Uriah Heep Quotes

you know when you read a book, sometimes, and you suddenly realize that you’ve been missing something your whole life, and you weren’t even aware, and all at once you’ve found it and are just a little bit more whole?

Every supporting character is the protagonist of his own story.

I thought you said everything in a book has meaning.” “It does! That doesn’t mean it means what you want it to mean!

I don’t care what everyone says, damaging books is worse than damaging people. People heal up. Books never do. The marks always show.

History is every bit as much of a story as fiction.

It scares the living daylights out of everybody. Present company excepted, I’m sure.” “I don’t really do living or daylight,” Dorian said. “I’m a Gothic masterpiece.

My Uriah,' said Mrs. Heep, 'has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,' said Mrs. Heep.

Kind people don't make things happen. They try to prevent bad things from happening, and they fail, and they live in fear of that failure. So do those under their protection

There are coincidences in life, not in books. Everything in a book is placed there for a reason. What’s the reason for this one?

Something has to be heard to be ignored. He heard me this time, and he ignored me.

We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking - and we look out of 'em.

What we see when we look at people is just a bundle of our own interpretations

There is not a poem on earth that doesn't make sense to anyone.

Truth, at least complete truth, isn’t held in words. But there would be no truth at all without them. It lies behind them and lurks around them and shines through them, in glimpses of metaphor, and connotation, and story.

As I recall,” Millie said, “in your book, your secret isn’t revealed until you stab your painting in the heart.” He shrugged. “That’s how all secrets are revealed, in the end. Either someone else betrays us, or we betray ourselves.

Books don’t hurt people.” “What comes out of them jolly well does.

She's from a children's book," Charley pointed out. "That makes her by definition more capable than most adults.

We’ve read our own myths into the world.

That’s the danger of stories,” Mum said. Lydia and I weren’t the only ones thinking about Charley, obviously. “They bring things into the world, and they can’t be put away again.

When he sees himself through your eyes, he reinterprets himself,

What you need to understand about protagonists, Sutherland, is that we’re all busy with our own plots. We can’t help it; we’re not used to sharing our stories.

How different this from the shocking half-truth so vociferously announced by certain of the half-wise, who fill the air with their raucous cries of: "I am God!" Imagine poor Micawber, or the sneaky Uriah Heep, crying: "I Am Dickens"; or some of the lowly clods in one of Shakespeare's plays, eloquently announcing that: "I Am Shakespeare!" THE ALL is in the earthworm, and yet the earth-worm is far from being THE ALL. And still the wonder remains, that though the earth-worm exists merely as a lowly thing, created and having its being solely within the Mind of THE ALL—yet THE ALL is immanent in the earthworm, and in the particles that go to make up the earth-worm.

Let me try to warn you again. Knowledge is dangerous

Sherlock Holmes stories glorify human intellect; his criminals are intellectual puzzles to be solved, not living breathing inhabitants of a world in their own right.

The only thing more tedious than someone else’s crises are one’s own.

Nothing stays hidden. Secrets are always found out, and the world is unforgiving.

I want to live in the world, unbound, following nobody’s plots but my own.

Where the light was strongest, there were no buildings.

Today was my first day of high school, and it was not as expected. I thought people would want to learn in high school. Perhaps that was naive.

It’s not complicated. It’s just the idea that every book has an implied reader—a sort of imaginary person the author has in mind while he’s writing.

I had a sense then of being suspended between two worlds: the sane one in which I had fallen asleep, and Charley’s, reaching to pull me awake through the speaker of my phone.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,

We see what we know is there.

It was a glorious mess, as all relationships were:

The truth here is rarely pure and never simple.

We love Dickens because he tell us stories, and because he tell us that we are all stories. We are. We are more than stories, of course. But we have to start somewhere. And there are many worse places to start than, 'Chapter One: I am Born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that stations will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

I thought you were sticking to poetry lately. Those postmodern things that read like a dictionary mated with a Buddhist mantra and couldn’t possibly make any sense to anyone.” “There is not a poem on earth that doesn’t make any sense to anyone.

That’s not what Charley says,” I returned. I felt, illogically, that I was scoring a point. “He says that feelings are a mind picking up on things it doesn’t always understand.” “Perhaps. But if so, they are a poor substitute for true understanding.

But I need to reassure the others first. They’ll be all out of sorts.” “Reassure them of what?” “Oh, you know,” she said. “Everything’s perfectly all right, that sort of thing.” “And is it?” Charley asked. “Of course not,” she snorted. “If it were, they wouldn’t need me to tell them.

