Dunbar Quotes & Sayings

I was reckless and crazy and I never learned from my past mistakes. Ever. — Debra Dunbar

The most revered presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama - have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Every new fad or fashion at once has its denouncers from the pulpit, platform, professor's chair. — Alice Dunbar Nelson

We reduce the deity to vulgar fractions. We place our own little ambitions and label them ?divine messages?. With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Well, the Taco Bell burrito scale of immense magnitude returned an 'r' factor of point eight six. Then when I applied the nose-picking coefficient, I discovered a multivariate numeration of nine dot oh sixteen on the Richter scale. — Debra Dunbar

London, thou art the flower of cities all! — William Dunbar

Picturesqueness is a lost art. We may expect at anytime to hear that a collar ad is blazing its electric lights atop of the largest pyramid. — Alice Dunbar Nelson

Something deep in the human psyche has always seemed to yearn for ever more enhanced levels of savagery. — Robert Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Noble men in the quiet of morning hear Indians singing the continent's violent requiem. — William Dunbar

Most actors love to get to the point where they're not auditioning. — Rockmond Dunbar

To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow; His chance tonight, it maybe thine tomorrow. — William Dunbar

Timor mortis conturbat me. The fear of death disturbs me. — William Dunbar

It's either this or the vodka. Trust me; you don't want to drink the vodka. It takes half the flesh from the inside of your throat on the way down, and you wake up the next morning feeling as if a major portion of your brains are on the outside of your skull. Most unpleasant. — Debra Dunbar

All training is negotiation, whether you're training dogs or spouses. — Ian Dunbar

Beyond the Years

I the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies -
Beyond the years.

II

Beyond the years the prayer for rest
Shall beat no more within the breast;
The darkness clears,
And Morn perched on the mountain's crest
Her form uprears -
The day that is to come is best,
Beyond the years.

III

Beyond the years the soul shall find
That endless peace for which it pined,
For light appears,
And to the eyes that still were blind
With blood and tears,
Their sight shall come all unconfined
Beyond the years. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

I had not thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that springs beneath you feet
In wistful April days. — Alice Dunbar Nelson

I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

I grew up on a farm and my grandfather quit school when he was 12, but when it came to common sense and animals, he was the smartest person I've ever met, before or since. He taught me that to touch an animal is an earned privilege. It's not a right. — Ian Dunbar

Love me, honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?
An' she answe'd, " 'Cose I do"
Jump back, honey, jump back. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

The only thing worse than living inside an alligator had to be living inside a decrepit one. — Robert Dunbar

E wear the mask that grins and lies,
it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-
this debt we pay to human guile;
with torn and bleeding hearts we smile. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

What dreams we have and how they fly
Like rosy clouds across the sky;
Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,
Of love that comes to cheer and bless;
And how they whither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade
The fame that for a moment gleams,
Then flies forever, - dreams, ah - dreams! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,- When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings- I know why the caged bird sings! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Family. I thought of Dar and Leethu, of all the demons I had a strange affection for. I thought of Wyatt, of Amber and Nyalla, of Michelle and Candy. And I thought of that darned angel. They were all my family; mine. — Debra Dunbar

There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear even than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the idea that he must die someday — Joseph Heller

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing? — Paul Laurence Dunbar

If my landlord hadn't been so vehement about the no-pets clause in my lease, I probably would already have at least two cats roaming my apartment. I was considering taking up knitting. Well, no, not the last one, but I did miss having a pet. And the dating situation was becoming dire. — Debra Dunbar

He'd risk everything for you, Sam," Wyatt said. "He'd trade heaven for an eternity in the depths of hell to possess you. — Debra Dunbar

People - and dogs - are dying to be trained. — Ian Dunbar

People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Invitation to Love
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome — Paul Laurence Dunbar

They say a basis in fact underlies most legends. They say it all the time, all those Wise Elders in all those old horror films, the high priests, the scientists, the gypsy fortune tellers. On this single issue they agree unanimously. — Robert Dunbar

In his moments of pride he had said all those things, half in fun and half in earnest, and he began to wonder how he could have been so many kinds of a fool for so long without realising it. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Training a dog, to me, is on a par with learning to dance with my wife or teaching my son to ski. These are fun things we do together. If anyone even talks about dominating the dog or hurting him or fighting him or punishing him, don't go there. — Ian Dunbar

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me.* * Fear of Death troubles me. — William Dunbar

Passionate, organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do to try to change the world. Now is the time to spread hate, hatred for the rich. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

She wasn't all that into guys anyhow, she kept telling herself. It's just there were so goddamn many of them. — Robert Dunbar

