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C Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with C. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All C Quotes

“Can’t Handle Freedom (The Sonnet) Whole human is the first human, All else are but wannabe. Designation human says it all, Yet why do you chase terminology! Even when you broke free from religion, You could not handle that utter freedom! Like a rightful new descendant of divisionists, You chained the word "human" with an "ism". It is like you can't handle being free, You have to stay enslaved by one ism or another. They used to keep the world apart with religions, Today the same is done by new-age dividers. Human, human, human - that is all we ever are. Not humanist, not socialist, just carers of each other.”

“Can't it be stopped?" said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit where rocks weren't digging into her. Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning," Maddy said. "If someone sees what's happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction." Reverse the direction?" Yes, turn it around." How would you do that?" You'd do something good," said Maddy. "Or at least you'd keep yourself from doing something bad." But how could you?" said Lina. "When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?" You wouldn't want to," said Maddy. "That's what makes it hard. you do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”

“Can’t say my Uttarpara ancestral home isn’t my homeland, I know unidentified bodies, their eyes plucked out, float by in the Ganga. Can’t say my aunt’s Ahiritola isn’t my homeland, I know abducted girls are bound and gagged in Sonagachi nearby. Can’t say my uncle’s at Panihati isn’t my homeland, I know who was killed, and where, in broad daylight. Can’t say my adolescent Konnagar isn’t my homeland, I know who was sent to cut whose throat. Can’t say my youth’s Calcutta isn’t my homeland, I know who threw bombs, set fire on buses, trams. Can’t say West Bengal isn’t my homeland, I’ve the right to be tortured to death in its lock-ups, I’ve the right to starve and have rickets in its tea gardens, I’ve the right to hang myself at its handloom mills, I’ve the right to become bones buried by its party lumpen, I’ve the right to have my mouth taped, silenced, I’ve the right to hear the leaders sprout gibberish, abuse, I’ve the right to a heart attack on its streets blocked by protestors, Can’t say Bengali isn’t my homeland.”

“Can’t sleep?” SIRS had asked. “No,” Cavalo said roughly. “Ah. I often wonder what it’s like.” “What,” Cavalo asked, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Sleeping,” SIRS had said. “Being able to dream. I’m told it’s a wondrous thing.” “Except when they’re nightmares. Not so wondrous when death is all you see.” SIRS’s eyes had flashed. “I would think that would be even better,” he’d said. “Because you wake up, your heart pounding in your chest, and there would be a moment of terror before clarity sets in. The relief one must feel at realizing it was just a dream seems like it would be the greatest sensation in the world. How I wish I could wake from a nightmare.”

“Can't we all simmer down a bit? Let the teachers teach, the parents parent, and the kids do the learning. Our children will be fine, just as we were. They will figure it out, just as we did. They don't need every advantage skewed their way and every discomfort fluffed with pillows. I bet they don't even need sandwich dolphins. I am a product of bologna, red Kool-Aid, and home perms, and I turned out okay.”

“Can't we look to Mary Magdalene as simply an early church leader whose rightful place next to Christ should have been acknowledged? There are no Scriptures to place her anywhere but right next to Jesus. Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows her to be a godly woman responding wholeheartedly to a message that must have appealed to her greatly. But the fastest way to rob a woman of her power is to make her a sexual suspect. It certainly has worked all these years for MM.”

“Can't you clerk in a store?' 'No.' 'Can't you be a waitress?' 'Would you be anything like you're suggesting to me? Then why, if you're too good, is it all right for me?' 'It's not a question of superiority, Dora. Come on, be a telephone operator and get paid while you work. Or how about ushering in a theater? I have it. You'll get a job in a flower shop. They always do.' He looked at her so sharply that she knew she must make some answer, and she began to speak as if her words came from another mind, another mouth. 'I am beyond this plane of animal existence. I'm made of different stuff. I lived all this ages ago and I'm through with it for good.”

“Can’t you get into your head, my learned friend, that you’ve taken a liking to me and feel that I matter because I’m a kind of mirror for you, because something in me responds to you and understands you? Actually, all human beings ought to be such mirrors for one another, responding and corresponding to each other in this way, but the thing is that cranks like you are oddities. You easily get lead astray, bewitched into thinking that you can no longer see or read anything in the eyes of other people, that there is nothing there that concerns you any more. And when a crank of your sort suddenly discovers a face again that really looks at him, in which he senses something akin to a response and an affinity, it naturally fills him with joy.”

“Can’t you imagine? Haven’t you told her about the place enough?” He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations. They looked to him now like magic spells written on the white paint in childish hand. Take me to another world! Go on! I know you can do it. My father has shown me how. Odd that your heart didn’t simply stop when it hurt so much.”

“Can't you just hide us in shadows or something?' 'Sure, because a giant black cloud moving down the hallway isn't going to look more suspicious than a couple sneaking around.' He shoots me a look that keeps me from countering. Point taken. Not that we're a couple. Not that I wouldn't climb the man like a tree if presented with the right set of circumstances.”

“Can’t you make yourself likeable? Can’t you even try?” Something shifted in Tavi then. She was always so flippant, trailing sarcasm behind her like a duchess trailing furs. But not this time. Hugo had pierced her armor and blood was dripping from the wound. “Try for whom, Hugo?” she repeated, her voice raw. “For the rich boys who get to go to the Sorbonne even though they’re too stupid to solve a simple quadratic equation? For the viscount I was seated next to at a dinner who tried to put his hand up my skirt through all five courses? For the smug society ladies who look me up and down and purse their lips and say no, I won’t do for their sons because my chin is too pointed, my nose is too large, I talk too much about numbers?” “Tavi …” Isabelle whispered. She went to her, tried to put an arm around her, but Tavi shook her off. “I wanted books. I wanted maths and science. I wanted an education,” Tavi said, her eyes bright with emotion. “I got corsets and gowns and high-heeled slippers instead. It made me sad, Hugo. And then it made me angry. So no, I can’t make myself likeable. I’ve tried. Over and over. It doesn’t work. If I don’t like who I am, why should you?”

“Can the act of narrative writing alter the writer’s mental alignment and will an honest chronicle and extended effort at seeking answers to a vexatious series of pending personal questions eventually place the author on an even keel? What other motive, good or evil, could possibly cause an essayist to write in such a torrid manner? With each line that I write, I beg to stop. The lines just keep tumbling out. Is there no end to this nightmarish experience of examination and reexamination? Is there no relief in sight to this modest attempt to form my storyline into an intelligible quest? Many days of writing go nowhere; blank pages replicate the blandness of life, whereas other days I sense progress towards an indiscernible and undefinable goal. If I write long enough, what will I finally discover gazing back at me?”