D Passerby Quotes & Sayings

IMPOSSIBLE FRIENDSHIPS For example, with someone who no longer is, who exists only in yellowed letters. Or long walks beside a stream, whose depths hold hidden porcelain cups - and the talks about philosophy with a timid student or the postman. A passerby with proud eyes whom you'll never know. Friendship with this world, ever more perfect (if not for the salty smell of blood). The old man sipping coffee in St.-Lazare, who reminds you of someone. Faces flashing by in local trains - the happy faces of travelers headed perhaps for a splendid ball, or a beheading. And friendship with yourself - since after all you don't know who you are. — Adam Zagajewski

Wagons rattling and banging,
horses neighing and snorting,
conscripts marching, each with bow and arrows at his hip,
fathers and mothers, wives and children, running to see them off
so much dust kicked up you can't see Xian-yang Bridge!
And the families pulling at their clothes, stamping feet in anger,
blocking the way and weeping
ah, the sound of their wailing rises straight up to assault heaven.
And a passerby asks, "What's going on?"
The soldier says simply, "This happens all the time.
From age fifteen some are sent to guard the north,
and even at forty some work the army farms in the west.
When they leave home, the village headman has to wrap their turbans for them;
when they come back, white-haired, they're still guarding the frontier.
The frontier posts run with blood enough to fill an ocean,
and the war-loving Emperor's dreams of conquest have still not ended. — Du Fu

The referee told me this league has never had a brawl of that magnitude," said Mr. Penderwick after a long, painful silence. "Of course, at the time I was pretending to be a casual passerby and not a father at all. — Jeanne Birdsall

I had a game where I liked to imagine what sort of pyjamas each passerby might wear. This came from a belief that the more I know about the inner lives of others, the more I might understand the world. — Stephanie LaCava

I've never felt this lonely.
But then I've never witnessed someone falling apart. Even his blank stare, as he watches his world crumble around himself, is beautiful. And I've never seen someone break so perfectly.
And all I can do is watch because he won't let me in.
Because just like his darkness, his misery is his own.
But what does that make me?
A passerby?
No.
I can't just stand by.
Why doesn't he understand that I can't watch him fall apart? That the sharp ends of the broken glass that is his heart, cut me too. — Kady Hunt

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe ... I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. — Annie Dillard

Like Karl Kraus, [Wittgenstein] was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception. — Thomas Szasz

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you
the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or bloated, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it. — Bernard Berenson

At first sin was as fragile as a spiders thread, and finally as stout as a ship's hawser; sin arrived as a passerby, next lingered for a moment, then came as a visitor, and finally became master of the house. — Israel Shenker

Having realized that her affection for Sinclair went far beyond friendship, there was only one thing for her to do. She took off her hat and banged her head against the nearest lamppost.
Also realizing she was drawing attention from passerby, she put her hat back on and resumed walking. — Shirley Karr

Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning — Forough Farrokhzad

A few years back, one bleak winter afternoon, on the way home from the Pioneer Market on Columbus, some faceless yuppie shoved past March saying "Excuse me," which in New York translates to "Get the fuck outta my way," and which turned out finally to be once too often. March dropped the bags she was carrying in the filthy slush on the street, gave them a good kick, and screamed as loud as she could, "I hate this miserable shithole of a city!" Nobody seemed to take notice, though the bags and their strewn contents were gone in seconds. The only reaction was from a passerby who paused to remark, "So? you don't like it, why don't you go live someplace else? — Thomas Pynchon

The waterfall winks at every passerby. — Marty Rubin

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me? — Alain De Botton

When passerby's ignore homeless people, they don't know if that was a man or woman in uniform previously. They should not be invisible. They cannot be ignored. — Max Martini