Among my friends love is a payment. It is an old debt for a borrowing foolishly spent. — William Dunbar

Cultural appropriation is especially egregious when it involves the co-optation of spiritual ceremonies and the inappropriate use of lands deemed sacred by Native peoples. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

A "race to innocence" is what occurs when individuals assume that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assumption made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what occurred in their adopted country's past. Neither are those who are already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners, Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Sometimes sanity just means the ability to recognize the end of the road when you reach it. — Robert Dunbar

I love dark humor. I love things that are so grounded in life, but just happen to be just a little bit twisted because my sense of humor is a little bit twisted. I love jokes that shouldn't be funny, but are. Those types of things just really make me laugh. — Rockmond Dunbar

US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the consciousness of US Americans. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism - the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Taking it all in all and after all, negro life in Washington is a promise rather than a fulfillment. But it is worthy of note for the really excellent things which are promised — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Columbus Day is still a federal holiday despite Columbus never having set foot on any territory ever claimed by the United States. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Nowadays I get complaints about long drum solos, but in those days they wanted me to keep on going so they could go over to the bar and have a drink. — Aynsley Dunbar

But every effort to make this work in practice at any scale failed, largely because the social bonds that police such mutual aid tend to fray when the size of the group exceeds 150 (termed the "Dunbar number" - the empirically observed limit at which the members of a human community can maintain strong links with one another). — Chris Anderson

The Texan wanted everybody in the ward to be happy but Yossarian and Dunbar. He was really very sick. — Joseph Heller

Give yourself room to make mistakes because you're human. We've got to make mistakes, and allow ourselves to make those mistakes. — Rockmond Dunbar

It's not about slaying monsters," he told her. "Not these days. I think it's about learning to live with them. Anyway who says we're the good guys?" "I — Robert Dunbar

Irix, my beloved klepto. — Debra Dunbar

Even the spate of clearly well-intentioned films about AIDS only added to the certainty that gay characters wind up dead by the final reel. After all, in the movies, no one lives with HIV ... perhaps the ultimate stigmatization. — Robert Dunbar

I was a demon. I could find a romantic opportunity in an insect-infested swamp. — Debra Dunbar

London sank into February gloom and rain spattered the dirty pavements as Daisy Dunbar, fourteen years old, skinny and cold, struggled to get home. — Bex Archer

Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn, ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Do I look like I'm compelled to do anything? Do I seriously look like anyone could compel me to even bring them a coaster?"
She looked me over again. "You look like you're compelled to cause trouble, but I doubt that's the boss' directive. — Debra Dunbar

European institutions and the worldview of conquest and colonialism had formed several centuries before that. From the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, Europeans conducted the Crusades to conquer North Africa and the Middle East, leading to unprecedented wealth in the hands of a few. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Euro-American colonialism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Blessed is the creature that knows its purpose. * — Robert Dunbar

Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem. — William Dunbar

It's perhaps not so much how your amygdala is tuned that makes you politically extreme, but that your intrinsic nervousness makes you more responsive to things that might seem to threaten your particular social world. Education probably plays an important role in dampening that response by allowing the brain's frontal lobes (where much of the brain's conscious work goes on) to counteract the emotional responses with a more considered view, so explaining why education is invariably the friend of liberal politics. — Robin Dunbar

All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Shortly, some pipeline worker or shipfitter would slow down. — Tony Dunbar

Gem of all joy, jasper of jocundity. — William Dunbar

We believe in ghosts as sincerely as we believe in the very poor. — Olivia Howard Dunbar

The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy. — Joseph Heller

We can think of the land bridge theory as a master narrative that for a couple of centuries has served multiple ideological agendas, lasting despite decades of growing evidence that casts doubt on the way the story has been perpetuated in textbooks and popular media. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Rambunctious and delinquent dogs become angelic when sitting. — Ian Dunbar

Washington is the city where the big men of little towns come to be disillusioned — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dunbar-Ortiz strips us of our forged innocence, shocks us into new awareness, and draws a straight line from the sins of our fathers-settler-colonialism, the doctrine of discovery, the myth of manifest destiny, white supremacy, theft and systematic killing-to the contemporary condition of permanent war, invasion and occupation, mass incarceration, and the constant use and threat of state violence. — Bill Ayers

In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Scotsmen are metaphisical and emotional, they are sceptical and mystical, they are romantic and ironic, they are cruel and tender, and full of mirth and despair. — William Dunbar

Something new prowled, something voracious and well-adapted to this environment. Something bad. Even the wood seemed to shiver with fear. And, no, trees do not make a sound when they fall in the forest with no one around to hear. But just before they fall, they scream. — Robert Dunbar

Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive. — William Dunbar

Never get in to it [acting] because you want to do it for the money. Have that passion in your heart, where you would do it for free just because you absolutely love it. If you just want to do it because you want to be famous, then go do reality TV. — Rockmond Dunbar

After all, the male ego was a horrible thing. — Robert Dunbar

NOT THEY WHO SOAR Not they who soar, but they who plod Their rugged way, unhelped, to God Are heroes; they who higher fare, And, flying, fan the upper air, Miss all the toil that hugs the sod. 'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod, Whose feet have pressed the path unshod, May smile upon defeated care, Not they who soar. High up there are no thorns to prod, Nor boulders lurking 'neath the clod To turn the keenness of the share, For flight is ever free and rare; But heroes they the soil who 've trod, Not they who soar! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

in describing the various writers of his idolatry he more than once lets fall a phrase that could equally apply to himself. 'To read Spenser,' he says, 'is to grow in mental health.' What he values in Addison is his 'open-mindedness.' The moments of despair chronicled in Scott's diary cannot, he claims, counterpoise 'that ease and good temper, that fine masculine cheerfulness' suffused through the best of the Waverly novels. Most of all it was the chiaroscuro of what Chaucer called 'earnest' and 'game' that attracted him. He found it eminently in the poetry of Dunbar, that late-medieval Scottish maker who wrote the greatest religious poetry and the earthiest satire in the language — Jocelyn Gibb

Between 1968 and 1973, the United States and Britain, the latter the colonial administrator, forcibly removed the indigenous inhabitants of the islands, the Chagossians. Most of the two thousand deportees ended up more than a thousand miles away in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they were thrown into lives of poverty and forgotten. The purpose of this expulsion was to create a major US military base on one of the Chagossian islands, Diego Garcia. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Investors, monarchies, and parliamentarians devised methods to control the processes of wealth accumulation and the power that came with it, but the ideology behind gold fever mobilized settlers to cross the Atlantic to an unknown fate. Subjugating entire societies and civilizations, enslaving whole countries, and slaughtering people village by village did not seem too high a price to pay, nor did it appear inhumane. The systems of colonization were modern and rational, but its ideological basis was madness. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

So Tumpty tried hiding upside down, behind a pot plant, under a large cardboard box, with his eyes tightly closed. — Polly Dunbar

Only the rich are lonesome. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

I'm really, really tired of the past — Helene Dunbar

Didacticism is the death of art ... — Alice Dunbar Nelson

I see dull people," she yawned. — Robert Dunbar

Blue. My God! I'm so blue that if I were a dog, I'd sit on my haunches and howl and howl and howl ... — Alice Dunbar Nelson

The caste system, in all its various forms, is always based on identifiable physical characteristics - sex, color, age. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The rainbow is elusive, and its colors but the illumination of tears ... — Alice Dunbar Nelson

Every hunchback has his gypsy, each phantom his diva, and flames of passion consume witches and martyrs alike. For any lonely monster, tradition demands that one sacrificial soul seek immolation.
Ashe to ashes.
It remains the ultimate, transformative act of love. — Robert Dunbar

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? — Joseph Heller

It was called 'We Wear the Mask', by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle's bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. — Catherine Doyle

The best revenge is to live well, and rub their noses in it when you're old and powerful. — Debra Dunbar

It is true that our everyday view of the world is not quite naively realistic, but that is what it would like to be. Common-sense is naively realistic wherever it does not think that there is some positive reason why it should cease to be so. And this is so in the vast majority of its perceptions. When we see a tree we think that it is really green and really waving about in precisely the same way as it appears to be. We do not think of our object of perception being 'like' the real tree, we think that what we perceive is the tree, and that it is just the same at a given moment whether it be perceived or not, except that what we perceive may be only a part of the real tree. — Charlie Dunbar Broad

Jodi Byrd writes: "The story of the new world is horror, the story of America a crime." It is necessary, she argues, to start with the origin of the United States as a settler-state and its explicit intention to occupy the continent. These origins contain the historical seeds of genocide. Any true history of the United States must focus on what has happened to (and with) Indigenous peoples - and what still happens. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

There was really nothing pressing for me to do beyond pouring bubble bath in the fountain at City Hall. — Debra Dunbar

When I'm training a dog, I develop a relationship with that dog. He's my buddy, and I want to make training fun. — Ian Dunbar

How will the family unit be destroyed? ... [T]he demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Life was short and brutal; so were the neighbors. — Robert Dunbar