Pulling

Famous quotes containing the word pulling:

    An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.
    Charlton Laird (b. 1901)

    Why must it always end this way?
    A dais with woman reading, with the ruckus of her hair
    And all that is unsaid about her pulling us back to her, with her
    Into the silence that night alone can’t explain.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a failure.... It is a greater strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,—to say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,—almost any timber will give way.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)