Detain Quotes & Sayings

Loneliness

It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.

As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;

And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?

There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born. — Mikhail Lermontov

There are some people who state that the exterior, sex, or physique of another person is indifferent to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people need not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made. — G.K. Chesterton

Are we going to go out and arrest and detain and deport 11 million people? Nobody would argue that that is what we are going to do, because we have never demonstrated the political will to do that, nor have we ever committed the requisite resources to do that. — Luis Gutierrez

'IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO DO IT,' WAS THE TERRIBLE VERDICT. 'IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU ARE A WOMAN AND WOULD NEED A PROTECTOR, AND EVEN IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO TRAVEL ALONE YOU WOULD NEED TO CARRY SO MUCH BAGGAGE THAT IT WOULD DETAIN YOU IN MAKING RAPID CHANGES. BESIDES YOU SPEAK NOTHING BUT ENGLISH, SO THERE IS NO USE TALKING ABOUT IT; NO ONE BUT A MAN CAN DO THIS.' — Nellie Bly

On a day of burial there is no perspective
for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was
to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Tradition is the prison where change is detained ... To make a change, you need to agree that you are not going with the statement "this is how we do it"! Yes, that was how it was done, but what next? Agree to change! — Israelmore Ayivor

On recovering my senses, I hastened to quit a place where I hoped there was nothing further to detain me. I first filled my pockets with gold, then fastened the strings of the purse round my neck, and concealed it in my bosom. — Adelbert Von Chamisso

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them. — Charles Caleb Colton

But the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags which he threw out, one after another, without taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled him over and over no less than one-and-twenty times, in the face of every man in Rotterdam. — Edgar Allan Poe

To my surprise, the young lady held up her gloved hand to detain me. "If your friend," she said, "would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The great difficulty with Guantanamo is it was perceived correctly as being a place where people were not being detained subject to rules. I don't think the world thinks that you can't detain suspected terrorists - the world thinks you can do that, but you have to do it pursuant to rules and to clear charges. — Noah Feldman

These people who detain us so pleasantly may decide to shoot us after all. It is a possibility. And if that is the case, then why should I carry this love with me to the other world? Why not give to you what is yours?"
"And what if there is nothing for me to give you?" She seemed to be interested in Fyodorov's argument.
He shook his head. "What a thing to say, after all that you have given to me. But it is not about who has given what. That is not the way to think of gifts. — Ann Patchett

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom. — Peter Ustinov

In order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions, and preserve its living spirit in a fleshless skeleton of words. — Friedrich Schiller

Never mind though our purses be as empty as the falcon's nest of a year ago. Let that not detain us. We are weary of being without gold in the midst of plenty. We wish to become men of means. Come, let us go to Arkad and ask how we, also, may acquire incomes for ourselves. — George S. Clason

IT is an eternal phenomenon: the insatiate will can always, by means of an illusion spread over things, detain its creatures in life and compel them to live on. One is chained by the Socratic love of knowledge and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art's seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; still another by the metaphysical comfort that beneath the flux of phenomena eternal life flows on indestructibly: to say nothing of the more ordinary and almost more powerful illusions which the will has always at hand. These three planes of illusion are on the whole designed only for the more nobly formed natures, who in general feel profoundly the weight and burden of existence, and must be deluded by exquisite stimulants into forgetfulness of their sorrow. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It isnt for want
of something to say
something to tell you
something you should know
but to detain you
keep you from going
feeling myself here
as long as you are
as long as you are — Cid Corman

[Psi waves travel far and wide
Faster than the speed of light
Limitless is their domain
Time does not their rate detain.] — Marcha A. Fox

She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] rejected the [George] Bush administration's claim that it could indefinitely detain a United States citizen. She upheld the fundamental principle of judicial review over the exercise of government power. — Patrick Leahy

It is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave. — Homer

Where on earth have you got to, man?" "In here," Alfred replied from the sanctuary of the foliage. "I think I've found it. Yes, there it is. Bloody good luck. I thank you for your help, Seton. You need not detain yourselves further." "At least join us for a late supper, Weston," Lord Seton pressed, peering into the — Michelle McMaster

