Battered Quotes:

Battered Women: sounds delicious. Doesn’t make it right.

- B. J. Novak

topic: Sound, Battered Women, Battered

Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed.

- Roger Kahn

source: Roger Kahn (2012). “Games We Used to Play: A Lover's Quarrel with the World of Sport”, p.41, Diversion Books

topic: Boxing, Kidneys, Halls, Battered, Boxing Champions

I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away.

- Ann Rule

topic: Book, Wife, Want, Battered Women, Battered

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

- Ada Louise Huxtable

source: Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.462, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

topic: Summer, Clothes, Drunk, Summer Garden, Summer Inspirational

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

- Virginia Woolf

source: Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Strong Women, Adversity, People, Strong Independent Women, Prodigious

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

- Jack Kerouac

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Travel, Nomadic, Life Journey

Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

- Jim Morrison

topic: Sex, Truth, Lying, Pretension, Cripples

I've been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-- But I don't care! I'm still here!

- Langston Hughes

source: Langston Hughes (2004). “Vintage Hughes”, Vintage

topic: Wind, Snow, Looks, Battered

On faith’s battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation’s hot rage.

- Aberjhani

source: Aberjhani (2010). “The River of Winged Dreams”, p.82, Lulu.com

topic: Prayer, Eye, Hot, Battered

The dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.

- Azar Nafisi

source: Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.92, Random House

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Book, Battered

It's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, and a wound that will never heal. No prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey. Goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight, Matilda, too.

- Tom Waits

source: Tom Waits (2007). “The Early Years: The Lyrics of Tom Waits 1971-1983”, Ecco

topic: Travel, Night, Flames, Sweepers, Prima Donnas

The battle for self-discipline may leave you a bit bruised and battered but always a better person.

- Thomas S. Monson

topic: Self, Discipline, Battle, Effortless, Self Discipline

The need for bold and aggressive federal action to create jobs and restore confidence in our battered economy is clear.

- Nita Lowey

topic: Jobs, Needs, Action, Battered

Historical memory is a potent weapon in fighting against the desert of organized forgetting and implies a rethinking of the role that artists, intellectuals, educators, youth and other concerned citizens can play in fostering a reawakening of America's battered public memories.

- Henry Giroux

source: Source: www.truth-out.org

topic: Memories, Fighting, Artist, Fostering, Rethinking

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

- Douglas Hurd

topic: Growing Up, Europe, Years, Battered

Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation, and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son, lynched?

- Mamie Till

topic: Son, Vacation, Sight, Your Son, Battered

Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new.

- Donald E. Westlake

topic: Hero, Brands, Battered, Brand New

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle. War is a boy being carried on a stretcher, looking up at God’s blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorsa for the son she has given.

- Mary Roberts Rinehart

topic: Horse, Children, War, Spirited, Carrying A Child

From the cab stepped a tall old man. Black raincoat and hat and a battered valise. He paid the driver, then turned and stood motionless, staring at the house. The cab pulled away and rounded the corner of Thirty-sixty Street. Kinderman quickly pulled out to follow. As he turned the corner, he noticed that the tall old man hadn't moved but was standing under the streetlight glow, in mist, like a melancholy traveler frozen in time.

- William Peter Blatty

topic: Men, House, Black, Battered, Frozen In Time

We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.

- Michael Foot

topic: Mean, Progress, Purpose, Economic Problems, Elegant Solutions

Out of defeat can come the best in human nature. As Christians face storms of adversity, they may rise with more beauty. They are like trees that grow on mountain ridges -- battered by winds, yet trees in which we find the strongest wood.

- Billy Graham

topic: Christian, Adversity, Wind, Ridges, Battered

It took me a full year of black eyes and a bruised and battered tailbone to learn how to do a crippler in the half-pipe. It was a trick that no one else was really doing, and it was scary! But I stuck with it, and one day, it finally clicked. The crippler has been my signature trick ever since, and it's what helped me be so successful in competition.

- Gretchen Bleiler

topic: Eye, Successful, Years, Bruised, Battered

There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.

- Tom Odell

source: "Tom Odell: 'Having your heart broken makes for good songs'". Interview with Tom Lamont, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2013.

topic: Writing, Brain, Relax, Bruised, Battered

It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.

- George VI

topic: Wall, Cities, People, Londoners, City Of London

I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling; there have been grand chords.

- James Salter

source: "Ali? Laver? Best? No, the Williams sisters" by Will Buckley, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2007.

topic: Men, Storm, Months, Battered

The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring

- Alice Miller

source: Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.115, Macmillan

topic: Mother, Children, Growing Up, Mistreated, Parenting Styles

I battered the cordons around me And cradled my wings on the breeze, Then soared to the uttermost reaches With rapture, with power, with ease!

