Navajos Quotes & Sayings

Women have a greater verbal capacity. — Geoffrey S. Fletcher

Unequipped to hold their own in the ferociously competitive world of White America, in which even the language is foreign to them, the Navajos sink ever deeper into the culture of poverty, exhibiting all of the usual and well-known symptoms: squalor, unemployment or irregular and ill-paid employment, broken families, disease, prostitution, crime, alcoholism, lack of education, too many children, apathy and demoralization, and various forms of mental illness, including evangelical Protestantism. Whether in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the barrios of Caracas, the ghettos of Newark, the mining towns of West Virginia or the tarpaper villages of Gallup, Flagstaff and Shiprock, it's the same the world over - one big wretched family sequestered in sullen desperation, pawed over by social workers, kicked around by the cops and prayed over by the missionaries. — Edward Abbey

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd. — May Sarton

The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do notintrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear. — Willa Cather

When the Americans were trying to conquer the Navajos, they felt this need to capture Canyon de Chelly like it was the Navajo capital. It was a meeting place and a sanctuary of last refuge. To control Canyon de Chelly was to control the Navajo people. — Hampton Sides

I've always liked what the Navajos say when they part. They never say 'Goodbye.' They say 'Go in beauty.' — Irene Sharaff

You know if something is good because you remember the lines because it is written so well. The rhythm of the speech is spot on. — Rob James-Collier

There is always a charge, of one kind or another. * — Jeff VanderMeer

What I see especially among the Navajos and the Zunis and the Hopis is a culture of people who have been smart enough to learn a lesson that we're awfully slow to get ... They know that being rich doesn't have any damn thing to do with how much money you've got. It's got to do with are you happy and are you content. — Rachel Dickinson

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home. — Tony Hillerman

For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone. — Mikhail Bulgakov

I love lists. Always have. when I was 14, I wrote down every dirty word I knew on file cards and placed them in alphabetical order. I have a thing about about collections, and a list is a collection with purchase. (Wired Magazine, "Step One: Make a List", October 2012) — Adam Savage

Yesterday's concert was a success. I hasten to let you know. I inform your Lordship that I was not a bit nervous and played as I play when I am alone. It went well ... and I had to come back and bow four times. — Frederic Chopin

The problem contains the solution. — Michael Bierut

It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure. — Blaise Pascal

The Navajos were another matter. Theirs was a sprawling nation, wealthy in stock, obdurate in its ways, open to change but only on its terms. — Hampton Sides

She was a thin, gypsyish woman, and her face was very keen; she could put on a manner when she felt like it, but she didn't care a damn who saw her when she didn't, and she gave her sharp, greenish-eyed grin. He wasn't rattled by her; he had decided she was going to be a nuisance, and she caught on at once that he was bent on giving her the shove-ho. She was an experienced woman, rough from being so much on the losing side and from having knocked around from town to town, Washington to Brooklyn to Detroit, with what other stops you'd never know, getting gold teeth here and a slash in the cheek there. But she was an independent and never appealed for any sympathy; was never offered any either. — Saul Bellow

People say Jesus Christ is a god, and they pray to him. Likewise, the Navajos have a god. He is an everlasting god who never dies, and we pray to him for everything. We were created from white shell in a sacred, holy way. Part of the white shell was taken and put in our bodies, but no one can see it. White Shell is a god. We pray to her "to give us the invisible white shell shoes, white shell socks, clothing, feathers," and so on. This god is female and is out there, but we cannot see her. — John Holiday

Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The United States Navy, during the war, used Navajos as "code-talkers" who relayed messages from ship to ship, talking in Navajo (a language not studied in Japan). — Michael Lesk

We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that. — Chester Nez