It may be easily believed that however little of novelty could be added to their fears hopes and conjectures on this interesting subject by its repeated discussion no other could detain them from it long during the whole of the journey. From Elizabeth's thoughts it was never absent. Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish self-reproach she could find no interval of ease or forgetfulness. — Jane Austen

Generally speaking, it is inhumane to detain a fleeting insight. — Fran Lebowitz

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws. — Henry David Thoreau

Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe - I have tried it - my own feet have tried it well - be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? — Walt Whitman

The question of whether enlightenment is a permanent state need not detain us. The crucial point is that you can glimpse something about the nature of consciousness that will liberate you from suffering in the present. — Sam Harris

Britain has a Terrorism Act, which has within it a portion called Schedule 7, which is quite unique. What it is is it gives officials the ability to detain people at the border as they go in or out or even transit through the country. — Sarah Harrison

I do not - I never believed it's better to kill a terrorist than to detain him. We want to detain as many terrorists as possible so we can elicit the intelligence from them in the appropriate manner so that we can disrupt follow-on terrorist attacks. — John O. Brennan

I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching. — Martin Luther

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth. — Epictetus

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. — Epictetus

Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practicing for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time? — Madame De Stael

Remember that there was great controversy that George Bush asserted the power simply to detain American citizens without due process or simply to eavesdrop on their conversation without warrant. Here you have something much more severe. Not eavesdropping on American citizens, not detaining them without due process, but killing them without due process. And yet many Democrats and progressives, because it's President Obama doing it, have no problem with it and are even in favor of it." Greenwald added: "To say that the President has the right to kill citizens without due process is really to take the Constitution and to tear it into as many little pieces as you can and then burn it and step on it." For — Jeremy Scahill

The subsistence mentality of a person is a prison in which his personal joy is detained. If you want to live in joy, you don't live for yourself alone. Live for others too! — Israelmore Ayivor

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 — Dorothy Parker

Perhaps you are right. In another setting it would be ridiculous, too grand. In another setting it would not happen because you are a famous woman and at best I would shake your famous hand for one second while you stepped into your car after a performance. But in this place I hear you sing every day. In this place I watch you eat your dinner, and what I feel in my heart is love. There is no point in not telling you that. These people who detain us so pleasantly may decide to shoot us after all. It is a possibility. And if that is the case, then why should I carry this love with me to the other world? Why not give to you what is yours? — Ann Patchett

My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. — Walter Savage Landor

There are those who leave without our needing to detain them; we have said all there is to say. — Richard Eyre

I am not here to answer your questions. To answer would imply that we conceded some slight possibility of truth to your assertions of innocence, and we do not concede that. Truth is something which is to be had from us, not from you. Ours is the most remarkable government in the history of mankind; because we, and only we, have accepted as a working principle what every sage has taught and every government has feigned to accept: the power of the truth. And because we do, we rule as no other government has ever ruled. You have often asked me what your crime is, why we detain you. It is because we know you are lying - do you understand what I am telling you? — Gene Wolfe

It is true that I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, because when I campaigned in Texas I told voters in Texas that I would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain U.S. citizens permanently with no due process. I have repeatedly supported an effort to take that out of that bill, and I honored that campaign commitment. — Ted Cruz

My policy will be to detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country. And we'll do it with an expedited hearing process so that millions of illegal aliens are not released into the general population with some hearing date down the road. — Rick Perry

We need to make clear the federal government does not have authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without due process or, for that matter, to use lethal force on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil if they don't pose imminent threats. — Ted Cruz

I cannot detain Love, holding him captive so that he may never break my heart. No more than I can stick Guilt in a pot so that I may boil him until all of my sins are vaporized, rising alongside the screaming steam. I cannot hold Sorrow in my arms and rock him to a fit and endless sleep. Nor can I search for Joy and effortlessly find him beneath the pink-dusted sky of late afternoon, where he waits for me with open arms. — Kelseyleigh Reber

In the unlikely event that she does escape me, I will inform you all. If you catch her, you are to detain her and return her to me." His eyes glowed like the fires of hell. "She is not to be harmed in any way, or so help you God, you will regret it until your last breath." * — Brooklyn Ann