Shuts Quotes & Sayings

One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops them unashamed, and then hangs a brisk coda to them, and then shuts up. — H.L. Mencken

I don't want all these germs all over my kid. "What's her name?" the woman asks. "Jamie." I stare steadily at the crosswalk signal, willing the little green man to pop up before the chick starts flirting. "And what's her daddy's name?" Too late. "Tucker, but my wife calls me Tuck." That shuts her up fast. Normally I'm not this rude during these random street pick-ups, but I really don't like the way she touched my child without permission. Fuck that. — Elle Kennedy

A song
Like a window of glass on a winter's day
That shuts in your warmth
And lets the coldness fall, free — Eesha Kumar

My nose, thank god, had conked out by then. Noses are merciful that way. They will report that something smells awful. If the owner of a nose stays around anyway, the nose concludes that the smell isn't so bad after all. It shuts itself off, deferring to superior wisdom. — Kurt Vonnegut

You think I'm wasting my time, " I accuse his flawless profile. "You think Sammy's dead."
"How could I know that, Cassie?"
"I'm not saying you know that. I'm saying you THINK that."
"Does it matter what I think?"
"No, so shut up."
"I wasn't saying anything. YOU said
"
"Don't ... say ... anything."
"I'm not."
"You just did."
"I'll stop."
"But you're not. You say you will, then you just keep going."
He starts to say something, then shuts his mouth so hard, I hear his teeth click. — Rick Yancey

Eternity is not a long time; rather, it is another dimension. It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind. — Joseph Campbell

Anna prods St. Clair's shoulder. "Come on. Weren't you gonna show me that thing?"
"What thing?"
She stares at him. He stares back. She cocks her head toward Cricket and me.
"Ah, yes." St. Clair stands. "That thing."
They rush out. The door shuts, and St. Clair shouts, "Lola, Cricket wants to show you his thing, too-oo! — Stephanie Perkins

The Soul selects her own Society
Then - shuts the Door
To her divine Majority
Present no more
Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing
At her low Gate
Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat
I've known her - from an ample nation
Choose One
Then - close the Valves of her attention
Like Stone - — Emily Dickinson

An inspirational writer's life is an open book that never shuts. Choose your words carefully. — Shannon L. Alder

Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din. — James Russell Lowell

She is the gin. Cold, intoxicating. Gives you a rush, makes you warm inside, makes you lose your head. Take too much, it makes you sick and shuts you down.
He is the coffee, hot, steaming, filtered. You have to add stuff to it to make it taste good. Grinds your stomach, makes you jittery, wired, and tense. Bad trip, keeps you up, burns you out.
Coffee and gin don't mix, never do, everybody keeps trying and trying to make it taste good. — Henry Rollins

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore. — Anna Letitia Barbauld

My own experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull. When I am really alive, and set in upon the text with a tidal pressure of living affinities, it opens, it multiplies discoveries, and reveals depths even faster than I can note them. The worldly spirit shuts the Bible; the Spirit of God makes it a fire, flaming out all meanings and glorious truths. — Horace Bushnell

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you're meeting a whole lot of new people and having to do things you're in - I'm in a constant low-level state of anxiety. Which produces adrenaline, and kind of shuts down - there's a difference between short-term, people-based anxiety. And sort of deep, existential, you know, fear, that you feel all the way down to your butthole. And that, I, that's ... that's what I'll have when I'm alone. — David Foster Wallace

Shooting at night in Los Angeles is amazing. The city shuts down at 10 P.M. every night, and a whole different cast of characters comes out. — Dan Gilroy

The concept of time shuts off eternity. — Joseph Campbell

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning, softness that "brings and shuts the day," while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. — James F. Cooper

Hurts to see you everyday
Cupid shuts his eyes and shot me twice
Smell your perfume on my bed
Thoughts of you invade my head
Truths are written, never said
And if I can't be yours now
I'll wait here on this ground
Till you come, till you take me away
Maybe someday
Maybe someday — Colleen Hoover

The summer Night comes brooding down on Earth, As Love comes brooding down on human hearts, With bliss that hath no utterance save rich tears. She floats in fragrance down the smiling dark, Foldeth a kiss upon the lips of Life
Curtaineth into rest the weary world
And shuts us in with all our hid delights. — Frank Herbert

There's a terrible stillness. I notice a small tear in the wallpaper above her shoulder. I notice finger marks grimed on the light switch. Somewhere down in the house, a door opens and shuts. As Zoey turns to face me, I realize that life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end. — Jenny Downham

Me: *is faced with a distressing situation*

Brain: *shuts down*

Me: No, maybe we should actually deal with this.

