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Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren Quotes

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Famous Robert Penn Warren Quotes

“The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.”

GivingMayHelpingFacesHumanityUnderstandingCommonProgramLogicAskingSubmitCommon Humanity
Book:The Legacy of the Civil War
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“I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.”

IfsKnowsMenLooksDoeBookRealMatterHurtPrinciplesWonderfulHeardCollegeGoes OnBeing TrueGatesIdealismIdealistHingesBarns
Book:All the King's Men
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“...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.”

IfsHeartHas BeensStillsLightMightHappensWaitingMorningHappenedAirStreetsCornersTeethAcheMight Have BeenBosomsDentistStreet CornersMorning After
Book:All the King's Men
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“Then after a long time Annie wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a big girl and I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In the dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen.”

WorldHeartLittlesLongEndsWholeDreamBigsHappensCertainGirlFeltHappenedReadyMy HeartSummerLong TimeWhole WorldOne TimeEnd TimesAnnieSwellingBig Girl
Book:All the King's Men
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“For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.”

GivingLooksCountryHandsAgeGrowsGrowing UpPlansBloodLandFieldsLettersGoldWestOld AgeHillsEmpiresBubblesTidesBlades
Author:Robert Penn Warren
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“It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) "There is always something." And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge." And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

MenSaidNightBlackBornSinStudentsJudgingSittingBurdenCorruptionBossStinkShroudsCadillacsSped
Book:All the King's Men
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“Dirt's a funny thing,' the Boss said. 'Come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?”

ThinkingWorldMadeSaidGrowsWaterPiecesMankindDependsHotBlessedGreenAwfulGrassBossFacultyDiamondGlobesDirtHandfulFunny ThingsApprehension
Book:All the King's Men
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“...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?”

MadeSelfLyingTermJusticeBreakLatePatternsDefinitionsBoxesSubstanceToo LatePrisonerHungCagesBreak OutNew Self
Author:Robert Penn Warren
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