Deafen Quotes & Sayings

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.
The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance. — Aleister Crowley

Brent waited for a moment, to see if he could hear anything on the other side of the door, but only silence greeted him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. Couldn't focus on anything but getting through to her. "What do I need to do, baby? Do you want me to sing 'Wind Beneath My Wings'? I'll do it. I'll deafen everyone in this building if that's what you want." When the silence remained, Brent's head dropped against the door with a curse. "You're really going to make me do this, aren't you?" Then he gave Bette Midler a run for her money. — Tessa Bailey

Only
but this is rare
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. — Matthew Arnold

If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. — Edgar Allan Poe

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections — Joseph Addison

Words can split logs and start fires and break stones, but they can also hug you and warm you and fight the wars you don't have the strength to fight. — David Estes

At the blind date,
deafen your ears
to hear the words
spoken with her eyes. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you! — Charles Dickens

How narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it!6 are words of our Lord. 8. The narrow gate — San Juan De La Cruz

It is our eyes that blind us and our ears that deafen us. — Nanamoli Thera

It was extraordinary how far you could go in London and barely touch a pavement or cross a road. — Kate Atkinson

Hear the heartbeats of a nation
silenced together on the impatient
winds of change,
And deafen your ears to the words of
one. Melodized by emancipation..
Then open your eyes,
open your eyes for me:
Darling, freedom to you is
a freedom to none. — Nema Al-Araby

The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. — C.S. Lewis

Do you swim? Hunt? Wrestle? I see. Can you use a crossbow? Your longest shot? Can you count? Read and write? Ah, the sting of sarcasm - Have we a scholar here? Then produce us a specimen," said Lymond. "What about some modest quatrains? Frae vulgar prose to flowand Latin. Deafen us, enchant us, educate us, boy. — Dorothy Dunnett

Why are you telling me this? (Stryder)
Because too many of us let our minds deafen our hearts. (Zenobia) — Kinley MacGregor

A long, ear-tearing howl threatened to deafen him, but he was already past the wight as the lanceblade sank in and cut deep, Gallow's body airborne and spinning, his axis almost parallel to the rooftop as the Veil bunched and shivered. Landing, still spinning, the lance a propeller now, the last wight baring its yellowed fangs and hissing. Another curse, this one hurried and malformed, hurtled flapping for Gallow's eyes, but his own spat phrase of the Old Language batted it aside, a dart of moonglow shredding the black wings. Skidding, — Lilith Saintcrow

The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and
where perfect judgment would have advised against going? — Charles Lindbergh

When I plug in my guitar and play it really loud, loud enough to deafen most people, that's my shot of adrenaline, and there's nothing like it. That's what it's always been for me - to be the flame the tribe dances around. — Joe Perry

Colors blind the eye
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart. — Lao-Tzu

In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won't move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it ... To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it
everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not interactive with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everyone is up to it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

For some she came in a dream. For others in words as clear as a bell: it is time, I am here. She may come in a whisper so loud she can deafen you or a shout so quiet you strain to hear. She may appear in the waves or the face of the moon, in a red goddess or a crow. — Lucy H. Pearce

Tizzie, count the number of fucks I give on my fingers. Oh, I managed to conjure one just for you. — Kurtis J. Wiebe

Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own. — Geraldine Brooks

He turned the music up loud. So what if it would deafen him? It made him happy. Like it had so many times before. — Stuart McLean

If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future. — Bernard Cornwell

The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you. — James A. Michener