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How can there be war
and the next day eating, a man stacking plates
on the curl of his arm, a table of people
toasting one another in languages of grace

— Naomi Shihab Nye Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

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War

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

Greedy men say "More!" to war
Sitting together telling stories
could change that but who will take the time?

Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.

Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)

Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

I think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails.

Introduction to This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World (1992)

All Naomi Shihab Nye quotes →

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now.

Hunter S. Thompson

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Naomi Shihab Nye (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.