A Quote by Raymond Carver

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so. — © Raymond Carver
A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.
When I talk to a man, I can always tell what he's thinking by where he is looking. If he is looking at my eyes, he is looking for intelligence. If he is looking at my mouth, he is looking for wisdom. But if he is looking anywhere else except my chest he's looking for another man.
I didn't really know what I was looking at when I first came across Man Ray's 'Dust Breeding,' his photograph of a work by Marcel Duchamp called 'Large Glass.' It looked like an aerial photograph or a view through a microscope.
The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.
A democracy without faith is just a machine without power. Nothing can make it function except faith in itself, in the ordinary man and woman.
I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capabilities.
I love a man who knows how to walk. I do like a gentleman, a man who opens the door and a man who walks on the proper side of the street with you. There’s something safe about it; he’s protecting you. That’s a really nice quality. You don’t see it as often anymore. I pay attention to those things. I know it sounds silly, but I love that. I’m fortunate to say that I have a good guy. Oh, and he has to have great hands. There’s a lot I find sexy in a man, but strong, manly hands are very important.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.
When the Spirit came to Moses, the plagues came upon Egypt, and he had power to destroy men's lives; when the Spirit came upon Elijah, fire came down from heaven; when the Spirit came upon Gideon, no man could stand before him; and when it came upon Joshua, he moved around the city of Jericho and the whole city fell into his hands; but when the Spirit came upon the Son of Man, He gave His life; He healed the broken-hearted.
I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.
A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.
It was just my mom, my sister and me. And from a young age, my mom always said I was like the man of the house. I really became the man of the house. And I really took that responsibility very seriously: being the man of the house, the protector.
The trade schools closed, so young Black men don't know how to build a house, or put a roof on a house or build cabinets anymore. We used to go to school to learn how to make ourselves useful in the trades. Then a man by the name of Samuel Gompers, a Jewish fellow, brought tradespeople from Eastern Europe, unions started and kept us out. We're having a problem on the national level, on the state level and on the local level because it's telling us that the White man doesn't want you anymore. You have no place in his house anymore except to be a little flunky around the door.
I came across a photograph of him not long ago... his black face, the long snout sniffing at something in the air, his tail straight and pointing, his eyes flashing in some momentary excitement. Looking at a faded photograph taken more than forty years before, even as a grown man, I would admit I still missed him.
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control.
When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long.
Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?
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