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Carnivals Quotes

Browse 96 quotes about Carnivals.

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Carnivals Quotes

“A tired man lay down his head in a dusty room so dim, and for so long his wife did shake and yell to waken him. Meanwhile his thoughts, his dreams, did stir of sandy, red bullfights, of powder-blasts in the air and carnival delights. Yet still his wife was in despair in a dusty room so dim, for she knew death was a whore not far from tempting him.”

DeathPoetryDyingDespairDreamingBullsHusband And WifeFireworksCarnivalsHusband And Wife RelationshipWhoreCarnivalCarnavalWhoresDying At HomeBull FightersBull FightsDeath DreamTorredor
Author:Roman Payne
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“The man standing in the booth placing the tickets into her hands for the fun-house loomed largely in front of her with arms comprised of iron muscle. She remembered the gray cataract that covered over one of his eyes and the terrified feeling it gave her. She had been too young to understand the malady. To her; his eye looked as though it belonged to a creature from the sea. A frightening creature composed of reptilian and fish like attributes, which would pull unsuspecting prey underneath the darkest oceans. The smile on his face, with the crooked teeth, the cigar, contrasting with the bald head and unshaven face increased her sense of panic.”

CircusFeverNightmaresCarnivalsDeformityFreaksSideshowsFreakshowsFunhouseChildhood SicknessFunhouse Mirrors
Book:River at the World's Dawn
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“It's difficult to spend time in any carnival or amusement park and not realize that a repressed fear of death may be the one emotion that is constant in the human heart even if, most of the time, it is confined to the unconscious as we go about our business. Thrill rides offer us a chance to acknowledge our ever-present dread, to release the tension that arises from repression of it, and to subtly delude ourselves with the illusion of invulnerability that surviving the Big Drop can provide.”

DeathFearSubconsciousOdd ThomasCarnivalsAmusement ParksInvulnerabilityThrillsRidesRepressed Fear Of Death
Book:Saint Odd
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“If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.”

PeopleIfsSocialRoomsViewsVisionOpinionCrazyPerceptionReflectionMirrorsCurrentsParadigmCarnivals
Book:Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE Every Day
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“Precise, graceful, and generous, the poems in SuperLoop, seem to be born out of a deep, careful attention and a profound compassion. Sometimes the quiet observer, sometimes the kid in the center of the messed-up carnival, these poems are the fireflies you’ve missed all winter, the longed-for return of the bees. Unaffected and inherently hopeful, Callihan’s work is as merciful as it is moving.”

SometimesSeemsKidsMovingBornAttentionCompassionReturnQuietProfoundWinterCarefulGenerousHopefulBeesPreciseObserversMercifulMessed UpFireflyCarnivals
Author:Ada Limon
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“Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.”

SometimesStatesWould BeConsciousnessToo MuchGenerationsAmbitionMurderObjectivesJournalistNovelistsHeight1960sEmbarrassmentDrankCommonplaceBourgeoisMy GenerationAvant GardeStates Of ConsciousnessCarnivals
Author:Lewis H. Lapham
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“with a country of rare picturesqueness for a background, a people of rare beauty for actors, everybody more or less permeated with the artistic instinct and everybody more or less writing poetry - California has a pageant for breakfast, a fiesta for luncheon and a carnival for dinner. They are always electing queens. In fact any girl in California who hasn't been a queen of something before she's twenty-one is a poor prune.”

PeopleWritingCountryFactsGirlActorsPoorTwentiesInstinctDinnerBackgroundsArtisticCaliforniaQueensBreakfastTwenty OneWriting PoetryPageantCarnivalsPrunesFiestaRare Beauty
Author:Inez Haynes Irwin
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“The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.”

GivingLooksChildrenSeemsEyeTogetherHeavenStarsPerfectHumilityHumourThousandHumorousAll ThingsDignityOptimismHeavyAbsenceKingdomsNosesCosmosFascinatingTouchingHintsKingdom Of HeavenAstonishmentCarnivalsEndearingSolemnity
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“It's hard to say conversation has become a minimal thing, because look at the rise of mobile communications in the last 10 years. It used to be only the President had a mobile phone. Now everyone on earth, even if they have nothing else, they have a cell phone. It's a larger anthropological shift in my mind than even the tattoo age in the United States.”

PeopleIfsMindLooksHardStatesAgeEarthUsedPresidentUnitedUnited StatesCommunicationConversationPrisonPhonesUsed To BeCellsTattooNavyMobileCell PhoneMobile PhonesCarnivals
Author:Padgett Powell
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“Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I've got Tourette's. My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud, my Adam's apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks of empty breath and tone.”

HeartArtistReadingMouthsEmptyPerformancesBreathsDressesMereTongueQuittingGhostNoiseDrunkToneApplesMusclesAdamSpeakersCheeksSenatorsEscapingDowntownMiniaturesCarnivalsReading AloudTourettesFilibuster
Book:Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel
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“Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.”

PersonsHas BeensReadingPracticeOur LivesMovementPlanetsSeriousNotionTeaAstrologyAlchemyGoatsPhonyPseudoscienceCarnivalsMidwaySawdustNumerologySerious PersonPhrenologyTea LeavesPalmistryBlarney
Author:James J. Kilpatrick
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“After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.”

PeopleWritingFirstsWantedTogetherFunChanceClassSeparationInstanceThings To DoNonfictionShedHaitiFun ThingsCarnivals
Author:Edwidge Danticat
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“Sometimes we mask ourselves to further reveal ourselves, and it's always been connected to me with being a writer: We tell lies to tell a greater truth. The story is a mask; the characters you create are masks. That appeals to me. Aside from that, too, in the carnival the masks were beautiful, and offered a vision of Haitian creativity.”

SometimesCharacterStoriesBeautifulLyingVisionCreativityGreaterConnectedAppealsMaskCarnivalsHaitian
Author:Edwidge Danticat
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“I believe that we will see cases like these that will continue because we're talking about companies that are doing business with a tyranny and a dictatorship. And when they do business with a dictatorship, a tyranny, they will have problems like this. This, I believe, is the beginning of several problems that there will be over the next few years because we are talking about American companies that now want to get cozy with this regime, and they will find themselves in very serious problems such as those we're seeing at this time with the Carnival Company.”

WantYearsBelieveProblemNextI BelieveCompanyTalkingCasesSeeingSeriousTyrannyRegimesDictatorshipCozyCarnivalsThis I Believe
Author:Marco Rubio
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