Ma Quotes

“Ma!" she cried. "There is a Santa Claus, isn't there?""Of course there's a Santa Claus," said Ma. "The older you are, the more you know about Santa Claus," she said. "You are so big now, you know he can't be just one man, don't you? You know he is everywhere on Christmas Eve. He is in the Big Woods, and in Indian Territory, and far away in York State, and here. He comes down all the chimneys at the same time. You know that, don't you?""Yes, Ma," said Mary and Laura."Well," said Ma. "Then you see--""I guess he is like angels," Mary said, slowly. And Laura could see that, just as well as Mary could.Then Ma told them something else about Santa Claus. He was everywhere, and besides that, he was all the time.Whenever anyone was unselfish, that was Santa Claus.Christmas Eve was the time when everybody was unselfish. On that one night, Santa Claus was everywhere, because everybody, all together, stopped being selfish and wanted other people to be happy. And in the morning you saw what that had done."If everybody wanted everybody else to be happy all the time, then would it be Christmas all the time?" Laura asked, and Ma said, "Yes, Laura.”

“Tony smothered the life that me and Ma had built, a furry mould growing over a sweating slab of cheese.”

“Nếu muốn học "thấy" hãy "bịt mắt lại mà tưởng tượng trước bằng một viễn tượng trong tâm hồn"; nếu muốn học "nghe" hãy "bịt tai lại"; nếu muốn học cách "đọc sách" hãy xếp sách lại mà phỏng đoán trước những gì ta sắp đọc"... đó là để mà lóng nghe cái tiếng dội của tâm hồn. Platon nói rất sâu sắc (...). Hiểu biết, thực ra là một sự nhận ra những gì ta đã biết. Nghĩa là, cái thật biết là cái biết do mình đã tìm ra. Ta chỉ thấy được những gì ta đã thấy. Ta chỉ thích được những gì ta đã thích.”

“She says it’s wrong to be frittering away my hours asking questions when there’s work to be done. But I don’t see how a question can be wrong. Can you, Pa? Ma says the Bible sets out what’s right and wrong so we don’t have to bother ourselves with it none but it seems to me that it ain’t so matter-of-fact. Like when you kilt that old cow last week and I didn’t want to eat it ’cause he was my favorite and so gentle besides. Ma said I was sinful to waste food. But I said that maybe we shouldn’t go about killing and eating cows when they was so peaceful-like. Ma said that was foolishness and that God put the cows here just so as we can eat ’em. But that don’t seem like such a good deal for the cows to me. Preacher told us not more than four Sundays ago that God loves all his creatures, but it ain’t loving to my way of thinking to create a thing just for it to be food. Them cows ain’t never done nothing to us. Which got me to thinking that maybe we got it wrong and they got a purpose we don’t know nothing about.”

“Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.”

“Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husband. But my pastor can destroy that spirit.”

“You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.”

“She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say "Ma-ma" or "Pa-pa": though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables.”

“You must become a free man so that you have “Sidik Paningal; Java” (lucidity and precision of sight). Later, you achieve the peak of detachment of sight (Ma’rifat), where you see something to the horizon with great clarity. Do not take another step before you are certain that the path you take is the right one. Failure is another matter; what matters is precision.”