63 Burden Quotes

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

Well everybody's got a secret, son, something that they just can't face. Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it, they carry it with them every step that they take Till some day they just cut it loose, cut it loose or let it drag 'em down Where no one asks any questions or looks too long in your face In the darkness on the edge of town.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust Are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.

The clog of all pleasure, the luggage of life, Is the best can be said for a very good wife.

Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

If I went to jail, at least I wouldn't have to sign autographs. (1991)

To impoverish that reality whose inhumanity constitutes man's majesty is tantamount to impoverishing him himself. I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone.

But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.

The kingliest kings are crowned with thorn.

Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.

More towers must yet be built-more towers destroyed- Great rocks hoisted in air; And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes . . . And so he did not mention his dream of falling But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath Sucked out of him, and saw the tower flash by And the small tree swell beneath him . . . He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife, Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,- And so went out . . . For once, he forgot his pail.

Freedom of choice is what you got / freedom from choice is what you want.

And when you are poor and have to carry The Christian creed and wife and children All on your back, it is too much! That's why I made the Elixir of Youth, Which landed me in the jail at Peoria Branded a swindler and a crook By the upright Federal Judge!

He went up on the mountain beside the giant stone They knew he was insane so they left him alone He'd given up enlisting help for there was no one else He spent his days devising ways to stop the rock himself One night while he was working building braces on the ledge The ground began to rumble the rock trembled on the edge.

He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him. But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights delights went through him. His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down. But the pedal floored easy without a sound. He said 'Christ!' It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now. He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide, riding on his fear-hunched back was every one of those yellow green I'm telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas. Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He wasn't involved with a race that could build a thing it had to escape from.

Every possession is just another stick to beat yourself with.

If I only could Be running up that hill With no problems...

It is as though we had buried Someone we thought dead, and now hear him calling in the night: Help me! Heaving and panting, he raises the gravestone of our soul and body higher and still higher, breathing more freely at every moment. Every word, every deed, every thought is the heavy gravestone he is forever trying to lift. And my own body and all the visible world, all heaven and earth, are the gravestone which God is struggling to heave upward.

Life at Papeete soon became a burden. It was Europe, the Europe which I had thought to shake off - and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization. Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing which I had fled?

From the haunts of daily life Where is waged the daily strife With common wants and common cares Which sows the human heart with tares.

Diese Muhsal, durch noch Ungetanes schwer und wie gebunden hinzugehen, gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes. Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen jenes Grunds, auf dem wir taglich stehen, seinem angstlichen Sich-Niederlassen-: in die Wasser, die ihn sanft empfangen und die sich, wie glucklich und vergangen, unter ihm zuruckziehn, Flut um Flut; wahrend er unendlich still und sicher immer mundiger und koniglicher und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.

I wish sometimes I wasn't as conscientious as I am.

The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.

Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.

You'll quite remove the ancient curse.

The hardest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.

Ah! heavy art thou, crown of Monomakh!

What a heavy burden to bear Heaviest because there's nothing I can do Then it's not your burden, is it? The opposite is true. The burden is heavier precisely because I can't do anything about it

And now my son's getten older and older and cold/From havin the world on his shoulders

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.

On this generation of Americans falls the burden of proving to the world that we really mean it when we say all men are created free and are equal before the law. All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

My punishment is far heavier, I forgive you, and set you free.

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles- wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

The leader is always alone before bad fates.

I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss So many men stronger than me Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it.

I am my father's father, You are your children's guilt. In history's pity and terror The child is Aeneas again; Troy is in the nursery, The rocking horse is on fire. Child labor! The child must carry His fathers on his back.

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.

Meine Ruh' ist hin, Mein Herz ist schwer.

'It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh,' said the Scarecrow thoughtfully, 'for you must sleep, and eat and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.'

God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight.

I know at last what distinguishes man from animals; financial worries.

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.

Alice had managed to get herself back under some sort of control, but it was thin. Thin enough to read a newspaper through, his bingo-playing mother might have said. Although a kid herself, Alice had managed to keep herself shiny-side up mostly for the other kid's sake, so he wouldn't give way entirely.

Respect the burden.