Nathanael Quotes & Sayings

The sun is a joke. — Nathanael West

We are soldiers who devote ourselves to arms not for the invasion of other countries, but for the defense of our own, not for the gratification of our private interests but for public security — Nathanael Greene

I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt. — Nathanael Greene

Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily. — Nathanael West

You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one
like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail
making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin. — Nathanael West

He thought of how calm he was. His calm was so perfect that he could not destroy it even by being conscious of it. — Nathanael West

It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles's deepest image of itself; Nathanael West perceived that, in The Day of the Locust; and at the time of the 1965 Watts riots what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. For days one could drive the Harbor Freeway and see the city on fire, just as we had always known it would be in the end. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are. — Joan Didion

He was giving birth to groups of words. — Nathanael West

The most difficult thing a failure can do is accept his identity or status — Nathanael Kanyinga

I'm going to be a star some day," she announced as though daring him to contradict her.
"I'm sure you ... "
"It's my life. It's the only thing in the whole world that I want."
"It's good to know what you want. I used to be a bookkeeper in a hotel,
but ... "
"If I'm not, I'll commit suicide. — Nathanael West

Death stamps the characters and conditions of men for eternity. - As death finds them in this world, so will they be in the next. — Nathanael Emmons

Everyone have big dreams they would want to see come alive, but not everyone has the strength to awaken the dreams to true life — Nathanael Kanyinga

had gone to heaven. Enoch was "translated" and Elijah was "taken up." One could "ascend" a ladder (Jesus had told Nathanael that he would see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, and Jacob beheld a ladder in his midnight dream at Bethel) or one could "ascend" to Jerusalem, moving to a higher elevation from sea level. The term could be used figuratively to refer to the elevation of a king to his royal office. But no one ever had "ascended to heaven" in the sense in which Jesus was speaking. The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended — R.C. Sproul

Selfishness is the root and source of all natural and moral evils. — Nathanael Emmons

Permit me then to recommend from the sincerity of my heart, ready at all times to bleed in my country's cause, a Declaration of Independence, and call upon the world and the Great God who governs it to witness the necessity, propriety and rectitude thereof. — Nathanael Greene

One principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits. — Nathanael Emmons

She wasn't hard-boiled. It was just that she put love on a special plane, where a man without money or looks couldn't move. — Nathanael West

Managers who feel inadequate in their jobs are often unreceptive to employees' ideas and denigrate subordinates who speak up, according to research at a multinational energy company and a subsequent experiment. In such cases underlings might consider voicing their ideas in private so that bosses feel less threatened. "MANAGING TO STAY IN THE DARK: MANAGERIAL SELF-EFFICACY, EGO DEFENSIVENESS, AND THE AVERSION TO EMPLOYEE VOICE," BY NATHANAEL J. FAST, ETHAN R. BURRIS, AND CAROLINE A. BARTEL — Anonymous

Obedience to God is the most infallible evidence of sincere and supreme love to him. — Nathanael Emmons

Art Is One if Life's Richest Offerings. For those who have not the talent to create, there is appreciation. — Nathanael West

It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous. — Nathanael West

If human beings are the most intelligent creatures on earth, why is it that the other less intelligent creatures realise themselves in their group of spieces that they are the same despite the difference in colour or condition, while humam beings don't — Nathanael Kanyinga

To know the secrets of a place, to read it on many levels, and to sense the vastness of the unknown is, I think, the key to love. — Nathanael Johnson

When you are able to affix yourself somehow, to bridge the abyss with a relationship with another creature of any sort, it's easier to make the case that there is some way in which the whole of creation matters, that it has, if not a purpose, at least an invigorating vitality. — Nathanael Johnson

These two rules make the best system: first, have something to say; second, say it. — Nathanael Emmons

Humanity ... I'm a humanity lover. All the broken bastards ... — Nathanael West

To march over dead man, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded, I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride. — Nathanael Greene

The weakest spot in every man is where he thinks himself to be the wisest. — Nathanael Emmons

The second is the military narrative of the battles on Long Island and Manhattan, where the British army and navy delivered a series of devastating defeats to an American army of amateurs, but missed whatever chance existed to end it all. The focal point of this story is the Continental Army, and the major actors are George Washington, Nathanael Greene, and the British brothers Richard and William Howe. — Joseph J. Ellis

Steady, patient, persevering thinking will generally surmount every obstacle in search of truth. — Nathanael Emmons

Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on eath. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will percieve the divine mystery in things. Once you percieve it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. — Nathanael West

What a perfect escape the return to the womb was. Better by far than Religion or Art or the South Sea Islands. It was so snug and warm there, and the feeding was automatic. — Nathanael West

Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence make him mobile. — Nathanael West

But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither. — Nathanael West

His mouth formed an O with lips torn angry in laying duck's eggs from a chicken's rectum. — Nathanael West

