Burl Quotes & Sayings

It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very. — Ian Rankin

On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and only there, lays the freedom of Art. — Albert Camus

People have this idea that the more pious and devout I am, the more successful I am. Which is very dangerous. If you look at faith in that way, you're bound to fail at both - spiritually and in your career. — Troy Polamalu

I'm a law-abiding man. That is, if there's any law to abide by. — Burl Ives

It all comes out in the wash. It's just the spin cycle that makes you crazy — Burl Barer

Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist - do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn't admit to being left handed - do you tell the judge what's going on? Imagine he's gay, and could not have committed the crime because he's gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn't a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay
just imagine that he is — Bernhard Schlink

There in front of me was the Senator on the floor being held by the busboy. There was nobody else around, and I made my first frame, and I forgot to focus the camera. The second frame was a little more in focus ... then just for a second, while everything was open, the busboy looked up, and he had this look in his eye. I made that picture, and then suddenly the whole situation closed in again. And it became bedlam.(On the 1968 shooting of U.S. presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy.) — Bill Eppridge

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring. — Burl Ives

The human animal is a beast that eventually has to die. If he's got money, he buys and he buys and he buys. The reason he buys everything he can is because of some crazy hope that one of the things he buys will be life everlasting. — Burl Ives

Well, if you don't like the idea of one world, how many worlds do you want, and how would you like them divided? By race? By religion? By income? Unless you have a spare planet in your pocket, one world is all we have. — Burl Barer

I got into a brawl one night in a saloon in Greenwich Village. Elia Kazan, a great director, saw me put out a couple of hecklers and figures there was some Big Daddy in me, just lyin' dormant. And out it came. People still do call me Big Daddy, but to me, inside, I'm no Big Daddy at all. — Burl Ives

So how are you supposed to learn how to drive with this guy yapping at you? My brothers were the ones who got to practice. So when you have to get on the expressway, you're afraid. That's what I think. That's why I take back routes on two-lane highways. — Sandra Cisneros

To be a man requires that you accept everything life has to give you, beginning with your name. — Burl Ives

As she stood there looking about, that radio sound resolved into the bluff baritone of Burl Ives, encouraging all the world to have a holly jolly Christmas, and never mind it was the third week of March. The voice was coming from the attached garage, a dingy building with a single roll-up door and four square windows looking into it, milky with filth. — Joe Hill

I stopped and gazed on the little dull man who was being paid to be a teacher of teachers. I turned and walked to the door, slammed it closed with a bang, and broken glass crashed to the floor. There was uproar behind me in the class, which did not interest me at all. — Burl Ives

I think my life has been a long, slow process of trying to move closer and closer to the spirit by moving closer and closer to the heart. The heart is what's important. — Burl Ives

Never let the sun go down upon your anger. — Roger N. Walsh

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself. — Norman Cousins

First you have to spread on the rust performer, then you add a coat of protective enamel, and then you spray on the satin finish so you look good. — Vinny Testaverde

Phil didn't know he was dead until he read it in the paper. All things considered, he took it rather well. — Burl Barer

You can buy a Talking Barbie anywhere, but you can't even special order Listening Ken. — Burl Barer

When you've set goals and dreams, you don't feel old. — Burl Ives

I went to my room and packed a change of clothes, got my banjo, and started walking down the road. Soon I found myself on the open highway headed east. — Burl Ives

How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked. — Burl Ives

Have a holly jolly Christmas! — Burl Ives

Dawn crept up out of the trees, defining a bole, a burl, a leaf at a time the world he'd spent the night trying to comprehend. But what would daylight offer except the illusion of understanding? At least in darkness you were spared the pretending. — Tom Franklin

Hating L.A. was in my Northern California DNA. We even had a burl plaque that hung on our living room wall that read, "We Don't Give a Damn How it's Done in L.A. — Antonia Crane

When you're on the open sea and you drop 10, 12 feet and your stomach goes up around your neck - that's when you have problems. — Tom Hanks

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. — Pete Seeger