- Georgia Douglas Johnson

topic: Wings, Ease, Breeze, Battered

If we choose an external marker as the measure of our inner worth, whether it is the amount of money we make, or others' opinion of us, or the success of some project we're involved in, sooner or later we're bound to be battered by life's inevitable changes. After all, money comes and goes, and thus is an unstable source of self-esteem, an unreliable foundation upon which to build our identity.

- Dalai Lama

topic: Markers, Money Comes And Goes, Inevitable Change, Battered

When you've been battered down and battered down and battered down, your spirit gets broken.

- Suze Orman

source: Source: www.pbs.org

topic: Broken, Down And, Spirit, Battered

When I went kayak surfing in Cornwall, I got a really deep gash on my hand - it looked like I had a slug on it - so I went to Harley Street for surgery, because I looked like a battered woman when I was making things on Blue Peter.

- Konnie Huq

source: "Konnie Huq: If I show my cleavage people make such a fuss". Mirror Interview, www.mirror.co.uk. November 30, 2008.

topic: Blue, Hands, Surfing, Really Deep, Battered Women

Pop stars are capable of growing old. Mick Jagger at 50 will be marvelous - a battered old roue - I can just see him. An aging rock star doesn't have to opt out life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it.

- David Bowie

topic: Stars, Rocks, Growing, Jagger, Battered

There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.

- George Carlin

source: "Playing With Your Head". Comedy album by George Carlin, 1986.

topic: Husband, Real, Men, Battered

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several million human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.

- Carl Jung

topic: War, Men, Epidemics, War Of The Worlds, Landslides

Coming up through the ranks of any calling can be rough, but that battered soul who survives the early years of courting the comic muse comes close to knowing what only the soldier knows: What combat is like.

- Dick Cavett

topic: Years, Knowing, Soul, Battered

The world is still being battered by the Western/white/Christian supremacy dogmas and practices, by the most primitive and fundamentalist 'principles'.

- Andre Vltchek

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Christian, White, Practice, Battered

The battered idealist. It's just my favorite character ... To me, a hero is somebody who is able to accept the environment of the world, deal with the stuff that's thrown in their path ... and somehow keep their heart.

- Cameron Crowe

topic: Hero, Heart, Character, Favorite Characters, Battered

I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive: he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the Lavinian shores Across the lands and waters he was battered beneath the violence of the high ones for the savage Juno's unforgetting anger.

- Virgil

source: Virgil, Barry Moser, Allen Mandelbaum (2007). “The Aeneid of Virgil: A Verse Translation”, p.1, Univ of California Press

topic: Fate, Journey, Men, Land And Water, Battered

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.That would do it every time.

- Terry Pratchett

topic: Rain, Believe, Flames, Battered, Eighty

Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1003, Delphi Classics

topic: Time, Fall, Men, Battered, Orderly

I found myself being more and more involved with people who were rejected by society - with drug addicts, alcoholism, battered this, battered that - and I found an affinity there.

- Princess Diana

topic: People, Drug, Affinity, Battered

Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles.

- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

topic: Names, Soldier, Honor, Old Soldiers, Battered

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.72, Courier Corporation

topic: Lying, Fate, Men, Battered

I am nothing but a miserable, crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a useless creature with morning sickness, and abig belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobody wants and which nearly drives me insane.

- Sophia Tolstaya

topic: Morning, Insane, Dignity, Bad Temper, Morning Sickness

Nothing in the world is as fearsome as a bloody, battered opponent who will never surrender.

- Gerry Spence

topic: World, Opponents, Surrender, Battered

I was in a conversation and someone said: "You know, we were talking about the whole issue of transgender and how it has become so accepted now, and somebody said, 'You know the Oprah show, I think has had a big impact.'" I said, I don't think so. We did several transgender [shows], but we didn't do as much for transgender as I did for, say, abused kids or battered women. And they said, "But no, you started the conversation. You started the conversation and the conversation has led us to here."

- Oprah Winfrey

source: Source: wwd.com

topic: Kids, Thinking, Impact, Transgender, Battered Women

I was recently interviewed for radio in relation to the "Thanksgiving" show [2001] at the Saatchi gallery that I was part of. The interviewer said that people in London were very disturbed that I showed a picture of myself battered ("Nan One Month after Being Battered", 1984) and they thought that I set it up. I was accused of deliberately putting on a wig for that particular picture.

- Nan Goldin

source: Source: foggysapphires.wordpress.com

topic: People, Wigs, Radio, Nans, Pictures Of Myself

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.

- Woodrow Wilson

topic: Doors, Order, Flags, Outraged, Financiers

Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling, we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised.

- Neal A. Maxwell

source: Neal A. Maxwell (1991). “Men and Women of Christ”, Bookcraft Pubs

topic: Endurance, Tumbling, Surf, Battered, Seeming

She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

- Markus Zusak

source: Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.263, RH Childrens Books

topic: Eye, Cutting, Blood, Liesel, Battered