Quote

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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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
Much
Conformity
Inward
Inside
Stand
Wish
Look
Looks
Frighten
Must
Tender

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.
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Love is the first lie wisdom the last.
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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.
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A man's sorrow runs uphill true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.
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We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.
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Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.
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Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.
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What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
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For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
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Youth is cause, effect is age so with the thickening of the neck we get data.
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Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
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And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
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My war brought me many things let yours bring you as much. Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself. No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into, and remember Lady Macbeth, who had her mind in her hand. We can't all be as safe as that.
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Well, isn't Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else - and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
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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.
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The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.
Djuna Barnes
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One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.
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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 priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.
Djuna Barnes