It’s not fair. It feels good to write it, even if it doesn’t change it. It’s not fair. It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not FAIR. It’s. Not. Fair. I know that life isn’t. But stories are. Or if they’re not fair, they’re not fair with purpose. I wish I could tell better where stories end and life begins.

There's truth in anything. It's the truth of a single moment in time. It's as if someone made a painting of you based on photograph. The photograph would be an accurate picture of you; the painting would be a valid interpretation of that photograph. Nobody's lying, but that painting isn't you, not all of you. It's just a picture.

And while I’m reading, the new words I’m taking in will connect to others already taken in. That reference to blue is the third this chapter, and it always goes with wealth. That phrase is from the poem earlier. Deeper. That’s a reference to the myth of Orpheus. That’s a pairing of two words that don’t usually go together. Wider. That’s a symbol Dickens employs often. That typifies Said’s writings on Orientalism. Points of light. They make a map, or a pattern, or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely. And then, at once, they’ll connect. They’ll meet, and explode. Of course. That’s the entire point. That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense.

It was quiet as I settled in to read alongside Sherlock Holmes and David Copperfield. But for the crackle of the fire and the ever-present whistle of the wind outside, it was as quiet as it had been in the city, after everything changed. And for a moment, the space between heartbeats, I felt I could glimpse the world Charley saw. A world of light and shadow, of fact, truth and story, each blurring into one another as sleep and wakefulness blur in the early morning. The moments of our lives unfolding as pages in a book. And everything connected, everyone joined, by an ever-shifting web of language, by words that caught us as prisms caught light and reflected back at ourselves.

To take a modern example, let us say that Othello, Iago, Hamlet, Lear, Richard III, existed merely in the mind of Shakespeare, at the time of their conception or creation. And yet, Shakespeare also existed within each of these characters, giving them their vitality, spirit, and action. Whose is the "spirit" of the characters that we know as Micawber, Oliver Twist, Uriah Heep — is it Dickens, or have each of these characters a personal spirit, independent of their creator? Have the Venus of Medici, the Sistine Madonna, the Appollo Belvidere, spirits and reality of their own, or do they represent the spiritual and mental power of their creators? The Law of Paradox explains that both propositions are true, viewed from the proper viewpoints. Micawber is both Micawber, and yet Dickens. And, again, while Micawber may be said to be Dickens, yet Dickens is not identical with Micawber. Man, like Micawber, may exclaim: "The Spirit of my Creator is inherent within me — and yet I am not HE!" How different this from the shocking half-truth so vociferously announced by certain of the half-wise, who fill the air with their raucous cries of: "I Am God!" Imagine poor Micawber, or the sneaky Uriah Heep, crying: "I Am Dickens"; or some of the lowly clods in one of Shakespeare’s plays, grandiloquently announcing that: "I Am Shakespeare!" THE ALL is in the earth-worm, and yet the earth-worm is far from being THE ALL And still the wonder remains, that though the earth-worm exists merely as a lowly thing, created and having its being solely within the Mind of THE ALL — yet THE ALL is immanent in the earth-worm, and in the particles that go to make up the earth-worm. Can there be any greater mystery than this of "All in THE ALL; and THE ALL in All?

A hardliner by nature, Honecker was nonetheless more open to rock music. But rather than import music by decadent capitalist puppets like the Doors or the Stones, he determined the DDR should foster its own rock culture. This led to a string of officially sanctioned East German rock bands dominating Free German Youth concerts and DDR youth radio during the 1970s. Bands with names like the Puhdys, Renft, Electra-Combo, Karussell, and Stern-Combo Meissen aped Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, King Crimson, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Jethro Tull—and landed deals with the government record label, Amiga, the sole music manufacturer and distributor in the tightly-controlled East German media system.

He tied me to the radiator with those plastic ties that only pull one way. I’ve always hated those things. They’re just a smug reminder that sometimes life doesn’t allow a do-over.

Uriah Heep and Orlick from Great Expectations are both shadow versions of the main characters

What I mean is, phrases are important. That’s what I’m trying to teach my poetry students at the moment. Words are chosen very carefully. Stories are built from words.

Words on paper are quiet, and porous; in the right mood, I sink down between the gaps in the letters and they close over my head. Words

So I’ll be drifting in words, absorbing, and the words I absorb will be racing through my bloodstream. Every nerve, every neuron will be sparking and catching fire, and my heart will be quickening to carry it through faster, and my eyes will be tearing ahead to take in more and more.

This isn’t magic yet, or whatever the word is. (It’s always annoyed me that I can’t find the word.) This is just reading a book.

I said. “None of you are real. You’re the accidental products of too much emotional investment in fiction.” “As opposed to what, the accidental products of a biological act?” Millie said scathingly.

