Battened Quotes & Sayings

It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, — Oscar Wilde

No matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy, — Ai Weiwei

Cities on the ocean have a choice whether to turn their faces or their backs to the water, lining the shore either with pretty hotels and rich homes or dim warehouses, narrow streets, and greasy piers. All prairie towns turn away from the prairie, however. The huddled houses form a storm-battened island in the midst of endless space. — Joseph Bottum

I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible socially, but full-scale - and that it's the knockings and baterrings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banaility. — Elizabeth Bowen

I'll teach you to kick me ... '
You don't need to teach me
I already know how! — Groucho Marx

Amaranta would sigh, laugh, and dream of a second homeland of handsome men and beautiful women who spoke a childlike language, with ancient cities of whose past grandeur only the cats among the rubble remained. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,
made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. — Oscar Wilde

They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling.
God help us all. — Libba Bray

The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. — Booker T. Washington

If principles don't determine what you are going to pass or do, then power will. — Dan Webster

You've got to be in your kitchens, or it all falls apart. — Jean-Georges Vongerichten

Proponents of privatization argued that cities and states needed private capital to fund all the upgrades that our decaying infrastructure so desperately needed. — Bethany McLean

Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease among the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.
-Strange Fruit — Seamus Heaney

There's something magical about Oaxaca and the vibe of the people. — Mike White

The voice went into his head, bored down through his memories, riffled through his fears, found the right levers, battened onto them, and pulled. In Moist's case, it found Frau Shambers. In the second year at school, you were precipitated out of the warm, easygoing kindergarten of Frau Tissel, smelling of finger paint, playdough, and inadequate toilet training, and onto the cold benches governed by Frau Shambers, smelling of Education. It was as bad as being born, with the added disadvantage that your mother wasn't there. Moist — Terry Pratchett

Billionaires should never be responsible for solving problems, because they're not the government. — Bill Gates

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality. — Elizabeth Bowen

Jenks watched for a moment from the rim of the bucket, then said, " You look like a porno star on your hands and knees, mopping in your underwear. Push it baby" he moaned. " Push it! — Kim Harrison

When one is an artist, what else can he be? — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

He wouldn't spend another standing in the darkness, hot and sick and shaking inside with a confused mess of feelings that weren't worth analyzing. That he shouldn't have felt anyway.
With Rachel gone it was like balancing on the edge of a cliff - and all the little wildflowers, the netting of grass and roots that kept the cliff from sliding into the sea below, were gone. It was just Matt standing there looking down, waiting to fall.
Even Rachel's memory, the sweet recollection of all they had built, all they had shared, was no longer strong enough to fight gravity. From the moment he had looked across the wet grass and seen Nathan Doyle standing in the shadow of a stone saber-toothed tiger, something had changed inside him. Something battened down had torn free, like a sail taking its first deep breath of sea air.
It terrified him.
And at the same time it exhilarated him.
Which terrified him all the more. — Josh Lanyon

Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that — George Bernard Shaw

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire. — Annie Dillard

Now and always, we expect to insist upon it that we are Americans, that America is our native land; that this is our home; that we are American citizens . . . and that it is the duty of the American people so to recognize us. - FREDERICK DOUGLASS A — Elizabeth Dowling Taylor