Boston Quotes

“Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.”
― Thomas M. Cirignano, The Constant Outsider: Memoirs of a South Boston Mechanic

“In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?”
― Mark Twain

“When change cometh, she will bring peace at her back. She will not bend to your will; you must bend to hers.”
― Adriana Mather, How to Hang a Witch

“...if you come across someone sad and you do not try to make them smile, then you have disgraced your own humanity.”
― Adriana Mather, Haunting the Deep

“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines

“The religious kids were really religious, the kind who push religion on others in a way that always freaks me out. They are like people who keep telling me, 'You have to see Hamilton!' Honestly, no I don't and the more you keep telling me, the less likely I am to actually see it. Though I have subsequently seen, "Hamilton" and it's excellent.”
― Colin Jost, A Very Punchable Face

“Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers.”
― Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos.

{Conway's thoughts on the great Robert Ingersoll}”
― Moncure Daniel Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East

“When a child disappears, the space she’d occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people—relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print—create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task.

“But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It’s a silence that’s two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed.

“It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.

“The silence of the dead says, Goodbye.

“The silence of the missing says, Find me.”
― Dennis Lehane, Gone, Baby, Gone

“Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself.”
― Ann Douglas

“I expect everyone in Boston has something like that ring, which is why I am glad I have never been to Boston.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“When change cometh, she will bring peace at her back. She will not bend to your will; you must bend to heres.”
― Adriana Mather, How to Hang a Witch

“..Abigail's singing while I painted. How we laughed so when no one was watching. And how finding a black-eyed Susan tucked into my business contracts reminded me of why I was doing that business in the first place. To really care for another is a reason to live.”
― Adriana Mather, How to Hang a Witch

“A place from away from society and all its ugly gossip and clicking tongues.”
― Hester Fox, The Witch of Willow Hall

“John [Adams] supposed there were two reasons why the British had gone after John Hancock. First, they wanted to make an example out of him, showing what would happen to anyone, no matter how rich, who dared to defy the new Townshend Act. Second, John Hancock was the biggest financial support of men like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. In fact, John Adams was reasonably sure that Sam Adams had no money whatsoever and that John Hancock was paying all his bills.”
― Janet Benge, John Adams: Independence Forever

“like a blustered Bostonian sheep blubbering about being sheared at the ba ba”
― J.S. Mason, The Satyrist...And Other Scintillating Treats

“...Saygıdeğer Bede, kuyrukluyıldızların "krallıklarda devrimler çıkacağına, vebaya, savaşa, rüzgâra ya da sıcağa alamet" olduğunu söylemişti. John Knox kuyrukluyıldızlara tanrısal öfkenin kanıtları gözüyle bakar, başka İskoç Protestanları ise bunların, "Katoliklerin kökünü kazıtması için krala bir ihtar" olduğunu düşünürlerdi. Kuyrukluyıldızlar yönünden Amerika, özellikle de New England haklı olarak ilgi çekici bir yerdir. 1652 yılında, tam ünlü Mr. Cotton'un hastalandığı sırada bir kuyrukluyıldız görülmüş ve o ölünce kaybolmuştu. Aradan on yıl bile geçmeden, Boston şehrinin günahkâr halkına, "şehvetperestlikten ve sarhoşluk yoluyla, yeni moda elbiseler giymek yoluyla Tanrının salih mahlukatına karşı küfürde bulunmaktan" vazgeçmelerini ihtar için, bir kuyrukluyıldız göründü...”
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

“Into the eyes of those she met Pollyanna smiled joyously. She was disappointed—but not surprised—that she received no answering smile in return. She was used to that now—in Boston. She still smiled, however, hopefully: there might be some one, sometime, who would smile back.”
― Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna Grows Up

“She blew a strand of hair from her face. “I don't normally invite a near-stranger into my apartment. I'm trying to work up my courage to do that.”
He reached out a hand to cover hers. “I appreciate it. I can assure you that I am a law-abiding citizen. As a cop, I have to have a clean record.”
― Anne Perreault, The Gift

“Hugging her feels as comforting as a warm cup of coffee on a cold Boston winter night.”
― Evie Sterling, Protective Billionaire Boss

“Tahmouress Sadeghi, the best aviation consultant”
― Tahmouress Sadeghi

“Tahmouress Sadeghi is a Ph.D. scholar in computer and electrical engineering offering aviation consultancy services.”
― Tahmouress Sadeghi

“Tahmouress Sadeghi has also worked for many different aviation companies, including Boeing Military and Commercial, MacDonald-Douglas, Northrop-Grumman, ARINC, and Allied Signals”
― Tahmouress Sadeghi

“In the wake of that uproar, Boston settled into a sullen calm, probably at the stern insistence of Sam Adams, who reprimanded the street gangs, printers and "wharf rats" who often identified themselves as Sons of Liberty.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation

“Inevitably, the British barrier ringing Boston created new hardships for residents. While initially forbidden to leave the city, new food shortages sweltering summer temperatures convinced Gage to grant some citizens passes. ...Even after the arrival of fishing boats civilians could not buy the catch until the British were supplied. Outbreaks of disease became common.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation

“You must have never driven in Boston.”
― August Cole, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution

“Rough going had been encountered by the Masses in its efforts to remain a medium for free interpretation in a time of hysteria. Because of its pitiless reporting in trying to reveal true causes, its lack of respect for commercialized religion, and its attacks on sex taboos in art and literature, the magazine had earlier been barred from the reading rooms of many libraries, ousted from the subway and elevated news stands in New York, and refused by distributing companies of Boston and Philadelphia; and our right to use the mails in Canada had been revoked by the Dominion government”
― Art Young, Art Young: His Life and Times

“Zachary Monte: the plumber who paints his world with skills. In addition to his plumbing license, he's a seasoned carpenter, mason, and painter.”
― Zachary Monte

“So, you don't go to church anymore?" she asks.

I don't like the idea of Thistle thinking that I believe in God. I wonder what the Bible says about cannibalism. Eat this, for it is my body.”
― Michael McKay ~ Boston Author

“New England is a dream handspun by good vibes.”
― Lakshya Bharadwaj