--- title: "Objects Quotes | QuotesBy.net" description: "A quirky collection of everyday oddities, from broken beds to primitive zippers, exploring the humor and surprise hidden in mundane things." image: "https://quotesby.net/wp-content/themes/quotesby-editorial/assets/og-default.png" --- ## Short objects quotes 1. > I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. [Jorge Luis Borges](https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges)[Jorge Luis Borges quote \#51](https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges/51/ "Permalink to quote 51") 2. > In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. [Rabindranath Tagore](https://quotesby.net/Rabindranath-Tagore)[Rabindranath Tagore quote \#76](https://quotesby.net/Rabindranath-Tagore/76/ "Permalink to quote 76") 3. > To restore silence is the role of objects. [Samuel Beckett](https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Beckett)[Samuel Beckett quote \#44](https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Beckett/44/ "Permalink to quote 44") 4. > I broke my arm trying to fold a bed. It wasn't the kind that folds. [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#27](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/27/ "Permalink to quote 27") 5. > A true beanie should have a propellor on the top. [Terry Pratchett](https://quotesby.net/Terry-Pratchett)[Terry Pratchett quote \#26](https://quotesby.net/Terry-Pratchett/26/ "Permalink to quote 26") 6. > To a pet nothing can be useless. [Samuel Johnson](https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Johnson)[Samuel Johnson quote \#79](https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Johnson/79/ "Permalink to quote 79") 7. > I just lost a buttonhole. \[while looking at stage floor\] [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#50](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/50/ "Permalink to quote 50") 8. > Tinsel is really snake mirrors. [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#146](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/146/ "Permalink to quote 146") ## More objects quotes 1. > Of all the works of man I like best Those which have been used. The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges The knives and forks whose wooden handles Have been worn away by many hands: such forms Seemed to me the noblest. [Bertolt Brecht](https://quotesby.net/Bertolt-Brecht)[Bertolt Brecht quote \#50](https://quotesby.net/Bertolt-Brecht/50/ "Permalink to quote 50") 2. > I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again. [George Carlin](https://quotesby.net/George-Carlin)[George Carlin quote \#161](https://quotesby.net/George-Carlin/161/ "Permalink to quote 161") 3. > It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing. [Jorge Luis Borges](https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges)[Jorge Luis Borges quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") 4. > Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult. [Tom Robbins](https://quotesby.net/Tom-Robbins)[Tom Robbins quote \#70](https://quotesby.net/Tom-Robbins/70/ "Permalink to quote 70") 5. > I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They went 'Aaaaahhhh...' [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#61](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/61/ "Permalink to quote 61") 6. > We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them. [Erich Fromm](https://quotesby.net/Erich-Fromm)[Erich Fromm quote \#27](https://quotesby.net/Erich-Fromm/27/ "Permalink to quote 27") 7. > So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. [George Orwell](https://quotesby.net/George-Orwell)[George Orwell quote \#26](https://quotesby.net/George-Orwell/26/ "Permalink to quote 26") 8. > The child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast; Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair. [James Russell Lowell](https://quotesby.net/James-Russell-Lowell)[James Russell Lowell quote \#29](https://quotesby.net/James-Russell-Lowell/29/ "Permalink to quote 29") 9. > I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#167](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/167/ "Permalink to quote 167") 10. > That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. [Willa Cather](https://quotesby.net/Willa-Cather)[Willa Cather quote \#66](https://quotesby.net/Willa-Cather/66/ "Permalink to quote 66") 11. > Pearls mean tears. [Doris Lessing](https://quotesby.net/Doris-Lessing)[Doris Lessing quote \#56](https://quotesby.net/Doris-Lessing/56/ "Permalink to quote 56") 12. > 'I've got an oscillating fan at my house. The fan goes back and forth. It looks like the fan is saying 'No'. So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say no to. Do you keep my hair in place? Do you keep my documents in order? Do you have three settings? Liar! My fan fucking lied to me. Now I will pull the pin up. Now you ain't sayin' shit.' [Mitch Hedberg](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg)[Mitch Hedberg quote \#18](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg/18/ "Permalink to quote 18") 13. > I like wearing this pass, because it lets me know when I'm upside down. [Mitch Hedberg](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg)[Mitch Hedberg quote \#70](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg/70/ "Permalink to quote 70") 14. > He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth. [Alan Bennett](https://quotesby.net/Alan-Bennett)[Alan Bennett quote \#22](https://quotesby.net/Alan-Bennett/22/ "Permalink to quote 22") 15. > To a collector of curios, the dust is metadata.' in Everything is Miscellaneous p. 233 [David Weinberger](https://quotesby.net/David-Weinberger)[David Weinberger quote \#3](https://quotesby.net/David-Weinberger/3/ "Permalink to quote 3") 16. > Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied? [David Sedaris](https://quotesby.net/David-Sedaris)[David Sedaris quote \#7](https://quotesby.net/David-Sedaris/7/ "Permalink to quote 7") 17. > He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth. [Franz Kafka](https://quotesby.net/Franz-Kafka)[Franz Kafka quote \#125](https://quotesby.net/Franz-Kafka/125/ "Permalink to quote 125") 18. > Logo for the Macintosh: An Introduction through Object Logo (1992) [Hal Abelson](https://quotesby.net/Hal-Abelson)[Hal Abelson quote \#13](https://quotesby.net/Hal-Abelson/13/ "Permalink to quote 13") 19. > 'Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen. [Helen Garner](https://quotesby.net/Helen-Garner)[Helen Garner quote \#4](https://quotesby.net/Helen-Garner/4/ "Permalink to quote 4") 20. > My mother and her little brown jug It held her milk And now it holds our memories... [Kate Bush](https://quotesby.net/Kate-Bush)[Kate Bush quote \#248](https://quotesby.net/Kate-Bush/248/ "Permalink to quote 248") 21. > This is a CD called HIT AND MISS. [Mitch Hedberg](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg)[Mitch Hedberg quote \#68](https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg/68/ "Permalink to quote 68") 22. > Take that bone out of your nose and call me back. [Rush Limbaugh](https://quotesby.net/Rush-Limbaugh)[Rush Limbaugh quote \#1](https://quotesby.net/Rush-Limbaugh/1/ "Permalink to quote 1") 23. > (a few minutes later) I bought one of those little glass ball things with the snow in it... Just checking. [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#25](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/25/ "Permalink to quote 25") 24. > I have a decaffeinated coffee table. You'd never know it to look at it. [Steven Wright](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright)[Steven Wright quote \#43](https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/43/ "Permalink to quote 43") 25. > 'The division of the world into important and unimportant matters, which has always served to neutralize the key phenomena of social injustice as mere exceptions, should be followed up to the point where it is convicted of its own untruth. The division which makes everything objects must itself become an object of thought, instead of guiding it.' [Theodor Adorno](https://quotesby.net/Theodor-Adorno)[Theodor Adorno quote \#88](https://quotesby.net/Theodor-Adorno/88/ "Permalink to quote 88") 26. > 'The Red Wheelbarrow' from Spring and All (1923) [William Carlos Williams](https://quotesby.net/William-Carlos-Williams)[William Carlos Williams quote \#10](https://quotesby.net/William-Carlos-Williams/10/ "Permalink to quote 10") 27. > We're worth a lot of dough. Whatever you see is antiques. This thing here. This is from - I don't remember exactly. I think it's the Renaissance or the Magna Carta or something. But that's where it's from. [Woody Allen](https://quotesby.net/Woody-Allen)[Woody Allen quote \#9](https://quotesby.net/Woody-Allen/9/ "Permalink to quote 9") 28. > I love manikins. I want to bring them to life. I give mine names. I feel as if I know them. I'll often talk to them in my living room. ~Rolling Stone 1983 [Michael Jackson](https://quotesby.net/Michael-Jackson)[Michael Jackson quote \#17](https://quotesby.net/Michael-Jackson/17/ "Permalink to quote 17") 29. > I don't care what you do to a box, it's still a box [Orson Scott Card](https://quotesby.net/Orson-Scott-Card)[Orson Scott Card quote \#691](https://quotesby.net/Orson-Scott-Card/691/ "Permalink to quote 691") 30. > I dont like jam, I dont want it to know where I am [Spike Milligan](https://quotesby.net/Spike-Milligan)[Spike Milligan quote \#32](https://quotesby.net/Spike-Milligan/32/ "Permalink to quote 32") 31. > Oh look! Souvenirs! [Davey Havok](https://quotesby.net/Davey-Havok)[Davey Havok quote \#87](https://quotesby.net/Davey-Havok/87/ "Permalink to quote 87") 32. > The Lord Octesian's arm-ring had a curious fate. Eustace did not want it and offered it to Caspian, and Caspian offered it to Lucy. She did not care about having it. 'Very well, then, catch as catch can,' said Caspian and flung it up in the air. \[...\] Up went the ring, flashing in the sunlight, and caught, and hung, as neatly as a well-thrown quoit, on a little projection on the rock. No one could climb up to get it from below and no one could climb down to get it from above. And there, for all I know, it is hanging still and may hang till the world ends. (ch. 7) [C. S. Lewis](https://quotesby.net/C.-S.-Lewis)[C. S. Lewis quote \#134](https://quotesby.net/C.-S.-Lewis/134/ "Permalink to quote 134") 33. > Hip flasks are the juice machines of the alcohol world - everyone has one and it never gets used. [Douglas Coupland](https://quotesby.net/Douglas-Coupland)[Douglas Coupland quote \#94](https://quotesby.net/Douglas-Coupland/94/ "Permalink to quote 94") 34. > Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. [J. D. Salinger](https://quotesby.net/J.-D.-Salinger)[J. D. Salinger quote \#29](https://quotesby.net/J.-D.