There is not a single spot between Christianity and atheism, upon which a man can firmly fix his foot. — Nathanael Emmons

An old man's advice is not an opinion — Nathanael Kanyinga

It had been happy for me if I could have lived a private life in peace and plenty, enjoying all the happiness that results from a well-tempered society founded on mutual esteem. But the injury done my country, and the chains of slavery forging for all posterity, calls me forth to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the sons of freedom. — Nathanael Greene

He's an escapist. He wants to cultivate his interior garden. — Nathanael West

Learning is not virtue but the means to bring us an acquaintance with it. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Let these be your motives to action through life, the relief of the distressed, the detection of frauds, the defeat of oppression, and diffusion of happiness. — Nathanael Greene

The first step is to stop thinking of nature as something far away that we must save from someone else and start seeing it all around us. The first step is to open our eyes to the existence of nature in our daily lives. — Nathanael Johnson

Do you want to work like a slave and live like a king or do you want to work like a king and live like a slave? Your choice — Nathanael Kanyinga

Better a live bird in the jungle of the body than two stuffed birds on the library table. — Nathanael West

Be short in all religious exercises. Better leave the people longing than loathing. — Nathanael Emmons

Love is but a flitting shadow, a lure, a gimcrack, a kickshaw. — Nathanael West

There are only two colors to paint a boat, black or white, and only a fool would paint a boat black. — Nathanael Greene Herreshoff

It is not always that the majority are right in a vote of a certain event. If that certain event was with no doubt acceptable to human nature then the minority would not exist. — Nathanael Kanyinga

The last officer named was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island; a man of limited education and military experience limited to two years of peacetime militia duty, he nevertheless was destined to be the best of the lot.27 — John Ferling

Thoughtout life, we all live our lives assuming two roles, the role of a slave and the role of a master. It only depend on an individual which role he assumes first — Nathanael Kanyinga

In reasoning upon moral subjects, we have great occasion for candor, in order to compare circumstances, and weigh arguments with impartiality. — Nathanael Emmons

Numbers constitute the only universal language. — Nathanael West

The difference between your dreams and the reality is you control your dreams while reality control you. Dreams let you choose, thus always makes you happy while reality choose for you. — Nathanael Kanyinga

It's solitary drinking that makes drunkards. — Nathanael West

Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing they say and do of choice; and for all these things they are accountable to God. — Nathanael Emmons

Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. — Nathanael West

Betty took him for a walk in the zoo and he was amused by her evident belief in the curative power of animals. She seemed to think that it must steady him to look at a buffalo. — Nathanael West

Feeling is of the heart and nerves and the crudeness of its expression has nothing to do with its intensity. — Nathanael West

If your
hands are tied towards
anyone who's in need of
a helping hand, let your
tangue also be tied — Nathanael Kanyinga

Let us consider the holes in our own bodies and into what these congenital wounds open. Under the skin of man is a wondrous jungle where veins like lush tropical growths hang along over-ripe organs and weed-like entrails writhe in squirming tangles of red and yellow. In this jungle, flitting from rock-gray lungs to golden intestines, from liver to lights and back to liver again, lives a bird called the soul. — Nathanael West

Americans have dissipated their racial energy in an orgy of stone-breaking. In their few years they have broken more stones than did centuries of Egyptians, and they have done their work hysterically, desperately, almost as if they knew that the stones would some day break them. — Nathanael West

If you're not very busy, a grown man in the uniform of a Western Union boy should make you feel a little sick. — Nathanael West

America must raise an empire of permanent duration, supported upon the grand pillars of Truth, Freedom, and Religion, encouraged by the smiles of Justice and defended by her own patriotic sons. — Nathanael Greene

Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing. Tod — Nathanael West

The more men have multiplied the forms of religion, the more vital Godliness has declined. — Nathanael Emmons

As pigeons were making their descent from bird of the aristocracy to bird of poverty, the native American passenger pigeon was going extinct. The paved habitat that allowed pigeons to spread was replacing the forest habitat that had supported passenger pigeons. We traded a bird of the trees for a bird of the city. Feral — Nathanael Johnson

But Roosevelt was just as much a faker. He constructed his macho persona from the ground up. When he first entered public life at the age of twenty-three as a New York state assemblyman, he was a rich kid with soft hands, a squeaky voice, and clothes that were a little too fashionable for his own good. The newspapers gave him nicknames: "Jane-Dandy," "our own Oscar Wilde," and "Punkin-Lily." He went west to shake this reputation. Viewed from this angle, Roosevelt's entire life looks like one gigantic exercise in overcompensation. — Nathanael Johnson

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. — Nathanael Emmons

Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. — Nathanael West

Man spends a great deal of time making order out of chaos, yet insists that the emotions be disordered. I order my emotions: I am insane. — Nathanael West

