Townsmen Quotes & Sayings

We stand at an immense fork in the raod. One way is the path of generosity, dignity and a respect for other races and customs; the other leads most certainly to greed, suspicion, hatered and the old, bloody course of violence and waste - and now, God help us, to the very destruction of all the struggles and triumphs of the human race on this earth. My old friends and fellow townsmen: which will it be? — Anton Myrer

Let everything in creation draw you to God. Refresh your mind with some innocent recreation and needful rest, if it were only to saunter through the garden or the fields, listening to the sermon preached by the flowers, the trees, the meadows, the sun, the sky, and the whole universe. You will find that they exhort you to love and praise God; that they excite you to extol the greatness of the Sovereign Architect Who has given them their being. — Paul Of The Cross

Prose poetry is not set to a melody or music so there's something freeing about it. — William Beckett

The function of traditional history is to create a citizenry that looks to the top - the president, Congress, the Supreme Court - to make the important decisions. That's what traditional history is all about: the laws that were passed, the decisions made by the court. So much of history is built around "the great men." All of that is very anti-democratic. — Howard Zinn

Forty, sleepy, overweight, comfortable Arridi townsmen, who hadn't fought a real engagment in twenty years or more, wouldn't provide much resistance to thirty yelling, fiendish, bloodthirsty, gold crazed Skandians who would come screaming up from the beach like the hounds of hell. — John Flanagan

The prairie towns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason of existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center , but only this ragged camp. It is a "parasitic Greek civilization"
minus the civilization. — Sinclair Lewis

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. — Henry David Thoreau

I was long brought up to think that it was nothing short of a crime to miss a sale. — James Cash Penney

I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "a handsome property" - though I never got a fair view of it - on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton - or Bright-town - which place he would reach some time in the morning. — Henry David Thoreau

In the occupation in Afghanistan, there are tragedies as well. It's not as bad as in Iraq because there are fewer American troops. But, as I describe in the book, going out on patrol and coming into a village, the soldiers found a stash of documents and decided this was Taliban propaganda. — Yaroslav Trofimov

I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. — Henry David Thoreau

'cause humans, above all, fear intelligence. how humans, scared out of their minds, gather whatever intelligence they can put their hands on and put it all in a central penitentiary named facts ... — Kathy Acker

The most satisfactory thing in all this earthly life is to be able to serve our fellow-beings-first, those who are bound to us by ties of love, then the wider circle of fellow-townsmen, fellow-countrymen, or fellow-men. To be of service is a solid foundation for contentment in this world. — Charles William Eliot

We live the given life, and not the planned. — Wendell Berry

Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. — Henry David Thoreau

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? — Henry David Thoreau

I wouldn't care to shoot my own townsmen over a difference of opinion about politics. Keep 'em yourself if you think you need 'em; but I suggest you'll be better off to put 'em away where you can't get at 'em. The trouble with a pistol is that if you show it, you've got to use it, and once you use it you've committed yourself. — Kenneth Roberts

So be steadfast in your commitment to Christ, and be a real VIP - a person with vision, integrity, and God's presence. — Billy Graham

that I can carry on these multiple conversations, each its own window so that sometimes my screen is filled with them; and in each I have the sense of being entirely false and entirely true, like — Garth Greenwell

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock. — Denise Levertov

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. — Henry David Thoreau

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. — Henry David Thoreau