Pyle Quotes & Sayings

Pyle could see pain when it was in front of his eyes. (I don't write that as a sneer; there are so many of us who can't) — Graham Greene

Let me tell you, an I had the shaping of things in this world, ye should all three have been clothed in the finest silks, and ride upon milk-white horses, with pages at your side, and feed upon nothing but whipped cream and strawberries; for such a life would surely befit your looks. At — Howard Pyle

Along with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can. — Robert Michael Pyle

You can see that there is scarcely an observable fact unworthy of mention in your notes, and yet you could easily spend more time scribbling than watching, and that would defeat the purpose. So be selective, don't be compulsive, and enjoy your note-taking. — Robert Pyle

Swinging first and swinging to kill is all that matters now. — Ernie Pyle

I managed to potter along tolerably well in the morning, sitting in the sun and sketching the old buildings ... but in the afternoon, sitting in the shade ... with stiff fingers and chilled bones ... the water froze in little cakes all over the picture. — Howard Pyle

For every man may sin, and yet again may sin; yet still is he God's handiwork, and still God is near by His handiwork to aid him ever to a fresh endeavour to righteousness. — Howard Pyle

In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory - there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else. — Ernie Pyle

It's alright to have a good opinion of yourself, but we Americans are so smug with our cockiness, we somehow feel that just because we are Americans, we can whip our weight in wildcats. — Ernie Pyle

Throw your heart into the picture and then jump in after it. — Howard Pyle

Too, some of my teachers helped me to navigate those books, showed me the maps and paths and secret decoder rings - people like Linda Kintz and Forest Pyle and Mary Wood and Diana Abu Jaber. They didn't treat me like a messy writer girl in combat boots who had infiltrated the smart people room. They treated me like I deserved to be there, potty mouth and all, they helped make a space for me to rage and ride my own intellect. That's why I'm saying their names out loud. — Lidia Yuknavitch

If in making a picture you introduce two ideas, you weaken it by half-if three, it weakens by compound ratio-if four, the picture will be really too weak to consider at all and the human interest would be entirely lost. — Howard Pyle

Say what you will, nothing can make a complete soldier except battle experience. — Ernie Pyle

In keeping with the Laws of the Prophet Bubba and the Code of the UIL, as set forth in the Book of First Downs, as the sun sets on Friday nights the rites of the Texas state religion are celebrated: high school, smash-mouth football. 'And lo, the children of Jim Bob do take to the roads in caravans and they do go up unto the stadium by tribes, the Indians of Groveton, the Panthers of Lufkin, the Mustangs of Overton, and the very Wildcats of Palestine, and who shall withstand the traffic jams thereof?' Thus is it written, and so it is and shall be. — Markham Shaw Pyle

--Writing Mystery and Macabre-- — David Pyle

We look up, if only to see if we're likely to be rained on. The sky calls attention to itself, whether scored by herons, cranes, or wires; illumined by sunsets, Perseids, or ballparks; broken up by the twigwork of oaks or maples, painted in rainbows, or just primed in the pale gray of my '52 Ford. If we are truthful, the sky is never neutral. — Robert Michael Pyle

This side of the Kingdom of God upon Earth, it is a melancholy human fact that those who beat their swords into plowshares end up doing the plowing for those who kept their swords. — Markham Shaw Pyle

A day like this ... is almost too perfect to be legal. — Robert Michael Pyle

The Greek word for idiot, literally translated, means one who does not participate in politics. That sums up my conviction on the subject. — Gladys Pyle

This sort of day makes indoor work seem shameful. So working outside, whether in the garden or the woods or on the front porch ... , is a sacrament. — Robert Michael Pyle

Active listening involves both demonstration and perception. — James Pyle

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness. — Howard Pyle

Jesus, as the one perfect person who fully embodied what it meant to be human and is the new Adam, is the definition of what it means to be a man. Everything else is false. — Nate Pyle

If Jesus looks too feminine to us, maybe it says more about our understanding of masculinity than it does about a possible conspiracy to feminize the church and men. — Nate Pyle

Up rose Robin Hood — Howard Pyle

I think it likely that some of my pupils will reach unusual distinction. — Howard Pyle

The last man, Pfc Layton, was the squad's favorite point man and didn't say much in or out of camp, but he was totally dependable. His only goal in life was to get out of Vietnam alive and get out of the Corps. He was a good point man because he didn't like to take chances. Layton was nineteen years old. — Raymond Hunter Pyle

For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians. — Markham Shaw Pyle

We've been taught a woman's body will cause men to sin. We're told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. Let's be clear: a woman's body is not dangerous to you. Her body will not cause you harm. It will not make you do stupid things. If you do stupid things it is because you chose to do stupid things. — Nate Pyle

For a lifetime I had bathed with becoming regularity, and thought the world would come to an end unless I changed my socks every day. But in Africa I sometimes went without a bath for two months, and I went two weeks at a time without even changing my socks. Oddly enough, it didn't seem to make much difference. — Ernie Pyle