Faye burst into the room. She ignored Homer and went straight to the couch.
Now what in hell's the matter?" she exploded.
Darling daughter," he said. "I have been badly taken, and this gentleman has been kind enough to let me rest for a moment."
He had a fit or something," Homer said.
She whirled around on him so suddenly that he was startled.
How do you do?" she said, holding her hand forward and high up.
He shook it gingerly.
Charmed," she said, when he mumbled something.
She spun around once more.
It's my heart," Harry said. "I can't stand it. — Nathanael West

Make no display of your talents or attainments; for every one will clearly see, admire, and acknowledge them, so long as you cover them with the beautiful veil of modesty — Nathanael Emmons

He Sat in the window thinking. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature ... the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth wile. — Nathanael West

It seems to me that someone must surely take the hint and write the life of Miss McGeeney, the woman who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of Boswell. — Nathanael West

Nathanael hadn't delivered any specific message; the angel's parting words, which had boomed out across the entire visitation site, were the typical Behold the power of the Lord. Of the eight casualties that day, three souls were accepted into Heaven and five were not, a closer ratio than the average for deaths by all causes. Sixty-two people received medical treatment for injuries ranging from slight concussions to ruptured eardrums to burns requiring skin grafts. Total property damage was estimated at $8.1 million, all of it excluded by private insurance companies due to the cause. Scores of people became devout worshipers in the wake of the visitation, either out of gratitude or terror. Alas, — Ted Chiang

All these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust — Nathanael West

The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. — Nathanael West

And if his youth was obvious, the Glorious Cause was to a large degree a young man's cause. The commander in chief of the army, George Washington, was himself only forty-three. John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, was thirty-nine, John Adams, forty, Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, younger even than the young Rhode Island general. In such times many were being cast in roles seemingly beyond their experience or capacities, and Washington had quickly judged Nathanael Greene to be "an object of confidence. — David McCullough

How vast is eternity! - It will swallow up all the human race; it will collect all the intelligent universe; it will open scenes and prospects wide enough, great enough, and various enough to fix the attention, and absorb the minds of all intelligent beings forever. — Nathanael Emmons

He felt as though his heart were a bomb, a complicated bomb that would result in a simple explosion, wrecking the world without rocking it. — Nathanael West

What goes on in the sea is of no interest to the rock — Nathanael West

Reading should be in proportion to thinking, and thinking in proportion to reading. — Nathanael Emmons

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing. — Nathanael West

I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene — David McCullough

You dedicate your life to the pursuit of pleasure. No over-indulgence, mind you, but knowing that your body is apleasure machine, you treat it carefully in order to get the most out of it. — Nathanael West

As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.
What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.
"Ah, humanity ... " But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He trist to break its fall by laughing at himself. — Nathanael West

You ask if we shall know our friends in heaven. - Do you suppose we are greater fools there than here? — Nathanael Emmons

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments. — Nathanael Emmons

He did not feel guilty. He did not feel. The rock was a solidification of his feeling, his conscience, his sense of reality, his self-knowledge. — Nathanael West

He knew now what this thing was - hysteria, a snake whose scales are tiny mirrors in which the dead world takes on a semblance of life. And how dead the world is ... a world of doorknobs. He wondered if hysteria were really too steep a price to pay for bringing it to life. — Nathanael West

Instead of being distressed by the huge moral discrepancy between the myth of Hollywood and its current reality, most of them only saw what already had been fixed in their minds. It was absolutely eerie and sent me right back to The Day of the Locust. The point that Nathanael West made, of course, is that the masses ultimately want to kill and devour, to cannibalize their celebrity gods. — Jean Stein

He felt like a bottle that is being slowly filled with warm, dirty warter. — Nathanael West

No dream ever entirely disappears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has been sufficiently troubled, it will be reproduced on the lot. — Nathanael West

It was very sad under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death-rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funeral hush. — Nathanael West

Angell and Marzluff once spotted an airborne group of crows playing with a ball of paper above a University of Washington football game. One crow would carry the ball a few wing lengths and then drop it, at which point the others would dive in, the fastest one snatching it from the air. They repeated rounds of this corvid quidditch over and over again, causing attention in the stands to stray from the earthbound athletes. And at the University of Montana, a crow learned to gather up small packs of dogs by whistling and calling what for all the world sounded like "Here, boy!" The bird would lead the dogs on frenzied chases across campus for no apparent reason. To — Nathanael Johnson

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones. — Nathanael Howe

Crowds of people moved through the streets with a dream-like violence. — Nathanael West

He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain. — Nathanael West

I'd rather reminisce about old memories I had with true people than record the moments I have with fake people — Nathanael Kanyinga

But the romantic atmosphere only heightened his feeling of icy fatness. — Nathanael West

He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven. — Nathanael West