,' said the traveller, offering the young herdsman some small pieces of money.

Alexandre Dumas, Pere     The Count of Monte Cristo

The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two hours; at last he turned in his seat and said--

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable to receive injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine; it was about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley     Frankenstein

I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot--how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered--not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do--beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he had been ordered to return to military service--and especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you should reign in my way, but not in yours!"--he had cheerfully taken up his familiar business, and--like a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts--he dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

There were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses. There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them to support them Lefebvre-Desnouettes's division,--the one hundred and six picked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety-seven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred and eighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirasses of beaten iron, with horse-pistols in their holsters, and long sabre-swords. That morning the whole army had admired them, when, at nine o'clock, with braying of trumpets and all the music playing "Let us watch o'er the Safety of the Empire," they had come in a solid column, with one of their batteries on their flank, another in their centre, and deployed in two ranks between the roads to Genappe and Frischemont, and taken up their position for battle in that powerful second line, so cleverly arranged by Napoleon, which, having on its extreme left Kellermann's cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers, had, so to speak, two wings of iron.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long, from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley     Frankenstein

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

Jonathan Swift     A Modest Proposal

"By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, 'Say, what is he like?' I make response, 'Tall as a spectre.'"

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six thousand rubles--to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts. After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine, Nicholas-- having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was already on the friendliest terms--galloped back over abominable roads, in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as to be in time for the governor's party.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were marching along both.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

"What am I to Cosette? A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that she was in existence. I love her, it is true. One loves a child whom one has seen when very young, being old oneself. When one is old, one feels oneself a grandfather towards all little children. You may, it seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without either father or mother. She needed me. That is why I began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like me, can become their protector. I have fulfilled this duty towards Cosette. I do not think that so slight a thing can be called a good action; but if it be a good action, well, say that I have done it. Register this attenuating circumstance. To-day, Cosette passes out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her providence has changed. And Cosette gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit. How did that deposit come into my hands? What does that matter? I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me. I complete the restitution by announcing my true name. That concerns me. I have a reason for desiring that you should know who I am."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

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