Eke Out Quotes & Sayings

I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is. — Jeanette Winterson

Wandering is better than place sometimes, than home, than destination. Sometimes she can eke out the idea that wandering is possibility, chance, serendipity
he might be there, that place she didn't think to look, hadn't worked hard enough to find ... — Michelle Latiolais

By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute. — Matthew Desmond

And mo the merier is a Prouerbe eke.
[The more the merrier.] — George Gascoigne

What undercuts the power of women's anger in the end is not the melancholy that Butler charts, but material realities - economics, not psychology. While Em fantasizes about the possibility of Afro- and Euro-Jamaican women building partnerships to work for each other, she seems to understand that she has no concrete possibilities for realizing this fantasy in 1920s Jamaica. — Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley

I'm kidnapped by aliens, forced to eke out a living on an ice planet, and now I'm basically married to Mr. Tall, Dark, and Super Pissy. — Ruby Dixon

To be wise and eke to love,
Is granted scarce to gods above. — Edmund Spenser

All live by seeming.
The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier
Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming;
The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier
Will eke with it his service.
All admit it,
All practise it; and he who is content
With showing what he is, shall have small credit
In church, or camp, or state.
So wags the world. — Walter Scott

the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor. Immigrants — W.E.B. Du Bois

Wherever there was a scrap of soil amongst the ravaged crags, emaciated trees struggled to cling on: a poignant metaphor for the way so many Nepalis eke out an existence, defiantly surviving on less than nothing. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime, And eke attonce the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruits load: The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet above, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad. — Edmund Spenser

The bird, the best, the fisch eke in the see,They live in fredome, everich in his kynd.And I a man, and lakkith libertee. — James I Of Scotland

To friends and eke to foes true kindness show; No kindly heart unkindly deeds will do; Harshness will alienate a bosom friend. And kindness reconcile a deadly foe. — Omar Khayyam

You had once asked me if I was afraid of death. I said I was afraid of not living. I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalued what the self is. — Jeanette Winterson

Trauma. It doesn't eke itself out over time. It doesn't split itself manageably into bite-sized chunks and distribute itself equally throughout your life.
Trauma is all or nothing. A tsunami wave of destruction.
A tornado of unimaginable awfulness that whooshes into your life - just for one key moment - and wreaks such havoc that, in just an instant, your whole world will never be the same again. — Holly Bourne

The Housefly
I'm just a little pesky thing,
Flying to eke out a living.
So round and round and round I hiss,
And fill the air with busy bliss.
Of hand and swatter steering clear,
I venture to light on crumbs and beer.
In salad days I was a Grecian king.
War and famine make me sing.
How much they'd like to whack me flat,
With a newspaper or even a baseball bat.
Splat! — David B. Lentz

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

From now until the end of the year I would like to eke out one victory, that's my short term aim. I am sure I can be competitive in 2004. Tennis is like riding a bike, you never forget how to do it. — Marat Safin

Nine months ago, my mother died. This was the saddest, most painful time of my life, but somehow unexpected laughter managed to eke its way into the days and moments following her death...after determining she was, in fact, dead, my father, a very practical man, took the opportunity to finish up some laundry he has been working on — Meredith Spidel

Over the years I've come to realize that in a broad sense I'm interested in power and politics. I'm interested in how individuals try to eke out some wiggle room within these large institutions ... how they eke out some measure of freedom and personal space and integrity ... trying to negotiate their way toward some sort of, if not happiness, then at least accommodation or peace with themselves. — Ben Fountain

Today, I go east. It's one of my favorite times of day: that perfect in-between moment when the light has a liquid feel, like a slow pour of syrup. Still, I can't shake loose the knot of unhappiness in my chest. I can't shake loose the idea that the rest of our lives might simply look like this: this running, and hiding, and losing the things we love, and burrowing underground, and scavenging for food and water.
There will be no turn in the tide. We will never march back into the cities, triumphant, crying out our victory in the streets. We will simply eke out a living here until there is no living to be eked. — Lauren Oliver

I have managed to eke out a good and substantial existence. I'm not shoveling gold bricks or anything, but I do very, very well. — Rufus Wainwright

When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes, - two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals, - the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Eke wonder last but nine deies never in toun. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Sometimes the results of a first free election will find the moderates so poorly organized that extreme groups can eke out a victory, as Hamas did when it gained a 44-to-41 percent margin in the Palestinian election of 2006. — Elliott Abrams

Kovacs to a female believer in New Revelation: ..I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crapshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it's soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you'll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we've won for ourselves to come back and try again. You'll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you'll condemn her to the same fucking thing — Richard K. Morgan

To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. — Gretchen Rubin

She spoke of those needing the white destroyers' shiny things to bring a feeling of worth into their lives, uttered their deep-rooted inferiority of soul, and called them lacking in the essence of humanity: womanhood in women, manhood in men. For which deficiency they must crave things to eke out their beings, things to fill holes in their spirits. — Ayi Kwei Armah

I asked him how he came to be writing for the popular American weekly. How did he know what to write about or what to say? 'Oh...they have somehow got the idea that I am an unaccountably paradoxical dog, and they name the subject on which they want me to write; and they pay generously.' 'And so you set to work and invent a few paradoxes?' Not a bit of it. What I do is to recall, as well as I can, what my mother used to say on the subject, eke it out with a few similar thoughts of my own, and so produce what would have been strict orthodoxy in about 1900. And this seems to them outrageously paradoxical, avant garde stuff. — Jocelyn Gibb

Peasants had to work harder than foragers to eke out less varied and nutritious food, and they were far more exposed to disease and exploitation. — Yuval Noah Harari

Life for women in ancient Greece was hard - you had to fight for every inch of ground you got. Both Thetis and Briseis are strong, passionate women and in another time and place their lives would have been very different. Part of the tragedy of their characters is how much they have to offer - and how little of that they get to realize. Thetis spends the whole novel fighting the limitations placed on her, desperately trying to eke out the best she can from a bad situation. This makes her fierce and terrifying. — Madeline Miller

The zero-sum nature of the medieval economy was reinforced by a Christian ideology that was hostile to any commercial practice or technological innovation that might eke more wealth out of a given stock of physical resources. — Steven Pinker

Here haue I cause, in men iust blame to find,
That in their proper prayse too partiall bee,
And not indifferent to woman kind,
To whom no share in armes and cheualrie
They do impart, ne maken memorie
Of their brave gestes and prowess martiall;
Scarse do they spare to one or two or three,
Rowme in their writs; yet the same writing small
Does all their deeds deface, and dims their glories all,
But by record of antique times I find,
That women wont in warres to beare most sway,
And to all great exploits them selues inclind:
Of which they still the girlond bore away,
Till enuious Men fearing their rules decay,
Gan coyne straight laws to curb their liberty;
Yet sith they warlike armes haue layd away:
They haue exceld in artes and policy,
That now we foolish men that prayse gin eke t'enuy. — Edmund Spenser

Times were very hard if you were a poor, politically correct Jewish girl living in the east end of London during the Blitz and you were trying to eke out a living as a hairdresser. — Linda Grant

Where justice grows, there grows eke greater grace. — Edmund Spenser

Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth. — Henry David Thoreau

My galley, charged with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port. — Thomas Wyatt