Discarded Things Quotes & Sayings

The plain wooden toothpick, it may be argued, is among the simplest of manufactured things. It consists of a single part, made of a single material, intended for a single purpose-from which it gets its simple name. It is also among the most convenient and ready of things. It can be used directly out of the box-there being no instructions to read, no parts to assemble, no priming or booting required, and no maintenance expected. When it has served its purpose, it is simply discarded. — Henry Petroski

Only a sentimental being would care about such everyday things - things used and discarded by the humans of their respective eras without thought, yet kept and preserved by an immortal who never forgot them. An immortal who loved and cared for them, dusting them off for an eternity, keeping their dead spirits as alive as he - stuck in their immortal tomb never to find the rest everything must eventually seek. Time had no meaning in this cavern of infinite age. — Michelle M. Pillow

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck. — Roger Zelazny

He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances. "Maybe I should turn the lights out," says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can't be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I'm inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos. — Margaret Atwood

In old magazines and newspapers we find a number of uncomfortably revealing things: the aged as young, the dead as living, forgotten people as celebrities, an array of our own barbarous and long-discarded fads and postures, and worst, visible only in this removed perspective, our own sickening pretensions to meaning and permanence. — Robert Grudin

Alas, words were but empty things, devoid of power and all too easily broken, discarded, and forgotten. — Stephen R. Lawhead

we lived depravity
and called it truth, silencing
our dreaming, and
our love, discarding
things holy. — John Daniel Thieme

They are sparkly," Nawat said. "The griffins shed them. I thought if I brought you a present that was made of discarded things, no one would punish you for having them. — Tamora Pierce

A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny. — Michel Faber

My mother told me that truth is like my skin, a beautiful, protective covering, and the things that people say or do can be easily changed or discarded. She told me truth comes from the heart. — Stewart Lewis

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations. — Jarvis Cocker

Elegance is achieved when, having discarded all superfluous things, we discover simplicity and concentration. — Paulo Coelho

There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity ... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth. — Agnes Repplier

Good Things Happen to Big-Thinking People A tourist walked down a pier and watched a fisherman pull in a large fish, measure it, and throw it back. He caught a second fish, smaller this time, he measured it, and put it in his basket. Oddly, all fish over 10 inches, he discarded. The smaller ones, he kept. Someone asked him, "why?" The fisherman said, "Because my frying pan only measures 10 inches." Is that foolish? Of course it is, but it's no more so than when we throw away the biggest ideas and most beautiful dreams that come into your mind simply because your experience is too limited. Start growing now. Start thinking. Big things happen to big-thinking people. You can become the team you want to be. It's possible. Every man must make his contribution. — Peter G. Tormey

Two came here, Two flew off, - Butterflies. Chora3 In this verse, the ordinary poetical meaning is discarded; what remains is that dark flame of life that burns in all things. It is seen with the belly, not with the eye; with "bowels of compassion. — R.H. Blyth

Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive as, for example, that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking. The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish. Once the new way of thinking has been established, the old problems vanish; indeed they become hard to recapture. For they go with our way of expressing ourselves and, if we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the old garment. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The body, I have often thought, is like a promise. You keep things in it. Those things are covert, immediate, yours. There is something lustrous about them. They emit energy, like radium or appliances. They can be replaced, repaired or simply discarded. The promise of the body is very firm and intact. It's the only promise we can count on, and we can't really count on it very much. — Scott Bradfield

Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest of things- a little boy walking home by himself, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY PLEASE HELP. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn't feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that's probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I'm not saying that it's stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night. — Nina LaCour

He balled up my discarded sweatshirt and put it against his shoulder. "Go on," he said. "I don't bite." "And from what I hear, that's a good thing." He gave a rumbling chuckle. "Yeah, it is." I leaned against his shoulder. — Kelley Armstrong