That kind of walk is nice when it happens, but I'll take four minutes now and then over being butt-stapled to a chair all day long. — Robert Michael Pyle

Gaffer Swanthold speaks truth when he saith, 'Better a crust with content than honey with a sour heart. — Howard Pyle

In Europe we felt that our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people.
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But out here I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked upon as something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches or mice. — Ernie Pyle

All the rest of us - you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa - we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over. — Ernie Pyle

I'm really tall - almost six feet - and my features tend to be extreme, especially on TV. — Missi Pyle

You will have to scrutinize the model sharply to find the proportions - how the weight is supported, how each joint is functioning ... Look for the color and tone and texture ... how the light falls on the figure, especially the face. — Howard Pyle

The river has indeed become an inefficient conduit, but the same plaque that plugs this artery used to hold back the flow when it was soil in the hills. Now the land just bleeds when it rains. — Robert Michael Pyle

I started performing in high school. There was a pretty great drama department at my school, and that's when I started doing plays and musicals. — Missi Pyle

An I must drink sour ale, I must, but never have I yielded to a man before, and that without would or mark upon my body. Nor, when I bethink me, will I yield now. — Howard Pyle

As it happens, however, no one in my family recognizes the existence of an impossibility. (We're not specially courageous, we're just bullheaded as all get-out, and the whole lot of us as independent as a hog on ice. Every last one of us would argue with a wooden cigar-store Indian.) — Markham Shaw Pyle

Of all America's natural resources, its richest is an inexhaustible vein of irony. — Markham Shaw Pyle

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without. — Ernie Pyle

[I]nstead of the usual "Why can't we make movies more like real life?" I think a more pertinent question is "Why can't real life be more like the movies?" — Ernie Pyle

I find more of an authenticity in people who are a little strange - so I really like characters who are just the tiniest bit weird. I find enormous comfort in that - someone who's kind of normal just doesn't feel as true. — Missi Pyle

For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit. — Ernie Pyle

All, Pyle? Wait until you're afraid of living ten years alone with no companion and a nursing home at the end of it. THen you'll start running in any direction, even away from that girl in the red dressing-gown, to find someone, anyone, who last until you are through. — Graham Greene

It is the gift of stories that most repays life among settled people. — Robert Michael Pyle

The student learns rules but all the rules in the world never make a picture. — Howard Pyle

I am of use to the younger artists through the advice and criticism which I give them. — Howard Pyle

Love that transforms is love that is vulnerable. — Nate Pyle

The crushed carcasses of slugs and frogs mixing with the Cretaceous carbons of tar give the road an organic glaze. — Robert Michael Pyle

[W]e have reason to ask what artists are working specially for children, and whether they are running with the popular tide or saying something special.... In America, we had the 'parlor gift book' makers, but we also had Howard Pyle. — Louise Seaman Bechtel

The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion. — Ernie Pyle

Let us e'er be merry while we may, for man is but dust, and he hath but a span to live here till the worm getteth him, as our good gossip Swanthold sayeth; so let life be merry while it lasts, say I. — Howard Pyle

Then all was quiet save only for the low voices of those that talked together, ... , and saving, also, for the mellow snoring of Friar Tuck, who enjoyed his sleep with a noise as of one sawing soft wood very slowly. — Howard Pyle

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor only to break out again later. — Ernie Pyle

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, where my father was a minister at music, so I sang in the church all the time. — Missi Pyle

I couldn't resist the temptation to tease Pyle - it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I was weak. — Graham Greene

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived. — Howard Pyle

Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, the result has largely been not to demythologize the past, but merely to dehumanize and depersonalize it. As Roger Mudd has pointed out, 'Too many of today's historians [and biographers] ... seem to have forgotten that the writing of history is a literary art. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Chili is one of those marvelous-simple, elemental, all-important, and fundamental concepts that has been elaborated out of all recognition: rather like justice, or objective reality, or 'being' (ens) in Aquinas. Lean closer and I will whisper to you a horrific, soul-shattering secret: there are actually people so lost to any sense of decency that they put beans in chili. (I hope you sent the children of tender years out of the room before we discussed that horror, lest they be warped for life). — Markham Shaw Pyle

He who jumps for the moon and gets it not leaps higher than he who stoops for a penny in the mud. — Howard Pyle

People will go into an audition and a casting situation, and they'll see someone across the room that's perhaps slightly famous, or famous, and they think, 'Oh God, I'm not gonna get the part.' — Missi Pyle

After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew, and you will doubtless recall that he is not only the patron saint of Alba, of Scotland, but was also a fisherman. How better to toast my favorite apostle (he being all the things I personally am not, starting with humble and self-effacing) than with the sea-salty dram of an Islay whisky? — Markham Shaw Pyle

Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand. — Howard Pyle

In the past few years, genetics have confirmed that the hunter-gatherers were not overwhelmed by the new wave of sedentary farmers, and that the first agricultural revolution spread well in advance of its first users, by contact and trade in ideas. Nice to see science catching up with economics and military history. Any economist could tell you technology spreads beyond its first adopters, even if they stay at home. And any military historian could tell you that, in a contest between people who hunt and kill aurochs and farmers armed with hoes, the smart money is on the hunters. — Markham Shaw Pyle

I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin' to solid sense and learning, regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life, especially Protestant American religious life, that things bottom out completely. — Markham Shaw Pyle

I grew up in Middle America and I don't think my family was very funny, but I watched 'The Princess Bride.' I always wanted to be an actor. I didn't know anything about it. I'd never seen any plays or anything and I watched that movie over and over and over again. — Missi Pyle

Justice can readily do her job blindfolded; she cannot function gagged and deafened, least of all when the means of gagging and deafening her are not remarked. — Markham Shaw Pyle

There are no atheists in the foxhole. — Ernie Pyle

I've always felt there is something sacred in a piece of paper that travels the earth from hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart. — Robert Michael Pyle

When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff. — Howard Pyle

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece. — Ernie Pyle

(H)ope, be it never so faint, bringeth a gleam into darkness, like a little rushlight that costeth but a groat. — Howard Pyle

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her. — Graham Greene

Rather than trying to prove our masculinity, we need to accept who we are in the spirit of the gospel. Instead of trying to live up to some cultural standard of manhood, we need to accept God's grace, which says, "I accept you just as you are." It is culture, not God, that alienates those who do not live up to the existing, narrow definition of manhood. — Nate Pyle

I had been wanting to do a musical for a really long time. I wanted people in New York to know that I can sing. — Missi Pyle

So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten. — Howard Pyle

Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people who'd read more if only their lips didn't get so tired. — Markham Shaw Pyle

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth. — Ernie Pyle

The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy. — Howard Pyle

So endeth the story of the winning of Excalibur, and may God give unto you in your life, that you may have His truth to aid you, like a shining sword, for to overcome your enemies; and may He give you Faith (for Faith containeth Truth as a scabbard containeth its sword), and may that Faith heal all your wounds of sorrow as the sheath of Excalibur healed all the wounds of him who wore that excellent weapon. For with Truth and Faith girded upon you, you shall be as well able to fight all your battles as did that noble hero of old, whom men called King Arthur. — Howard Pyle

Writing is how I process the cacophony of each day. Prayer is how God makes sense out of my scribbles. — Donna Pyle

But that's the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin. You can leave East Texas, for Houston, for the Metroplex, for the Commonwealth, for New York, or Bonn or Tokyo or Kowloon; but you can never quite leave it behind. — Markham Shaw Pyle

And it was at this time that Sir Myles died of his hurt, for it is often so that death and misfortune befall some, whiles others laugh and sing for hope and joy, as though such grievous things as sorrow and death could never happen in the world wherein they live. — Howard Pyle

The teacher knows best what these helpful connections are and must help the pupil to make them. — William Henry Pyle

When that small Siberian bird fell out of the sky over Gray's River, not once but twice, he brought with him the sweetness of chance in any place, the certainty of wonder in all places. And if that's not grace, I don't know what it. — Robert Michael Pyle

However, if Sir Launcelot of the Lake failed now and then in his behavior, who is there in the world shall say, 'I never fell into error'? And if he more than once offended, who is there shall have hardihood to say, 'I never committed offence'? — Howard Pyle

It's so fun to do theater, because as opposed to television, you just keep doing it again and again and again - every night. Sometimes it lands beautifully, and sometimes it lands just beside of it. It's like throwing a horseshoe. It's great fun. — Missi Pyle

My family is not at all involved in television, or film, or theatre, or any of it, really. — Missi Pyle

It was left to the Progressive movement in America (as to the Fabians in Britain) to promote eugenics, Prohibition, dietary fads, the compulsory sterilisation of those they deemed 'unfit', and preferential treatment in immigration law of 'Nordic' (and preferably Protestant) immigrants. — Markham Shaw Pyle

For ages past the Genius of Literature and the Genius of Art have walked together hand in hand. For the Goddess of letters is blind, and only she of Art can lend her sight. — Howard Pyle

Thoughts are wonderful things, that they can bring two people, so far apart, into harmony and understanding for even a little while. — Ernie Pyle

I've really been sick with this cold, but I think I might have kept the columns going anyhow except I was just so low in spirit, I didn't have the will to struggle against them when my deadline was so close and I felt so lousy. — Ernie Pyle

It may be," said he, "that the wisdom of little children flies higher than our heavy wits can follow. — Howard Pyle

What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren? — Robert Pyle

If the power to tax is the power to destroy, the power to regulate is no less so. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Lo, God! I am Thy handiwork. I have sinned and have done great evil, yet I am still Thy handiwork, who hath made me what I am. So, though I may not undo that which I have done, yet I may, with Thy aid, do better hereafter than I have done heretofore. — Howard Pyle

The paradox of questioning is that simple questions can lead to detailed, on-target answers, but complicated questions get you single-word answers from a subject who doesn't want to talk, and unrestrained answers from a person who does. — James Pyle

No matter where you go in East Texas, 'Deep' East Texas is always about twenty miles further in than wherever you are. — Markham Shaw Pyle