neighbors Quotes

“My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.”

“And snow- snow is not my enemy, I tell him. Snow is God’s way of telling people to slow down and rest and stay in bed for a day. And besides, snow always solves itself. Mixes with the leaves to form more earth, I tell him.”

“He was so infinitely patient, so unflaggingly hopeful of George’s improvement, so unfailingly good-natured and courteous, that no one could possibly have been angry or failed to try to mend his ways.”

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploi.... But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

“All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.”

“They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way-in their own lives, at least- to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. [...] I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don’t always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting. They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

“This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful?”

“The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.”

″‘That’s not what I meant, though. I meant… that you’re different from the other people in the neighborhood, you know?’ Of course he knew. They’d all been telling him so his whole life.”

“I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.”

“The bear family felt very welcome in their new neighborhood. That night they went to bed very tired, but very happy.”

“Always gawking and sticking her beak over the hedge.”

“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”

The kids spend their nights at the Colonel’s pool, the neighbors disapprove of their family for this among other things, which doesn’t’ make a new family feel better at all. Their mother died and with her, the normalcy of their family died. Retta, the eldest, has tried her best to replace their mother, but Johnny, the middle child, is fed up with Retta.

″‘You! That row last night! Screaming, shouting, bang bang banging. I’m going to get you all evicted, you see if I dont’”

“I had this terrible sneezing cold…” “Now this neighbor was a pig, and he wasn’t too bright either… I mean, who in his right mind builds a house out of straw?” “I felt a sneeze coming on. I huffed, snuffed, and I sneezed… and you know what? That whole house fell down.”

“Everybody knows the story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has ever heard My side of the story”

“Lyle is the bravest, kindest, most wonderful crocodile in the whole, wide world. I would consider it a privilege and a pleasure to have him as out neighbor once more.”

“Lyle moved back to the house on East 88th Street that very night.”

“So I walked down the street to ask my neighbor a cup of sugar. Now this neighbor was a pig, and he wasn’t too bright, either. He had build his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean who in his right mind would build a house of straw?”

“Suddenly Percy hears a knock again. “Who can be at this time of night?” Percy goes to the door and looks out. There are two little rabbits..“It’s too cold outside, we are frozen. May we come in?. Percy replies: “Never mind, my bed is big” and the rabbits go into Percy’s bed. They’re warm now.”

“He decides to let her stay and she takes up lessons with the three Smith boys next door.”

“On the Wall Top So high- so high on the wall we run, The nearer the sky- why, the nearer the sun, If you give me one penny, I’ll give you two, For that’s the way good neighbours do.”

“The neighbours thought Pettson was odd. He was certainly absentminded. And it wasn’t normal, the way he talked to that cat.”

“In bed is where I’m going to stay. And I don’t care what the neighbors say! I never liked them anyway. Let them try to wake me. Let them scream and yowl and yelp. The can yelp from now until Christmas but it isn’t going to help.”

“Sometimes Old Tom went for a little walk to the mailbox. But Angela though is best that he stay inside. ‘You mustn’t frighten the neighbors.’ she would say. When babies come to visit... Old Tom loved to play.”

“Col, in 1938, has the experience of seeing a neighbor getting evicted during the Great Depression. Bridie, in 1928 and with much excitement, sees the arrival of electricity in her house.”

“Wine: it’s what’s for dinner,” Elliot said with a laugh.”

“This truth reverberated around the room, and I knew my admission irrevocably changed something between us. The simple things I was no longer: his new neighbor, a girl, potentially interesting, also potentially uninteresting. Now I was a girl who had been permanently damaged by life. I was someone to be handled carefully.”

Every day after work Pedro’s parents and neighbors sit around the radio in his home listening to broadcasts from a “long way away.”

“Ginger was a smart dog. He even located the school that Jerry goes to. Almost all his neighbors and friends knew Ginger.”

″ In the course of eleven years, new servants, new neighbors, and new lovers come and go. Pat’s older brother, Sid, suddenly marries the loud and opinionated May Binnie after he is jilted by another woman.”

“Where were all the other neighbors? My, this was a quiet street. It was a little short street, and it didn’t have any other children on it at all. Just the Moffats. Some children might move into the big house which had just been built next door.”

“Love your neighbor, even the ones who do not show you the same courtesy. You can’t expect to receive love if you’re selective and not really willing to give it. What you put into the world, you will indeed get back, even if it’s not from the person you’re expecting it to be.”

″‘At least he said sorry,’ Ravi continued. ‘Look at all of them.’ He nodded at the group around his parents. ‘Their friends, neighbors. They’ve never apologized, just pretended like the last six years never even happened.‘”

“It’s no wonder the neighbors called us the Weird Watsons behind our backs.”