Elegance isn't a superficial thing, it's the way mankind has found to honor life and work. That's why, when you feel uncomfortable in that position, you mustn't think that it's false or artificial: it's real and true precisely because it's difficult. That position means that both the paper and the brush feel proud of the effort you're making. The paper ceases to be a flat, colorless surface and takes on the depth of the things placed on it. Elegance is the correct posture if the writing is to be perfect. It's the same with life: when all superfluous things have been discarded, we discover simplicity and concentration. The simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be, even though, at first, it may seem uncomfortable. — Paulo Coelho

We ran hunched along a subterranean corridor, discarded animal bones underfoot, the ceiling brushing our heads, past things I tried not to see - a slumped figure in a corner, sleepers shivering on miserable mats of straw, a boy in rags lying on the ground with a beggar's pail bangled around one arm. — Ransom Riggs

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. — Mahatma Gandhi

We can tell much by what we have already willing discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent. — Neal A. Maxwell

Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them. — Bill Buxton

The shiny black nose of a fox appears through her door before the rest of it steps tentatively across the wooden floor to where she's cooking. A pile of children's clothes lie discarded in a corner of the room. The fox knows what she is cooking and holds back a shudder. There are some things even foxes know better than to eat. — Amy Kuivalainen

(I)n this world of change and lost memories, time brings all things full circle. That which was discarded becomes priceless.Those who were abandoned will someday be loved - if you can hold on till that day. — Neal Shusterman

Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can't pinpoint where you are in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you can learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiences are well nigh infinite, you'd best figure our your good points and learn to get by with what you have. — Haruki Murakami

Our hearts bear a similarity with storerooms.
We hold in them our trampled convictions, our fears, suppressed acts of valor, disappointments, enmity, anguish, secrets, things we wish we should have done, things we wish we shouldn't have, regret.
And continue piling them up with emotions, memories, conversations which did happen and conversations which didn't, soured relationships and bitter people all of which we should have discarded, we keep it within until there is no space left, until the room is full, occupied after which we go on to lock it.
Once in a while we happen to open the room and sight the dust accumulated all over, we relive each moment, each memory and each emotion again and soon fall upon the realization as to how deeply the room is in need of cleaning and so we clean it.
We clean it so that we can fill it once more, hold it, bear it, relish it, heal from it and then finally let it go. — Chirag Tulsiani

It seemed Paris somehow managed to absorb all the beautiful things the rest of the world discarded; it was a sparkling and bejeweled box of lost treasures, a wondrous cabinet that hummed with soft horn harmonies played against a grand piano's minor chords. — Toby Barlow

The movies remind me of the Triangle Club at Princeton. I used to belong to it, and we always started out firm in our decision to create new and startling things. We always ended up by producing the same old show. In the beginning, our enthusiasm and ideals discarded as rubbish all the old fossilized plots. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The organic produce guy, a young man who'd left Brooklyn in order to minimize his carbon footprint and consume only things he could make or grow himself. This had come to involve ... going toilet-paper free the year before, and making his wife use discarded athletic socks for her monthly cycle.'That poor girl!' said Sylvie, privately resolving to figure out where the young woman was living and anonymously deliver some tampons, the really bad kind, with non biodegradable plastic applicators. — Jennifer Weiner

I lived on nothing for years - squatted where I lived and where I worked, stole electricity, made things from stuff I found in skips, used paper that had been discarded - you do everything you can do to keep going and not have to get a job. — Gary Hume

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable. — Robert Walser

I remind myself that traveling through life as an artist requires one to distill things slowly. To be inquisitive, inventive, and patient - a lot of things get discarded along the way. It's a little like boiling sea water to get at the salt. — James Nares

It was not chance that brought us together again. I am sure of that. These things are predestined. I have a theory that each man's life is like a pack of cards, and those we meet and sometimes love are shuffled with us. We find ourselves in the same suit, held by the hand of Fate. The game is played, we are discarded, and pass on. — Daphne Du Maurier

Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. — John Irving