Quote

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

Djuna Barnes

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Djuna Barnes
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: June 12
Died: 1982
Died: June 18
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Cornwall on Hudson
New York
Lydia Steptoe
Around
Alchemy
Look
Spoken
Wells
Precisely
Everything
Misery
Well
Doubt
Looks
Full
Gorge
Done
Seen
Gorges
Word
Doubting

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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Madness to us means reversion to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form.
Djuna Barnes
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Una's face was an unbroken block of calculation, saving where, upon her upper lip, a little down of hair fluttered. Yet it gave one an uncanny feeling. It made one think of a tassel on a hammer.
Djuna Barnes
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I've seen death and I didn't like it.
Djuna Barnes
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
Djuna Barnes
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We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.
Djuna Barnes
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And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
Djuna Barnes
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If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class.It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for - or ignored.
Djuna Barnes
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New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.
Djuna Barnes
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Youth is cause, effect is age so with the thickening of the neck we get data.
Djuna Barnes
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Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
Djuna Barnes
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There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?
Djuna Barnes
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The very condition of Woman is so subject to Hazard, so complex, and so grievous, that to place her at one moment is but to displace her at the next.
Djuna Barnes
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The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections.
Djuna Barnes
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I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.
Djuna Barnes
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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.
Djuna Barnes
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Love is the first lie wisdom the last.
Djuna Barnes
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After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
Djuna Barnes
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Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.
Djuna Barnes
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I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through.
Djuna Barnes
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Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
Djuna Barnes