Quotes & Sayings About Doors And Gates

No matter where one looked, the sky had a clean-washed appearance. There was not a trace of a cloud to be seen anywhere in its vast expanse. It was one of those days that made one want to open doors and gates to release the last traces of winter, to watch them disappear like thin wisps of smoke into the farthest reaches of the sky. — Der Nister

One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight ... Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won't put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke ... It's a relaxed atmosphere in our little town, plus our neighbors keep an eye out and will, if asked, tell us the make and model of every vehicle that ever enters the lane to our farm. So the family was a bit surprised when I started double-checking the security of doors and gates any time we all were about to leave the premises.
"Do I have to explain the obvious?" I asked impatiently. "Somebody might break in and put zucchini in our house. — Barbara Kingsolver

It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window ... Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place. — Frederic Chopin

He rubbed his unshaven chin with the back of his hand. Beyond the gates lay a life he had been forbidden. He tightened his grip on the satchel and walked spindle-legged over the sodden ground, glancing at the numerous closed doors on either side of the passage, expecting one to open at any moment. The walls echoed as he splashed through puddles of oil and water. He reached the gates, allowed himself a deep breath, and squinted through the ironwork. — Richard A. Kirk

We have been happily borne - or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way - down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.
That's all there is to it! You are arrested! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The population of his feelings
Could not be governed
By the authorities

He had reasons why
Reason disobeyed him
And voted him out of office

Anxiety
His constant companion
Made it difficult to rest

Unruly party of one
Forget about truces or compromises
The barricades will be stormed

Every day was an emergency
Every day called for another emergency
Meeting of the cabinet

In his country
There were scenes
Of spectacular carnage

Hurricanes welcomed him
He adored typhoons and tornadoes
Furies unleashed

Houses lifted up
And carried to the sea
Uncontained uncontainable

Unbolt the doors
Fling open the gates
Here he comes

Chaotic wind of the gods
He was trouble
But he was our trouble — Edward Hirsch

The grandest thing has been the lifting up of the gates and the opening of the doors to the women of America, giving liberty to twenty-seven million women, thus opening to them a new and larger life and a higher ideal. — Olympia Brown

Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates. — Gertrude Stein

The law of attraction is synonymous to the law of sacrifice, in which you get in return what you are decisively choose to give up. The universe in all her infinity beauty generously opens up gates that you had no idea existed when you close others, but she requires you to walk through the gates solely on your own will and strength, with the other doors that you have left behind often times being forever locked and eternally inaccessible. — Forrest Curran

The Harrowing of Hell is so important to the Eastern Orthodox Church that they reenact it during their Easter liturgy. The priest exits the church with a cross held high, and the congregation remains inside. The church doors are locked and the lights are turned off. The darkened church becomes hell, the Devil's jail. The priest then pounds on the doors of the church - symbolizing Christ assaulting the gates of Hades - proclaiming "Open the doors to the Lord of the powers, the king of glory!" Inside the church the people make a great noise of rattling chains, the resistance of hell to the coming of Christ. Eventually the doors are opened, the cross enters, and the church is lit and filled with incense. For the Orthodox, Easter is all about how Jesus defeats the power of death. — Richard Beck

You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and what's more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it. One stage further, and you seek it out, you orient your-self by it. The same thing with houses. It is only after having crept along a series of them in search of a very specific one that you come to learn what they contain. From the arches of gates, on the frames of house doors, in letters of varying size, black, blue, yellow, red, in the shape of arrows or in the image of boots or freshly-ironed laundry or a word stoop or a stairway's solid landing, the life leaps out at you, combative, determined, mute. You have to have traveled the streets by streetcar to realize how this running battle con-tinues up along the various stories and finally reaches its decisive pitch on the roofs. — Walter Benjamin

I try to make things that are not elitist. There's enough places in the world where we're excluded. I do not ever want to be contributing to that. I want to be contributing to opening the doors and gates for women. — Amanda De Cadenet

You don't get the guarantee of tomorrow. Today is all you have. Don't waste it worrying. Enjoy it. Don't go stumbling up to the Pearly Gates in your spotless martyr robes. Go sliding up there in a worn-out, used-up body, screaming to the top of your lungs, 'Hallelujah, I made it and I've used everything I had while I was on earth, so open the doors and let me in!' That's the way to live. — Carolyn Brown

All obstacles now vanish from my pathway. Doors fly open, gates are lifted and I enter the kingdom of fulfillment, under grace. — Florence Scovel Shinn

Tallish. Check. Built like a bull. Check. Were there tingles in her downstairs department? Mmhmm. Check. Her pearly gates had gone into override and the doors were ready to burst open. — Cari Silverwood

Afraid? Batman's not afraid of anything. It's me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that The Joker may be right about me. Sometimes ... I question the rationality of my actions. And I'm afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates ... when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me ... it'll be just like coming home. — Grant Morrison

Early morning mist ghosted along the Orm, trailing above the water, rising and twisting. Wide and sleek and almost silent, the river curled through the valley, curved almost to the doors of the stone-terraced cottages sunk tight in the moorland.
As soon as he was beyond sight of the mill gates, Manny ran, his step lighter, his boots crunching against the highway. The village was quiet now, and he could hear the faint cries of sheep on the hillside. He felt suddenly exultant at having acted decisively, felt the thrill of running away. Then he reasoned with himself that he wasn't so much running away as running to something else - something better - running away to take charge of his future. He was improving his station in life, looking for work of his choosing. — S.J. Wilkins

In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door. That was social and economic progress. That model is gone now. We also had a world order that was fraught but fairly stable. — Henry Louis Gates

One day about 10 years ago the door to my office opened and who walked in but Bill Gates ... Seemed like a nice guy and has done more with his money than most billionaires. But that's as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates. — Andy Rooney

Isn't that ridiculous to show Peter standing at the gates of Heaven with a ring of keys? The doors are already unlocked for us, all we've got to do is walk in through the front gate! — David Berg

For this I weep all my days
and throughout my lifetime grieve
that I swam from my own lands
and came from familiar lands
towards these strange doors
to these foreign gates. — Elias Lonnrot

The inventory, the value of my company, walks out the door every evening. — Bill Gates

We shouldn't take for granted the security and comfort of our neighborhoods, we shouldn't think that always leaving our windows open and our doors unlocked means that we're beyond an encroachment. We may believe our gates are insurmountable and that we're armored by routines, but can't we be touched by chance or fate, plucked up like a mouse foraging along his well-worn trail? Before you know it, you're looking down at the last faint print of your claws in the dirt. — Chang-rae Lee