Meridel Le Quotes & Sayings

The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. — Meridel Le Sueur

A good civilization gives the greatest possible scope to the common passions and makes them intelligible among the great number of people. — Meridel Le Sueur

The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost. — Meridel Le Sueur

They never die, who have the future in them. — Meridel Le Sueur

Literature must spring from the deep and submerged humus of our life. — Meridel Le Sueur

I am luminous with age. — Meridel Le Sueur

It was the bumble bee and the butterfly who survived, not the dinosaur. — Meridel Le Sueur

Katie, honey, you need a date for your sister's wedding."
"I had a date, Mom. He's marrying the bride. — Susan Mallery

Hard times ain't quit and we ain't quit. — Meridel Le Sueur

Lie in the sun with the child in your flesh shining like a jewel. Dream and sing, pagan, wise in your vitals. Stand still like a fat budding tree, like a stalk of corn athrob and aglisten in the heat. Lie like a mare panting with the dancing feet of colts against her sides. Sleep at night as the spring earth. Walk heavily as a wheat stalk at its full time bending towards the earth waiting for the reaper. Let your life swell downward so you become like a vase, a vessel. Let the unknown child knock and knock against you and rise like a dolphin within. — Meridel Le Sueur

Linear thinking is patriarchal. — Meridel Le Sueur

An abyss seems to have opened between the intellectual cosmopolites of culture and the people, hungry for word and meaning. — Meridel Le Sueur

To be bound by hungers is a beautiful thing but to be bound by physical hungers only is too low a state for man. — Meridel Le Sueur

What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone ... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to "negotiate" between this hunger and this greed. — Meridel Le Sueur

Suddenly many movements are going on within me, many things are happening, there is an almost unbearable sense of sprouting, of bursting encasements, of moving kernels, expanding flesh. — Meridel Le Sueur

You can tell by looking at most people that the world remains a stone to them and a closed door. — Meridel Le Sueur

It's not the suffering of birth, death, love that the young reject, but the suffering of endless labor without dream, eating the spare bread in bitterness, being a slave without the security of a slave. — Meridel Le Sueur

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors. — Meridel Le Sueur

Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life. — Meridel Le Sueur

There's timing. And then there's also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

These are the stories that never, never die, that are carried like seed into a new country, are told to you and me and make in us new and lasting strengths. — Meridel Le Sueur

Where and what are Helm's Deep and all the rest of it?" said Merry. "I don't know anything about this country."
"Then you'd best learn something, if you wish to understand what is happening," said Gandalf. "But not just now, and not from me: I have too many pressing things to think about."
"All right, I'll tackle Strider at the camp-fire: he's less testy. But why all this secrecy? I though we'd won the battle! — J.R.R. Tolkien

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously ... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody ... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. — Hunter S. Thompson

Growth is not concerned with itself. — Meridel Le Sueur

I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done. — Robert Downey Jr.

Money is only money, beans tonight and steak tomorrow. So long as you can look yourself in the eye. — Meridel Le Sueur

Pears cannot ripen alone. So we ripened together. — Meridel Le Sueur

How old is Old? It is interesting how, as we advance in years, we push the boundaries of what we consider "old age."
"I am so depressed." my friend Irma told me the other day.
When I asked why, she put her hands up in despair and answered, "I am turning thirty next week. I never thought I would get there."
No, none of us ever thinks that we will get "there."
What? Becoming thirty or forty or fifty? Or even older? No way! That happens to others - not me! But as the years pile up, you'll find yourself kicking the idea of "old" farther and farther down the road. — Brigitte Nioche

No art can develop until it penetrates deeply into the life of the people. — Meridel Le Sueur

Each generation must go further than the last or what's the use in it? — Meridel Le Sueur

Human history is work history. The heroes of the people are work heroes. — Meridel Le Sueur

I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities. — Ursula Burns