Passers Quotes

“Clearly it is God's will to place me in such a predicament," declared Philias loudly to a procession of stunned passers-by, "So God can jolly well point me towards salvation.”

— Stephen J. Day

“I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them, "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.”

— Henry Rollins

“One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul? This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence.
There emerged, this evening, from that swarming esplanade of Des Invalides - amid the crackle of fireworks, the shooting stars, the stink of frying, the hiccuping of drunkards and the reeking atmosphere of menageries - the wild effusions of one of Nero's festivals.
It was like the odour of a May evening on the Basso-Porto of Naples. It was easy to believe that the faces in that crowd were Sicilian.”

— Jean Lorrain

“He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.”

— Nikolai Gogol

“At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces.
Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows.”

— Georges Simenon

“The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried farther, and people in their beds could feel, as they did every night, the vibration of the ground as buses rolled past.”

— Georges Simenon

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds.”

— Jane Hamilton

“Innocence is a bleeding wound without a bandage, a wound that opens with every casual knock from casual passers-by. Experience is an armour.”

— Hilary Mantel

“He thought that they were walking there like Mickey and Minnie Mouse and that they probably appeared ridiculous to the passers-by.”

— Ayn Rand

“Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.”

— Robert Graves

“And when the Assembly arrived at Dusk I hasten'd into the Streets and made my self a child of Hazard. There was a Band of little Vagabonds who met by moon-light in the Moorfields, and for a time I wandred with them; most of them had been left as Orphans in the Plague and, out of the sight of Constable or Watch, would call out to Passers-by Lord Bless you give us a Penny or Bestow a half penny on us: I still hear their Voices in my Head when I walk abroad in a Croud, and some times I am seiz'd with Trembling to think I may be still one of them.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns. Everywhere else in America towns are named either after the first white person to get there or the last Indian to leave. But the Amish obviously gave the matter of town names some thought and graced their communities with intriguing, not to say provocative, appellations: Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, to name but three. Intercourse makes a good living by attracting passers-by such as me who think it the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postal mark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back.”

— Bill Bryson

“The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests.”

— Evelyn Waugh

“I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“What has happened to architecture since the second world war that the only passers-by who can contemplate it without pain are those equipped with a white stick and a dog?”

— Bernard Levin

“God have mercy on my soul. Sometimes I wish they'd all just die. My friend and his mother and his father and my aunt and all the neighbors and passers-by and drivers who leave their cars parked by the river and even the poor innocent children who run around in the park beside the river. God have pity on my soul and make me better. Or unmake me.”

— Roberto Bolaño

“There,' said Wednesday, 'is one who "does not have the faith and will not have the fun". Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see - I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favour here - this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets.”

— Neil Gaiman

“Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated.”

— Samantha Harvey

“All this is still my kingdom, a small portion of the splendid riches which God distributes to passers-by, to wanderers and to solitaries. The earth belongs to anyone who stops for a moment, gazes and goes on his way; the whole sun belongs to the naked lizard who basks in it.”

— Colette

“I could happily lean on a gate all the livelong day, chatting to passers-by about the wind and the rain. I do a lot of gate-leaning while I am supposed to be gardening; instead of hoeing, I lean on the gate, stare at the vegetable beds and ponder.”

— Tom Hodgkinson

“And, swearing that he'd let no English passers-by tell him what HE was going to wear, he stalked toward Piccadilly and into a hat-shop he remembered having seen. He'd just glance in there. Certainly they couldn't SELL him anything! English people couldn't sell like Americans! So he entered the shop and came out with a new gray felt hat for town, a new brown one for the country, a bowler, a silk evening hat, and a cap, and he was proud of himself for having begun the Europeanization which he wasn't going to begin.”

— Sinclair Lewis

“I talked to everyone about the project: actors and extras, members of the crew and passers by.”

— James D'arcy

“I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately, when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.”

