"I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat."
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Quote collection
Djuna Barnes quotes (page 2 of 4)
75 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"She was nervous about the future; it made her indelicate. She was one of the most unimportantly wicked women of her time --because she could not let her time alone, and yet could never be a part of it. She wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing. She had the fluency of tongue and action meted out by divine providence to those who cannot think for themselves. She was the master of the over-sweet phrase, the over-tight embrace."
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"A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?"
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"We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality."
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"The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment."
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"Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the 'findings' in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves."
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"To love without criticism is to be betrayed."
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"Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity."
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"We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn't the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life's lived before it gets to the parlor door."
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"Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty."
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"No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to."
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"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart."
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"One must not look inward too much, while the inside is yet tender. I do not wish to frighten myself until I can stand it."
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"The Seal, she lounges like a bride,Much too docile, there's no doubt;Madame Récamier, on side,(if such she has), and bottom out."
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"Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy"
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"Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same."
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"After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat."
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"An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties."
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"Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact."
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"Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature."
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