Brain: Read 7:26 p.m. — Unknown

The untrained mind keeps up a running commentary, labelling everything, judging everything. Best to ignore that commentary. Don't argue or resist, just ignore. Deprived of attention and interest, this voice gets quieter and quieter and eventually just shuts up. — Plato

When it's time to leave, we put on our shoes, kiss Daddy good-bye, and tumble out the front door. Waiting for us on the street in front of his car is Peter with a bouquet of cellophane-wrapped pink carnations. "Happy birthday, kid," he says. Kitty's eyes bulge. "Are those for me?" He laughs. "Who else would they be for? Hurry and get in the car." Kitty turns to me, her eyes bright, her smile as wide as her face. I'm smiling too. "Are you coming too, Lara Jean?" I shake my head. "No, there's only room for two." "You're my only girl today, kid," Peter says, and Kitty runs to him and snatches the flowers out of his hand. Gallantly, he opens the door for her. He shuts it and turns and winks at me. "Don't be jealous, Covey." I've never liked him more than in this moment. — Jenny Han

Not so her eyes, which were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts you out. — Margaret Atwood

And yes, when he kisses you, the rest of the world disappears and your brain shuts off and all you can feel are his lips and nothing else matters. — Jess Rothenberg

No sooner had one season slipped out the door than the next came in by another door. A person might scramble to the closing door and call out, Hey, wait a minute, there's one last thing I forgot to tell you. But nobody would be there any more. The door shuts tight. Already another season is in the room, sitting in a chair, striking a match to light a cigarette. Anything you forgot to mention, the stranger says, you might as well go ahead and tell me, and if it works out, I'll get the message through.
Nah, it's okay, you say, it was nothing really. And all around, the sound of the wind. Nothing, really. A season's died, that's all. — Haruki Murakami

The dark and the snow are too thick for him to see beyond the first trees. He's been in there before at this time, when the dark shuts down in early winter. But now he pays attention, he notices something about the bush that he thinks he has missed those other times. How tangled up in itself it is, how dense and secret. It's not a matter of one tree after another, it's all the trees together, aiding and abetting one another and weaving into one thing. A transformation, behind your back.
There's another name for the bush, and this name is stalking around in his mind, in and out of where he can almost grasp it. But not quite. It's a tall word that seems ominous but indifferent. — Alice Munro

The human soul is to God, is as the flower to the sun; it opens at its approach, and shuts when it withdraws. — Benjamin Whichcote

But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? — John The Apostle

The system which admits the unworthy to the vote provided they are men, and shuts out the worthy provided they are women, is so unjust and illogical that its perpetuation is a sad reflection upon American thinking. — Carrie Chapman Catt

My mother, who died aged 82, had Alzheimer's. Losing your memory is bad enough, but everything shuts down. You can't remember how to eat or go to the toilet. It's a terrible disease and so distressing to watch it take over someone you love. — Bonnie Tyler

Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye. — William Shakespeare

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand. — Laurence Sterne

The wife carries the burden of the marriage on her shoulders," his mother said. "Her husband, herself, both of them, their covenant, and everything else that gets added over the years. And all that is very, very heavy. It is in her power to keep the marriage alive and thriving, but also to drive it to the brink of crisis and back again. For whatever reason, men have not taken this role upon themselves. Perhaps they are not capable. Now, as you know, every empty space, every abyss created in nature fills itself, and this one is filled by women out of a sense of responsibility and maybe also the will to control. It's a simple matter, really, but in case you haven't understood, I'll explain it: your wife must be happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and impassioned, and then the burden of marriage will not be heavy for her. She'll be prepared to take it upon herself for better and for worse until the very day that one of you shuts your eyes for good. — Anat Talshir

Surprise is just a paradox. Sometimes it annoys us; sometimes it shakes the tears of joy within us; sometimes it makes us ponder; sometimes it ceases our words and leaves our jaws open, and sometimes, it shuts our lips; for a moment, surprises can put our minds into a state of confusion and halt the movement of the body. Watch out for surprises for surprises are there to surprise you! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs. — Rebecca MacKinnon

There are no lost opportunities in Divine Mind, as one door shuts another door is opened. — Florence Scovel Shinn

Everest silences you ... when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue. — Salman Rushdie

Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.
Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion. — Suzanne Collins

Hey, ya'll should come home with us. Verdie has a pot roast in the oven that will melt in your mouth," Finn said.
He was as tall as Sawyer and had the bluest eyes Jill had ever seen on a man. Callie nodded at his side as she corralled four kids, and Verdie poked her head out around Finn's shoulder to say, "Yes, we'd love to have you. Got plenty of food and plenty of these wild urchins to entertain you. If that don't keep you laughing, then there's a parrot that never shuts up and a bunch of dogs."
"And a cat," a little girl said shyly. — Carolyn Brown

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows. — Robert Kiyosaki

When an opinionated person starts to challenge something, his mind shuts out all that could clear up the matter. The argument irritates him, however just it might be, and it seems that he is afraid of discovering the truth. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

No: Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens - the heavens which declared the glory - the happy climes that ly Where day never shuts his eye Up in the broad fields of the sky. He quoted Milton's words to himself lovingly, at this time and often. — C.S. Lewis

A deadline is a finish line. Don't stop 'til the door shuts in your face! — Raven Moore

A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters. — Henry David Thoreau

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind. — Henry Rollins

It is cowardly to fly from natural duties and take up those that suit our taste or temperament better; but it is also unwise to take an exaggerated view of personal duties, which shuts out the proper care of the mind and body entrusted to us. — Ellen Swallow Richards

Kindness is the color in the cathedral window which woven into beautiful characters shuts out the hideous sights of a world which is all too practical. — James Leonard Gordon

Often God shuts a door in our face, And then subsequently opens the door through which we need to go. CATHERINE MARSHALL — Julia Cameron

black eyes need no translating; the mind itself throws a shadow upon them. In them thought opens or shuts, shines forth or goes out in darkness, hangs steadfast like the setting moon or like the swift and restless lightning illumines all quarters of the sky. They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow. The — Rabindranath Tagore

Certainty shuts down possibilities and keeps us small. — L.R.W. Lee

Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off. — Halsey

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent. — Greg Graffin

The white realtor lady asks if I'm adopted - like that's some legitimate, socially appropriate question to ask - and is halfway through a gushy story about her friend's new baby from Korea when I say, "Haven't you ever heard of interracial marriage? It's all the rage in civilized countries," and she shuts up and purses her lips. — E. Lockhart

The blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a casket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and shuts out the light. — Margaret Deland

Whenever you hear yourself or others telling you you cannot do something, do that particular something, and notice how quickly everyone shuts the hell up. — Miya Yamanouchi

There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to love you. — Anne Enright

I always pray for God's guidance in my life and he always provides it. He opens the right doors he shuts the right doors. And I have tremendous faith in him. He just guided my career in an amazing way. — Ben Carson

Even such is Time *
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618)
*These lines are said to have been composed by Sir Walter Raleigh on the night before his execution. — Walter Raleigh

This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we've finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it's shut for good. — Deb Caletti

The Conditioned Mind / shuts off magical vision and gnosis / gives up freedom, truth, real choices / loses sight of love, trust, and social coherence / loses touch with organic life, gives way to interference // risks personal wellbeing, peace of heart, balance of mind / is tricked into believing we need power, money, lies / and people to lead us by the nose into violence and war / is hypnotised, drugged, poisoned, misinformed. — Jay Woodman

There's something final about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once. It shuts them up. — Margaret Atwood

Ah! that quite does for me. I haven't a word to say ... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much. — Oscar Wilde

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sleeping was her latest discovery. 'It's so wonderful. One simply shuts one's eyes, that's all. It's so delicious. — Katherine Mansfield

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down. — Lauren Oliver

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? — Kurt Vonnegut

Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love. — Robert Greene

For most cosmologists, a supernatural God is an unnecessary hypothesis. For most Americans, He is an unassailable fact. The American belief machine apparently has a fail-safe component. Nothing shuts it down. — Gary Sloan

The woman wants the man to love her for ever and ever. She deliberately shuts her eyes to those two terrible enemies - Time and Change. Men are more realistic. They know that all things pass. And yet, it's precisely out of this tension between the two sexes that civilization has evolved. Had this not been present, man would have become extinct like the many animals who were overtaken by this fate. Why do I say this? Because I see this "push" and "pull" as masculine and feminine principles, respectively, both of which are essential for the survival of the human race. — Khushwant Singh

And she leaves. She opens the door and, without a backward glance, goes out and shuts the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. She vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot something she wanted to say and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence that's like a hollow space. — Haruki Murakami

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies ; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul , On these strange words for ever whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time . O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens Thee we wait! — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something. — John Hannah

Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself. — Ann Douglas

Literature is my Utopia ... No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends — Helen Keller

Soul-the spiritual principle, the creative spark of God-cannot work if you panic. Anxiety shuts down the creative centers. When you can't think, whatever you try to do becomes one blunder piled upon another. If you slow down, the spiritual principle can begin working through you so that you can figure out the solution to the problem that is bothering you. — Harold Klemp

He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

As a kid, snow served the useful purpose of closing schools. As an adult - it shuts down any activity a decent, suntanned person over the age of thirty-five enjoys. I don't do snow forts, snowballs, snow angels, snowmen, snowmobiles, or snowshoes. I don't like to walk in it, drive in it, ski on it, or sled on it. Other than that, snow is just ducky. — Michael Holbrook

True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does. — Hugh Nibley

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter ... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, - You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat ... Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile ... — James Russell Lowell

Try staying awake for 24 hours and you'll realize just how many needless worries your mind instantly shuts out. — Joyce Rachelle

Where one door shuts, another opens. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Say what we will, you may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed,
it steals away the freshness of life,
it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments,
it shuts our souls to our own youth,
and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

At one time I say to myself: "Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully ... " Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them. — Homer

Come and let us live my Deare,
Let us love and never feare,
What the sowrest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies to day
Lives againe as blithe to morrow,
But if we darke sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe of another.
Thus at last when we have numbred
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
Wee'l confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our joyes so multiply,
As shall mocke the envious eye. — Richard Crashaw

He shall rise up and shut the door, it will be in vain for mere professors to knock, and cry Lord, Lord open unto us, for that same door which shuts in the wise virgins will shut out the foolish for ever. Lord, shut me in by Thy grace. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We had eight inches of snow last night. In any other part of the country, that would mean a snow day. Not in Syracuse. We never get snow days. It snows an inch in South Carolina, everything shuts down and they get on the six o'clock news. In our district, they plow early and often and put chains on the bus tires. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I'm in a house where if the washing machine shuts off, it sings a song. If iPad gets a message, it sings a song. I'm living in a real postmodern time - every single thing sings to you to tell you it's started, it's stopped, you've got a message, you didn't get a message ... — Abel Ferrara

She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing. — Jeanette Winterson

The happy man is he who turns his soul Unto the light of joys that he can find; And pays each day its just demand of toll, But shuts the future troubles from his mind. — Edgar Guest

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work. — Steven Pressfield

Whatever. I've never understood what the big deal is about reading." He shuts the door and locks it, turning for the stairs. "Going to another place. Getting lost in time. Pretending that you're living a different life." He heads down the stairs and I follow him. "What's not to love? — Jessica Sorensen

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. — Virginia Woolf

She finishes the chorus and shuts her eyes again. Her long legs bounce against the rail of the stool to keep rhythm and I fall victim to her siren's song. She has bewitched me. And I want her. She's the one. — Georgia Cates

is "an architect of the modern type who preaches and practices cooperation. He has no use for the architect who 'shuts himself up in his office to make a design and then sends it out to a contractor to build or to an engineer to fit up the plumbing, heating and steel as best as he can.' Nor has he any use for the architect who 'goes up to a Communion on Mount Sinai and hands the results to the owner, the engineers and the public: In his view, as in my own, the best designs, at any rate for the building of skyscrapers, come from 'a group of minds in which the architect is one link in the — Ayn Rand

If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana ... and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation. — Ezra Pound

How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door ... — Emily Dickinson

Call me a midget, but just be real. I am all for correct terms, but please don't tiptoe around feelings. Don't be too careful, because that shuts you off from people. — Peter Dinklage