— Therese Of Lisieux

“There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“Teafortwo was a wyrman. Barrel-chested creatures like squat birds, with thick arms like a human dwarf's below those ugly, functional wings, the wyrmen ploughed the skies of New Crobuzon. Their hands were their feet, those arms jutting from the bottom of their squat bodies like crows' legs. They could pace a few clumsy steps here and there balancing on their palms, if they were indoors, but they preferred to careen over the city, yelling and swooping and screaming abuse at passers-by. The wyrmen were more intelligent than dogs or apes, but decidedly less than humans. They thrived on an intellectual diet of scatology and slapstick and mimicry, picking names for each other gleaned without understanding from popular songs and furniture catalogues and discarded textbooks they could just about read. Teafortwo's sister, Isaac knew, was called Bottletop; one of his sons Scabies.”

— China Miéville

“Observe the rhythm of passers-by on the street, at work, everywhere. Summon loving acceptance and let their tempos move you emotionally and corporeally. Try to assimilate new ideas by trying out the rhythms of those you encounter.”

— Alexandra Katehakis

“Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“In a recluse, the most irrevocable, lifelong rejection of the world often has as its basis an uncontrolled passion for the crowd, of such force that, finding when he does go out that he cannot win the admiration of a concierge, passers-by or even the coachman halted at the corner, he prefers to spend his life out of their sight, and gives up all activities which would make it necessary for him to leave the house.”

— Marcel Proust

“In the case of the solitary, his seclusion, even when it is absolute and ends only with life itself, has often as its primary cause a disordered love of the crowd, which so far overruled every other feeling that, not being able to win, when he goes out, the admiration of his hall-porter, of the passers-by, of the cabman whom he hails, he prefers not to be seen by them at all, and with that object abandons every activity that would oblige him to go out of doors.”

— Marcel Proust

“For in this way Swann was kept in the state of painful agitation which had once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had haunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterward, at Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings that would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them without Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty a woman to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a case filled with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he would scowl furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many pick-pockets. But their faces - a collective and formless mass - escaped the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his jealousy.”

— Marcel Proust

“I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, 'Do you need help, brother?' And $1 fell into my hat!”

— Ian Mckellen

“The duty of the inn-keeper,is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty
sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small
purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families
respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child
clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner,the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress
and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the
mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to
make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog
eats!”

— Victor Hugo

“The cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind.”

— Victor Hugo

“Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves - this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.”

— Gaston Bachelard

“The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.”

— Franz Kafka

“He was one of those people whose ideas are too lively to be confined
in their brains and spill out into the world to the consternation of
passers-by. He talked to himself and the expression on his face
changed constantly. Within the space of a single moment he looked
surprized, insulted, resolute, and angry
emotions which were
presumably the consequences of the energetic conversation he was
holding with the ideal people inside his head.”

— Susanna Clarke

“The scent of wine rising
from my grave will be so strong
that it will intoxicate passers-by.
There will be such an atmosphere of serenity
that couples in love will find it impossible
to tear themselves away.”

— Omar-Khayyam

“There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It's apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially”

— Jojo Moyes

“All philanthropy ... is only a savory fumigation burning at the mouth of a sewer. This incense offering makes the air more endurable to passers-by, but it does not hinder the infection in the sewer from spreading.”

— Ellen Key

“The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to "turns of phrase" or "stylistic figures." There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of "turning" phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.”

— Michel De Certeau

“Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls. From the opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away, none cries, 'Let no more riches enter!'.”

— Aeschylus

“He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

“But the blessed Bishop of Geneva taught his nuns another kind of prayer, which even the sick can make: to remain peacefully in the presence of God, manifesting our needs to Him with no other mental effort, like a poor person who uncovers his sores and by this means is more effective in inciting passers-by to do him some good than if he wore himself out trying to convince them of his need.”

— Vincent De Paul

“The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.”

— H.G. Wells

“The morrow was a bright September morn; The earth was beautiful as if newborn; There was nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero