Having Walls Built Up Quotes & Sayings

Not well-built walls, but brave citizens are the bulwark of the city. — Alcaeus

Perhaps one of the walls to such a room would have built into it a sliding panel that could be opened only from the other side. And next to that room would be another room that was unfurnished and seemed never to have been occupied. But leaning against one wall of this other room, directly below the sliding panel, would be some long wooden sticks; and mounted at the ends of these sticks would be horrible little puppets. — Thomas Ligotti

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction. — Ottessa Moshfegh

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her ... — Michael Ondaatje

The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition. — Rabindranath Tagore

Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

If God's masons built real walls, I doubt we'd be able to destroy them. But instead of walls all I see is backdrops, sets. And sets are made to be destroyed. — Milan Kundera

Some of these walls had been of my own making; my rebellion, my resistance; my arrogance, my need for control. Some had been built around me by the misfortunes of life; my loneliness; my orphaned heart; my fear of rejection. I had kept God at bay, and cheated myself of the warmth of His mercy. — Tessa Afshar

Things change, not only in one's life but also in the economy
and on the political scene, and it pays to be aware. Is the foundation
of your financial house secure, with an income that is
guaranteed? Have you built solid walls, investing appropriately,
and keeping inflation at bay? Are you living under a reliable
roof, with assets positioned to grow? Is your house insulated
and sturdy, safe from any economic storm? — Christopher K. Abts

The Authority has said: Dream! But in truth , they mete out our destinies in tiny rations; they've said how far we can go, how long, and where. Aspirations are useless, because to aspire, is to reach. Dream, they say, but not too big. Laugh, they say, but not too loudly . Love, they say, but not too hard. When you find you cannot contain yourself any longer and you imagine things beyond the walls they've built for you, constructed to imprison your desires, and when your heart is filled with impossible things, then, I say, you have achieved true independence. Our Anarchy is not simply a battle of flesh and blood; it is a war of the mind. The time is always now to declare your freedom! — Logan Keys

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FUMES

Clean clothes and expensive accessories will not cover a blackened core. The smoldering sends out smoke through the crevices. You brush the fumes away, but they keep coming.

As his criminal actions have built walls around a prisoner, so your forgetfulness and refusal to let light in keep your soul from traveling. — Bahauddin

It's easy for you to speak of love when you've built walls high enough around your heart that you forget what true love is. Sacrifice. Shelter. Loyalty. — Randi Cooley Wilson

At Halicarnassus , the house of that most potent king Mausolus, though decorated throughout with Proconnesian marble, has walls built of brick which are to this day of extraordinary strength, and are covered with stucco so highly polished that they seem to be as glistening as glass. That king did not use brick from poverty; for he was choke-full of revenues, being ruler of all Caria . — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can't tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I'm bigger than God. — Jeanann Verlee

What happens when you return
and find nothing
but a hollowed shell,
shingles and floor,
walls and echoes
and the light that lead you here
has now burned out
and the ones who built it
have traveled afar
and you cant go to them,
no matter what shoes you wear. — Kellie Elmore

The walls he's built around himself will crumble, and some really diabolical developments will push him toward the answers he fears. — Scott Allie

My own
Walls I built up became my home
I'm strong and I'm sure there's a fire in us
Sweet love, so pure
I catch my breath with just one beating heart
And I embrace myself, please don't tear this apart — Christina Aguilera

Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa's own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too. — Sandra Neil Wallace

I've built walls too steep for any man to climb. I'm caged. My heart is that cage. It's always been my strength and weakness. Unfortunately, feeling emotions so strongly has worked against me most of my life. There's — Kathryn Perez

We have created crime, just as the propertarians did. We force a man outside the sphere of our approval, and then condemn him for it. We've made laws, laws of conventional behavior, built walls all around ourselves, and we can't see them, because they're part of our thinking. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Without compunction, pity or shame,
they've built towering walls around me.
Desperate, I sit and think one thing:
alone here this fate confounds me.
For there were many things I'd hoped to do out there.
With all the construction, how was I not aware?
Yet the crack and clang of hammers I never once heard.
Imperceptibly they've confined me from the outside world.
("Walls") — Constantine P. Cavafy

In the reign of Shulgi a wall had been built across the country, more than 250 kilometres long, to keep them out. It was called 'a wall to keep out the Martu'. Shulgi's second successor ordered it to be rebuilt and strengthened, calling it Muriq-Tidnum, 'It Fends Off Tidnum.' But walls must end somewhere and enemies can often outflank them: in 1940 Hitler made the impregnable French Maginot Line irrelevant by sending his tanks through the forest of the Ardennes. And so it was with Muriq-Tidnum. — Paul Kriwaczek

Many of us humans have a hard time with understanding one simple truth: the surest way to get love is to start giving love to others. Often, when we desperately need some companionship, understanding and warmth from those who are around us, we chose to blame, shout, criticize, accuse, insult and set ultimatums. But in reply, we only encounter with cold walls of estrangement which was diligently built by our own efforts, farcical walls and fences. — Sahara Sanders

She did not make monsters of us. She simply gave us the power to remake ourselves into those inviolable creatures the God of Equality had intended us to be. We knew she was deconstructing the old disabled versions of our sex, and that her ruthlessness was adopted because those constructs were built to endure. She broke down the walls that had kept us contained. There was a fresh red field on the other side, and in its rich soil were growing all the flowers of war that history never let us gather. It was beautiful to walk in. As beautiful as the fells that autumn. — Sarah Hall

I look at you
And I want to build things
Four walls
A roof
A room with a view

I look at you
And I want to build things
A stack of logs
A roaring fire
A starlit night with you

I look at you
And I want to build things
Hike a secret trail
where the world cannot find us
A bench built for two

Picture this - lightning and thunder
Picture this- my telephone number
Picture this- discovery and wonder
Picture this- the moon as we slumber

I look at you
And I want to build things
I just need my hands
Your smile
And for you to want this too — Jose N. Harris

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted. — Rabih Alameddine

Ever since mankind stopped wandering around aimlessly and started cultivating its own food, society has been growing more complex. As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born. — Ben Aaronovitch

How long have I been here? I haven't been able to tell day from night with eyes covered." [Vincent]
"Nor could you anyway, in here. There are no windows and the walls are so thick you cannot hear the church bells. It was built so that the one who prayed here would not be aware of the passage of time or the world outside. When we reach into the higher planes, we pass beyond time. Only the body is governed by time, but that too, I will change". [Sylvian] — Karen Maitland

People say that when you return to the place where you grew up, it always seems smaller than you remember ... but I don't know if it was because I had built it up in my memories or I had gotten bigger. Maybe both. — Jeannette Walls