Pegs Quotes & Sayings

One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you'd opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are "pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours." Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along. — Anne Fadiman

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable. — Stanislaw Lem

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed: it was labelled "ORANGE MARMALADE," but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it. — Lewis Carroll

There are not so many round pegs in square holes one might think. Most people, in spite of what they tell you choose the occupation that they secretly desire. You will hear a man say who works in an office, 'I should like to explore, to rough it in far countries.' But you will find that he likes reading the fiction that deals with that subject, but that he himself prefers the safety and moderate comfort of an office stool. — Agatha Christie

You might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intonations on. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses. As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. — Virginia Woolf

Smoking does not make one ill, but worrying makes. Drinking two pegs in the evening would not make you ill, but sleeping with tensions and worries would definitely do that. — Girdhar Joshi

All words are pegs to hang ideas on. — Henry Ward Beecher

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently ... Rock on! — Steve Jobs

That's Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat,watch the dead being put to flames and hear their kin wail for them. Then come home and down a couple of pegs of whisky. In Delhi, death and drink make life worth living, — Khushwant Singh

Hear the language, this English, double-jointed as Bedivere's limbs. It only sounds awkward. In its ability to join one concept to another as with pegs, its dependent clauses, figures of speech and cadenced alliteration, a man can say one thing five ways and yet imply a sixth; can change meaning with an inflection, a pause or a deliberate misuse of a word, can mock, scorn and flay an opponent without uttering one overt insult. — Parke Godwin

People going in the wrong direction will get like that. Round pegs just don't fit in square holes. — J.R. Ward

Sister Evangelina shared this robust humour. Before an enema: "Now then, Dad, we're going to put a squib up your arse, shake your insides about a bit. Got the jerry ready, Mother, and the clothes pegs to clip on our noses." Laughter would continue about how he hadn't "been" for a fortnight, and there must be a turd inside as big as an elephant's. And no one was the slightest bit embarrassed, least of all the patient. No, — Jennifer Worth

(aside) Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am. — William Shakespeare

Being taken down a few pegs is humbling. Knowing that life is not easy or fair is humbling. Receiving a great honor - well, that would be called an honor. — Meghan Daum

The organizer who creates roles, who creates the holes that will force the pegs to their shape, is a prime creator of personality itself. When we ask of a man, "What is he?" the answer is usually given in terms of his major role, job, or position in society; he is the place that he fills, a painter, a priest, a politician, a criminal. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents. — Aldous Huxley

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up. — Abraham Lincoln

At sea, sometimes, if you take a ship too far from land and the wind rises and the tide sucks with a venomous force and the waves splinter white above the shield-pegs, you have no choice but to go where the gods will. — Bernard Cornwell

You could be knocked down a peg or two."
... "Baby, I'm so far up the latter there aren't any pegs under me to be knocked down.
"Wow," she said. "That's a new one."
"You loved it. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his thumb for this, softer and subtler than the plectrum, his head bent to the vibrating string and his lips slightly open, breathing quickly, as over the body of a lover. — Ann Wroe

First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she — Lewis Carroll

Images are the pegs holding down memory's billowing tent. — Frances Mayes

It's Square Pegs," Georgie said, "plus My So-Called Life, plus Arrested Development." If Seth were here, he'd add, "Plus some show that people actually watched." And — Rainbow Rowell

Unless the hole is MEANT to be square,' I said with a sudden erudition that surprised me, 'in which case, all the round pegs are the ones that are wrong, and if the ROUND hole is one that is not meant to be square, then the square ones will, no, hang on
'
'Shame,' said the historian, 'and you were doing so well. — Jasper Fforde

Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg. — Paul Collins

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall. — Langston Hughes

The best job to get was as a doctor, at $45,000 a year. The worst was a teacher, at $17,000. If there was any disparity in salary between players, the game was over at the beginning: it didn't take an extra eye to see that a doctor could whoop ass on a teacher. So we massaged the rules a bit: Why not both be doctors? How easy! How fair! That way whoever won did so by a slim margin of money and/or plastic children pegs in the car-shaped game pieces. Little did we know we'd reinvented Communism — Audrey Meier DeKam

Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that's the dealio - you're a train and I'm a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story. — Richard Siken

she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. — Lewis Carroll

Corporations no longer try to fit square pegs into round holes; they just fit them into square cubicles. — Robert Breault

And we, too, had a relationship
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also. — Sylvia Plath

About half of all design patterns out there [ ... ] appear to be ways take perfectly natural design ideas and twist them to fit into someones static type system: recipes for pounding square pegs into round holes — Steve Yegge

Deborah Tedone, Director of Square Pegs/Asperger's Support Group for Adults in Rochester, NY. Deborah says so eloquently what all parents of AS girls need to hear. — Rudy Simone

Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn't time to bother about anything but the average. — W. Somerset Maugham

I no longer went to church as a regular habit, but go I sometimes did, for one Sunday morning I saw these words painted on a board in the porch: 'The congregation are requested to kneel during prayers; the kneelers are afterwards to be hung upon pegs provided for the purpose. — W.B.Yeats

Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung. — P.T. Barnum

This is the year of expansion in the Kingdom of God! Tent pegs will span to the north, the south, the east, and the west in the realm of revelation in the dominion of the Kingdom, where you will walk in a greater dimension of the manifestation of the Kingdom for your life! — Keith Miller

My first stringed instrument was a cigar box banjo where I cut and turned the pegs and strung the wires myself. — Carl Sandburg

Rock 'n' roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then. — Ronnie Hawkins

We are supposed to be different. Do not try to put round pegs in square holes. When people look at us, believe in yourself. — Manoj Arora

There was this real fear in doing 'Square Pegs' after getting such a fast ride to glory on 'Saturday Night Live'. I was afraid that the word would be 'peaks early, fails to live up to promise.' — Anne Beatts

The reason we recoil from this is that we have in our day started by getting the whole picture upside down. Starting with the doctrine that every individuality is 'of infinite value,' we then picture God as a kind of employment committee whose business it is to find suitable careers for souls, square holes for square pegs. In fact, however, the value of the individual does not lie in him. He is capable of receiving value. He receives it by union with Christ. There is no question of finding for him a place in the living temple which will do justice to his inherent value and give scope to his natural idiosyncrasy. The place was there first. The man was created for it. He will not be himself till he is there. We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light. — C.S. Lewis

You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are. — Benjamin Hoff

The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda ... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine. — Paul Haggis

In the lobby, an old woman with legs wrapped in elastic bandages mopped the floor with filthy water. She kept missing the same spot, over and over. There was the overpowering smell of disinfectant, bad tobacco, and wet wool. This was the smell of Russia indoors, the smell of the woman in front of you on line, the smell of every elevator. Near an abandoned newsstand, dozens of overcoats hung on long rows of pegs, somber and dark, lightly steaming, like nags in a stable. — David Remnick

There is the review intended to sell a book, - which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him. — Anthony Trollope

Wood is an endlessly adaptive material. You can plane, chisel, saw, carve, sand, and bend it, and when the pieces are the shape you want you can use dovetail joints, tenpenny nails, pegs or glue; you can use lamination or inlay or marquetry; and then you can beautify it with French polish or plain linseed oil or subtle stains. And when you go to dinner at a friend's house, the candlelight will pick out the contours of grain and line, and when you take your seat you will be reminded that what you are sitting on grew from the dirt, stretched towards the sun, weathered rain and wind, and sheltered animals; it was not extruded by faceless machines lined on a cold cement floor and fed from metal vats. Wood reminds us where we come from. — Nicola Griffith

She saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; — Lewis Carroll