When had I tamed myself? It had been a lengthy apprenticeship, begun when I was as young as ten, and continued relentlessly throughout my adolescence, when I had discovered to my own terror that I wanted to murder somebody: my father, a sarcastic friend, my professor of Latin and Greek, even a rude passerby. It was not until I was almost twenty that I began to suspect that, along with the repression of my violent impulses, I had repressed everything, even my ability to experience a profound emotion, even my impulse to do good deeds and help others. I had become as good as I had hoped to be, but good with the cautious detachment of one who never indulges in excess. — Domenico Starnone

With madness, as with vomit, it's the passerby who receives the inconvenience. — Joe Orton

Clouds, this evening
The same as always, like thirst,
The same red dress, unfastened.
Imagine, passerby,
Our new beginnings, our eagerness, our trust. — Yves Bonnefoy

And despite the eyeliner, and the lipstick that defines her lips, she has a face now that a passerby's gaze will engage and then bounce from, as it would a street sign or a mailbox number. ...this is what aging is... — Khaled Hosseini

Here you will find marvelous moustaches, which neither pen nor brush could depict. To which the best part of a lifetime has been devoted, objects of long vigils by day and midnight; moustaches on which the most ravishing ointments have been poured, which have been anointed with the most precious pomades and which are the envy of passerby.. — Andrei Bely

In every passerby, everywhere - Christ ... He is in everyone - there can be no outcasts. — Caryll Houselander

She tried to make her eyes seem tender; she did not know why, for no reason, for pleasure, the pleasure of charity, of a little vanity, and also gratuity, the pleasure of carving your name into a tree trunk for a passerby whom you will never see, the pleasure of throwing a bottle into the ocean. — Marcel Proust

If you are a blackman in America and get stopped by the police, make sure you have a vidio camera. Don't rely on some passerby to film the beating. Rodney King was just lucky. — Don King

I had a vision ... of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Much like books, she could tell how voiceless things had provided a brand of companionship more compatible to his nature than human friendship had ever been. These things, locked in their inanimate ways, fed him ideas, she thought. They whispered their tales to him through unmoving lips and he listened, opening himself to their world so much more than any normal passerby. That much was evident in the way he'd taken the photos, as if he'd caught each soulless thing in a candid moment of secret animation. Like they'd sensed him coming and so turned themselves his way because they knew that he held the power to translate their silence into words. — Kelly Creagh

Like a blood-red sky that warns the passerby, "There is a fire over there," certain blazing looks often reveal passions that they serve merely to reflect. They are flames in the mirror. — Marcel Proust

I resemble that worm which crawls through dust,
Lives in the dust, eats dust
Until a passerby's foot crushes it. — Philip K. Dick

There's an old joke about a skydiver who's blown off course and ends up landing in a
tree, dangling above the ground. After awhile someone walks by and the skydiver asks
where he is.
The passerby answers, "You're about 20 feet off the ground."
The skydiver replies "You must be a software analyst."
"You're right. How did you know?" asks the passerby.
"Because what you told me was 100 percent accurate, but completely worthless. — Craig Walls

In order to succeed he must remain true to the feeling that had inspired him in the first place. It didn't matter that other people would do it in a different way; in fact this was inevitable. He would keep to the roads because, despite the odd fast car, he felt safer there. It didn't matter that he had no mobile phone. It didn't matter that he had not planned his route, or brought a road map. He had a different map, and that was the one in his mind, made up of all the people and places he had passed. He would also stick to his yachting shoes because, despite the wear and tear, they were his. He saw that when a person becomes estranged from the things they know, and is a passerby, strange things take on a new significance. And knowing this, it seemed important to allow himself to be true to the instincts that made him Harold, as opposed to anyone else. — Rachel Joyce

They are hung from the walls whilst still alive and left to starve to death. Their tongues are cut so their screams will not disturb passerby. This is done purely because they follow a different faith (...) I told you I had been all over this world. The are countless faiths, countless gods. There are more ways to honour the divine than there are stars in the sky. — Anthony Ryan

You're beautiful, but you're empty ... One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery