Traveling Salesman Quotes & Sayings

Latin America can no longer tolerate being a haven for United States liberals who cannot make their point at home, an outlet for apostles too "apostolic" to find their vocation as competent professionals within their own community. The hardware salesman threatens to dump second-rate imitations of parishes, schools and catechisms
out-moded even in the United States
all around the continent. The traveling escapist threatens further to confuse a foreign world with his superficial protests, which are not viable even at home. — Ivan Illich

The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. — Sinclair Lewis

I've always had a bawdy sense of humor. My father was a traveling salesman and he would bring jokes home. He would say, "Honey, you can take this one to school, but you can't take that one to school." — Betty White

I don't watch a lot of T.V., and I hardly ever have time to keep up with series, though I do love reruns of old favorites from my childhood like 'Dr. Who', 'The Goodies', and 'Get Smart.' — Garth Nix

He was surprised at the way she answered. She had taken a long time to say that. She had nodded her head in a deep way too. Had she wished to affect him with some sort of premonition? He wondered unhappily. Or was it only that she would not help him, after all, by talking with him? For he was not strong enough to receive the impact of unfamiliar things without a little talk to break their fall. He had lived a month in which nothing had happened except in his head and his body - an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and dreams that came back, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate life which had left him weak to the point of - what? Of begging. The pulse in his palm leapt like a trout in a brook.

("Death of a Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

Hezekiah Pendergast," Constance continued, "was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius - and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own 'medicine': Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. — Douglas Preston

There was an old, crazy dude who used to live a long time ago. His name was Lord Buckley. And he said, a long time ago, he said, 'People
they'r e kinda like flowers, and it's been a privilege walking in your garden.' My love goes with you. — Robin Williams

One evening in one of those Over-the-Rhine cafes which were plentiful along Vine Street of the Cincinnati of the nineties, a traveling salesman leaned across his stein of Moerlein's Extra Light and openly accused Ray Schmidt of being innocent. — Fannie Hurst

A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth ... Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius. — Sinclair Lewis

I'm a one-woman man. Pretty much. — Robert Cray

Montefusco bare-hands it and throws him out. That grounder will make you a traveling salesman in a hurry! — Jerry Coleman

Love is a divine power..that enlightened me always towards my destination ... — Santonu Kumar Dhar

I do feel as if ... Look, I think I'm a very kind of ordinary person, and it seems to me that things that are of interest to me will probably be of interest to other people. I'm not exceptional; I don't have exceptional thoughts. — Kate Grenville

I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me. — Ian Frazier

Original visions are often wrong. Companies have to morph as they learn what customers don't want. — Guy Kawasaki

He did not like illness, he distrusted it, as he distrusted the road without signposts.
("Death Of A Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

Times change. The farmer's daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman. — Carey Williams

The borders he respected were the borders of dreams, the misty borders of love and indifference, the borders of courage and fear, the golden borders of ethics. — Roberto Bolano

Hetty turned her attention back to her subject's face and was quite surprised to see a meek little submissive, almost ashamed of the orgasm she was about to have, panting and heaving for breath whilst nearly foaming at the mouth. Indeed she looked quite tortured in the throes of passion and any Master would be extremely pleased with that particular look during training. — C.P. Mandara

Ashamed, shrugging a little, and then shivering, he took his bags and went out. The cold of the air seemed to lift him bodily. The moon was in the sky.
On the slope he began to run, he could not help it. Just as he reached the road, where his car seemed to sit in the moonlight like a boat, his heart began to give off tremendous explosions like a rifle, bang bang bang.
He sank in fright onto the road, his bags falling about him. He felt as if all this had happened before. He covered his heart with both hands to keep anyone from hearing the noise it made.
But nobody heard it.
(Death of a Traveling Salesman — Eudora Welty

adults usually think you can only feel real love when you're fifty or something and have lived through a war. — Callie James

To get a traveling salesman drunk is the height of impossibility. — Honore De Balzac

If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole. — Ishmael Reed

It was late afternoon. This time tomorrow he would be somewhere on a good graveled road, driving his car past things that happened to people, quicker than their happening.
("Death of a Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

I watched my daddy play that guitar, and whenever I could, I would pick it up and strum on it. — David Edwards

If you took the profit out of war, there would be no war. What the hell do you think war is? You think we go to another country to bring democracy? We go there 'cause there's oil, resources or something we need. — Jacque Fresco

I had a father who was a traveling salesman. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

People expect things from art that are horrible for us who make it! They put the things we make in these restrictive places called 'museums,' then don't want to hear another word from us. — Sigmar Polke

Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out
Samsa was a traveling salesman
hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared. — Franz Kafka

And it was so still. The silence of the fields seemed to enter and move familiarly through the house. The wind used the open hall. He felt that he was in a mysterious, quiet, cool danger. It was necessary to do what? ... to talk.
("Death Of A Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

The classes of problems which are respectively known and not
known to have good algorithms are of great theoretical interest. [ ... ]
I conjecture that there is no good algorithm for the traveling
salesman problem. My reasons are the same as for any mathematical
conjecture: (1) It is a legitimate mathematical possibility, and
(2) I do not know. — Jack Edmonds

A traveling salesman was driving in the country when his car broke down. He hiked several miles to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if there was a place he could stay overnight. "Sure," said the farmer, "My wife died several years ago, and my two daughters are twenty-one and twenty-three, but they're off to college, and I'm all by myself, so I have lots of room to put you up."
Hearing this, the salesman turned around and started walking back toward the highway.
The farmer called after him, "Didn't you hear what I said? I have lots of room."
"I heard you," said the salesman, "but I think I'm in the wrong joke. — Thomas Cathcart