-Salinger/29/ "Permalink to quote 29") 35. > Jack Benny: Where's that big glass star I told you to pack away last Christmas? [Jack Benny](https://quotesby.net/Jack-Benny)[Jack Benny quote \#37](https://quotesby.net/Jack-Benny/37/ "Permalink to quote 37") 36. > Rochester: You mean that shiny one with the three points on it? [Jack Benny](https://quotesby.net/Jack-Benny)[Jack Benny quote \#38](https://quotesby.net/Jack-Benny/38/ "Permalink to quote 38") 37. > An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970. [Jonathan Franzen](https://quotesby.net/Jonathan-Franzen)[Jonathan Franzen quote \#2](https://quotesby.net/Jonathan-Franzen/2/ "Permalink to quote 2") 38. > The world is the totality of facts, not things. (1.1) [Ludwig Wittgenstein](https://quotesby.net/Ludwig-Wittgenstein)[Ludwig Wittgenstein quote \#15](https://quotesby.net/Ludwig-Wittgenstein/15/ "Permalink to quote 15") 39. > This is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained. [Philip Kindred Dick](https://quotesby.net/Philip-Kindred-Dick)[Philip Kindred Dick quote \#19](https://quotesby.net/Philip-Kindred-Dick/19/ "Permalink to quote 19") 40. > The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are. [Philip Kindred Dick](https://quotesby.net/Philip-Kindred-Dick)[Philip Kindred Dick quote \#34](https://quotesby.net/Philip-Kindred-Dick/34/ "Permalink to quote 34") 41. > And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke. [Rudyard Kipling](https://quotesby.net/Rudyard-Kipling)[Rudyard Kipling quote \#10](https://quotesby.net/Rudyard-Kipling/10/ "Permalink to quote 10") 42. > Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so. [Russell Baker](https://quotesby.net/Russell-Baker)[Russell Baker quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/Russell-Baker/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://quotesby.net/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Topics", "item": "https://quotesby.net/topics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Objects", "item": "https://quotesby.net/topics/objects/" } ] } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "CollectionPage", "name": "Objects Quotes", "url": "https://quotesby.net/topics/objects/", "about": { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Objects" }, "hasPart": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Of all the works of man I like best Those which have been used. The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges The knives and forks whose wooden handles Have been worn away by many hands: such forms Seemed to me the noblest.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Bertolt-Brecht/50/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Bertolt Brecht" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/George-Carlin/161/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "George Carlin" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges/5/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jorge Luis Borges" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Jorge-Luis-Borges/51/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jorge Luis Borges" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Rabindranath-Tagore/76/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Rabindranath Tagore" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "To restore silence is the role of objects.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Beckett/44/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Samuel Beckett" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I broke my arm trying to fold a bed. It wasn't the kind that folds.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/27/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Steven Wright" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Tom-Robbins/70/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Tom Robbins" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They went 'Aaaaahhhh...'", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/61/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Steven Wright" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A true beanie should have a propellor on the top.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Terry-Pratchett/26/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Terry Pratchett" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Erich-Fromm/27/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Erich Fromm" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/George-Orwell/26/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "George Orwell" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast; Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/James-Russell-Lowell/29/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "James Russell Lowell" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "To a pet nothing can be useless.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Samuel-Johnson/79/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Samuel Johnson" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I just lost a buttonhole. [while looking at stage floor]", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/50/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Steven Wright" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Tinsel is really snake mirrors.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/146/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Steven Wright" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Steven-Wright/167/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Steven Wright" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Willa-Cather/66/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Willa Cather" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Pearls mean tears.", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Doris-Lessing/56/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Doris Lessing" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "'I've got an oscillating fan at my house. The fan goes back and forth. It looks like the fan is saying 'No'. So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say no to. Do you keep my hair in place? Do you keep my documents in order? Do you have three settings? Liar! My fan fucking lied to me. Now I will pull the pin up. Now you ain't sayin' shit.'", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Mitch-Hedberg/18/", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Mitch Hedberg" } } ] } ```