Best Native Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 13

“Almost none of the poetries I admire stick to their labels, native or adopted ones. Rather, they are vagrant in their identifications. Tramp poets, there you go, a new label for those with unstable allegiances.”

Poet Sticks Admire Labels Native Adopted Allegiance Identification Unstable Tramps Vagrants

Book:Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

Source: Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

“The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.”

Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition

“As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.”

Source: Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

“I've always been interested in the history of the West, our country and particularly as it relates to the Native Americans - the original Americans.”

Country Originals West Our Country Relate Native Native American

Author:Beau Bridges

“Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.”

Ifs Strange Native Dutch Yorkshire

Book:Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

“The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn't catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War.”

Men Way Years Believe Ideas War Country Bigs Lasts Three Dangerous Native Vietnam Three Years Vietnam War Idiotic Native Country

Book:Bluebeard

Source: Bluebeard

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”

“But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent, Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life, Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. Thy victims ere they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)

“When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.”

“Can you imagine anything more tragic?' Rose asked. 'To be born a princess --native and to the manor born-- and then to forget who you are and settle for being something horrible like an--an accountant!”

Born Forget Imagine Who You Are Rose Horrible Settling Native Tragic Princess Accountants

Author:Regina Doman

“Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.”

Ifs Men Years Lasts Science Left Deals Doubt Cutting Trouble Activity Scientist Native Last Year Be A Man Dissent

Author:Jacob Bronowski

“To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.”

Firsts Fall Cities Falling In Love Possession Native

Book:The Untouchable

Source: The Untouchable

“Thus the white men and Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until eventually the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota.”

Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States

“There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbal of the great human principle.”

People Humans Ideas Country Process Behinds Principles Fundamentals Parks Native Wildlife Scenery National Parks Enrichment

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1934, Volume 3

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1934, Volume 3

“The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”

“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

Source: The mortgaged heart

“The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind. However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity. ---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss”

Men Years Mind Young Left Behinds Creativity Land Return Seeds Young Man Native Misfortunes Left Behind Brian Mirages Native Land

Author:Brian Aldiss

“. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.”

Feels War Character Stories Grows Cold Battle Climate Winter Storm Tales Superiors Native Flaws Peculiar Elsewhere Veteran War Veteran Character Flaws Cold Climate

Author:Richard Paul Evans

“I had a desire to see something besides my own shores, if only to be content to return to them someday. If I wish to live in my native land and love her, it should not be out of ignorance.”

Ifs Should Desire Wish My Own Land Ignorance Return Travel And Love Native Someday Shore Native Land

Book:Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles

Source: Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles

“Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.”

Wells Country Speak Language Felt Gone Saws Complexity Native Speakers Nuance Lucy

Author:Ann Patchett

“We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.”

“A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”

Men Age Degrees Presses Errors Locals Native Nonsense Village Scholar Deceived Immune Microphones

Author:C. S. Lewis

“Potassium cyanide," says the talent wrangler as she leans over to pick up a paper napkin off the floor. "Found naturally in the cassava or manioc roots native to Africa, used to tint architectural blueprints in the form of the deep-blue pigment known as Prussian blue. Hence the shade 'cyan' blue.”

Form Used Found Known Talent Paper Picks Roots Blue Native Shade Blueprints Napkins Pigment Cyanide Potassium Wranglers

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“Thierry had no idea why they were called French doors. His native countrymen weren't stupid enough to put them in their homes.”

Ideas Enough Home Doors Stupid No Idea Native Countrymen

Book:Private Demon: A Novel of the Darkyn

Source: Private Demon: A Novel of the Darkyn

“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”

Needs Book Wit Crafts Clock Native

Author:Jean de la Bruyere

“Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness”

Knows Mean Character Consciousness Myth Native Ecological Integrating

Author:Gary Snyder

“Life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total darkness half of every day. There wouldn't be any native inhabitants. You couldn't expect life - which is fundamentally dependent on light - to develop under such extreme conditions of light deprivation. Half of every axial rotation spent in Darkness! No, nothing could exist under conditions like that.”

Ifs Enough Light Would Be Half Darkness Impossible Conditions Planets Extremes Heat Native Dependent Deprivation Rotation

Author:Isaac Asimov

“In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.”

Way Feels Country Native

Book:The Complete Notes

Source: The Complete Notes

“Choices are funny things-ask a native tribe that's eaten grubs and roots forever if they're unhappy, and they'll shrug. But give them filet mignon and truffle sauce and then ask them to go back to living off the land, and they will always be thinking of that gourmet meal. If you don't know there's an alternative, you can't miss it.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Giving Choices Asks Forever Land Missing Roots Unhappy Alternatives Meals Native Tribes Funny Things Sauce Gourmet Truffles Filet Mignon

Book:Handle with Care: A Novel

Source: Handle with Care: A Novel

“Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.”

Years Littles Long Feelings Land Absence Foolish Native Waking Coming Back Coma Native Land

Author:Bill Bryson

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

“Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.”

People Age Old Age Native Native American Honorable American Indian Native American Wisdom Native America Native American Indian Indian Wisdom Native Wisdom Native American Indian Inspirational Proverbs Wisdom Native American Proverbs Honorable Death

Author:David Gemmell

“If we must die, we die defending our rights.”

“Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.”

“I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.”

“Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.”

West South Islands Native Maps Far Away

Book:Moby Dick

Source: Moby Dick

“It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.”

Source: Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches

“He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other different desires.”

“A Panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a Panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry, and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black and white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

“Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.”

“Why don’t you purchase an Italian dictionary? I will assume the expense.” “I have one,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s very good. Half the words are missing.” “Half?” “Well, some,” she amended. “But truly, that’s not the problem.” He blinked, waiting for her to continue. She did. Of course. “I don’t think Italian is the author’s native tongue,” she said. “The author of the dictionary?” he queried. “Yes. It’s not terribly idiomatic.”

Thinking Wells Said Problem Courses Waiting Half Missing Assuming Very Good Tongue Native Expenses Italian Dictionary

Author:Julia Quinn

“Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.”

Wealth Poverty Victory Gold Defeat Prosperity Poison Native Empires Metals Alchemy Scrap Implicit Scrap Metal

Book:Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Source: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)”

People Mean Country Speak Language Painting Assuming Native Immigrants Speakers Idiom Baffled

Book:The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules

Source: The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules

“It is a strange world," I murmered, more to myself than to the native soul. "The strangest," he agreed.”

World Soul Strange Native Strange World

Author:Stephenie Meyer

“At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.”

Young Sea Clothes Sat Native Stolen Noon Bathing

Book:Roughing It: Easyread Large Bold Edition

Source: Roughing It: Easyread Large Bold Edition

“She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone save her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity.”

Soul Enough Feelings Earth Moving Impossible Elements Eternity Misery Depth Enormous Impression Miserable Permanent Bother Native Fluctuation Morose

Author:Vladimir Nabokov

“I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.”

Want Heart Country Character Stories Moving Grows Felt Wonder Growing Up Land Return Married Native My Sister Homeland

Book:N.P.: A Novel

Source: N.P.: A Novel

“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”

Home Chance Quality West Optimistic Preserves Native Cooperation Individualism Pessimistic Scenery Rugged Rugged Individualism

Author:Wallace Stegner

“One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.”

“And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.”

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Native Quotes