Quotes & Sayings About March Past Parade

I sing of those who cannot. To view human suffering as an abstraction, as a statement about how plucky we all are, is to blow air through brass while the boys and girls march in parade off to war. Seeing the flesh as only a challenge to the spirit is as false as seeing the spirit as only a challenge to the flesh. On the planet are people with whole and strong bodies, whose wounded spirits need the constant help that the quadriplegic needs for his body. What we need is not the sound of horns rising to the sky, but the steady beat of the bass drum. When you march to a bass drum, your left foot touches the earth with each beat, and you can feel the drum in your body: boom and boom and boom and pity people pity people pity people. — Andre Dubus

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving the dreams of past glory

I see the old men all twisted and torn
The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask me, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all — Eric Bogle

So when the book came out, my mother stunned us all by leaving my father. I think three months before the book came out, she left my father the day he retired from the Marine Corps. They had a parade and march, and she came home and left. — Terry Gross

The Trevanian Buff is a strange and wonderful creature: an outsider, a natural elitist, not so much a cynic as an idealist mugged by reality, not just one of those who march to a different drummer, but the solo drummer in a parade of one. — Trevanian

From the minute we're born, boys and girls stare at each other, trying to figure out if they like what they see. Like parade lines, passing each other for mutual inspection. You march, you look. You march, you look. If you're interested, you stop and talk, and if it doesn't work out, you just get back in the parade. You keep marching, and you keep looking. — Paul Reiser

Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization. — William H. Prescott

I march in the parade of liberty
But as long as I love you I'm not free
How long must I suffer such abuse
Won't you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose? — Bob Dylan

My mom will never march in a gay pride parade with a big sign. She is very private. She lives in Chattanooga. She tries so hard to understand me and my life. But she said to me once, "Leslie, if I live to be 105 I'll never understand this need you have to air your dirty laundry. Why can't you just whisper it to a therapist?!" She doesn't understand. — Leslie Jordan

It's a big deal about whether or not gays can march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade and I have to say that on some level I kind of see their point. Because when you think about it, it is a real macho heterosexual event. Bunch of guys in short skirts on a cart made of rose pedals sharing a bag pipe. That's not for sissies. — Laura Kightlinger

Grovelling then busking
All at once
And all in time
Leaving a Ferris-wheel trail
Across a deep mountainous climb
Descended with rapture and with joy
Their mindless triumphant demeanour
Gossamer wings parade-parade
These gormless little ants
Full to the brimful
Empty to the last meandering weight
Pulled across the
Rotting fruit filled with retiring goodness
Tiny prissy princelings
These masterful creatures
Filled with adventuring spirit
March on, march on
Under the forgiving human's
Watchful, waiting and wandering eye. — Abigail George

Hans?" the Fairy Godmother said. "Can you remember what made you happy when you were a young boy?" It didn't take him long to remember. "Places like this promenade," he said. "Why?" she asked. "It's a place of unlimited possibility," he said. "At any moment, anyone or anything could appear. A parade could march through the field, a flock of birds from a tropical land could fly across the skies, or a king from a distant country could sail through the waters on a massive ship. I suppose any child is happiest wherever his imagination is stimulated." "Interesting," she said. — Chris Colfer

I can't keep my head above water one minute to the next: it's not just the parties and the goo-gooing with what's-her-name, I've got the decide how long the Five Hundredth Anniversary Parade is going to be and where does it start and when does it start and which nobleman gets to march in front of which other nobleman so that everyone's still speaking to me at the end of it, plus I've got a wife to murder and a country to frame for it, plus I've got to get the war going once that's all happened, and all this is stuff I've got to do myself. Here's what it all comes down to: I'm just swamped, Ty. — William Goldman

It runs in the family. And don't expect me to be ashamed. Yankees lock away loony relatives, but down here, we prop 'em up on parade floats and march 'em through the middle of town. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Who was I fooling, telling my heart to quiet its beautiful song so I could march in the parade of conformity? My biggest fool was me. — Vironika Tugaleva

A year or two after emigrating, she happened to be in Paris on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of her country. A protest march had been scheduled, and she felt driven to take part. Fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism. She liked the slogans, but to her surprise she found herself unable to shout along with them. She lasted only a few minutes in the parade.
When she told her French friends about it, they were amazed. "You mean you don't want to fight the occupation of your country?" She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand. Embarrassed, she changed the subject. — Milan Kundera

Time doesn't really 'march on'. It tends to tip-toe. There's no parade. No stomping of boots to alert you to its passing. One day, you turn around and it is gone. — Heather Babcock

Perhaps it increased his annoyance that there was a certain unusual liveliness about the usually languid figure of Fisher. The ordinary image of him in March's mind was that of a pallid and bald-browed gentleman, who seemed to be prematurely old as well as prematurely bald. He was remembered as a man who expressed the opinions of a pessimist in the language of a lounger. Even now March could not be certain whether the change was merely a sort of masquerade of sunshine, or that effect of clear colors and clean-cut outlines that is always visible on the parade of a marine resort, relieved against the blue dado of the sea. But Fisher had a flower in his buttonhole, and his friend could have sworn he carried his cane with something almost like the swagger of a fighter. With such clouds gathering over England, the pessimist seemed to be the only man who carried his own sunshine. — G.K. Chesterton

I love gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, which is a big parade, a big march that thousands and thousands of people participate in. And there's one little group ... well it's not little, it's got hundreds of people marching, and they're all very sweet, middle-aged and elderly people who are the parents of gay children who are out and proud. — Jacki Weaver