I don’t trust him to be right.” “So you trust his morals, but not his intellect?

The implied author is the character a reader may attribute to an author based on the way a book is written. It might have nothing in common with the author as a real, historical person, or it might be very close—that’s completely irrelevant. What matters is what’s on the page.” “So that was the Dickens that we imagine when reading David Copperfield?” “I think so.

Uriah Heep is a scapegoat, so that David can achieve what Uriah wants to achieve without being dangerous himself. That’s how happy endings work. For there to be a restoration of order, there has to be a sacrifice.

I made them comfortable and was always glad to accommodate them in my ’umble home.’ The fire was scorching, the air stuffy and Mrs Buckley appalling. Cromwell wanted to get it over and be off. One almost expected the street door to bang, footsteps to sound along the passage, and Uriah Heep to fling open the door, kiss Mrs Buckley and say their ’ome was very ’umble…

I probably shouldn't ask this, but. . . who are you now? You nearly went into a book. And then you read yourself out, with my help. Are you the same person who went in, or did you . . . change yourself, in some way?

There’s no law against what we are,” he said, in answer to a question, “not just because there’s no precedent, but because there is no law against a person being made of ideas, intuitions, interpretations, and language. If there were, nobody could ever step outside their door. Excuse me, please, we’re expected somewhere…

... I really have no circle of acquaintances outside work. None nonfictional or unrelated to me, anyway. I'm busy. There are a lot of books to read.

Things in writing exist. They are not always true. But they exist.

They don’t really want to learn here. Or I think they do, but they have no time to learn what’s being taught. They’re busy trying to learn themselves. That’s probably why they didn’t talk to me. They have their own complicated landscapes, and I don’t fit.

Humility was not just an absence of pride, it was not a negative virtue, it was a definite “fruit of the spirit”. False humility was horrible of course (vide Uriah Heep) but real humility, growing from within, was beautiful.

Do stop being so Gothic. It's not half as attractive as you think.

I became very interested in how Uriah Heep was functioning as a scapegoat for middle-class anxieties in David Copperfield, and the means by which he’s constructed as a threat to the social order, and I was reading and thinking about him quite closely—

Sometimes I think my brain opened as far as it could go when I was about seventeen, and its doors have been just stuck there ever since. And now they're ossifying and collecting cobwebs, and things are spilling in, swirling around for a bit, and then flying out again. And someday they'll start to swing slowly shut, and I'll be left in the dark with nothing but a few rustling fragments of thoughts that get thinner and weaker every time I use them. Like tea leaves. And sometimes I think I can do anything.

Points of light. They make a map, or a pattern,or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely. And then, at once, they'll connect. They'll meet, and explode. Of course. That's the entire point. That's how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense. And it's beautiful. It's a moment of pure joy, the kind that brings pleasure like pain.

Call it an aesthetic observation; a place can suit a person aesthetically as well as a pair of trousers or a jacket. This street looks well on you.

We love Dickens because he tells us the truth, when the dominant strand of contemporary postmodern literature so often tells us that there is no truth. And there isn’t, perhaps, not that can be put in words. Truth, at least complete truth, isn’t held in words. But there would be no truth at all without them. It lies behind them and lurks around them and shines through them, in glimpses of metaphor, and connotation, and story.

you have seen, but you have not observed.

Emotions are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

I just realized that The Invisible Man is a retelling of Plato’s ring of Gyges,

There isn’t another way. I told you, it makes sense. Narrative sense. It’s how stories work. For order to be restored, there needs to be a sacrifice.

with a book in front of him, his mind distances itself from his body.

Esto es muy diferente de la chocante media verdad que clamorosamente anuncian algunos medio sabios, diciendo: «Yo soy Dios». Imaginad al pobre Micawber o al ratero Uriah Heep exclamando: «Yo soy Dickens», o a cualquier otro personaje de las obras de Shakespeare anunciando: «Yo soy Shakespeare». El TODO está en la lombriz, pero la lombriz está muy lejos de ser el TODO. Pero aunque la lombriz exista meramente como una pequeña cosa, creada y teniendo su ser únicamente en la mente del TODO, el TODO es inmanente a ella, así como en las partículas que la componen. ¿Puede haber algún misterio mayor que el encerrado en esa proposición: «Todo está en el TODO y el TODO está en todo?».

He seemed a very ordinary young man, very much cast down and in a state of humility approaching that of Uriah Heep’s.

sallow-faced, balding, heavy lidded, Uriah Heep of a man, Kevin

It was humility, thought Rhoda. That was the key-note of Bel’s character. Rhoda had never prized this virtue—she had thought it overrated—but now she realised, that she had been mistaken. Humility was not just an absence of pride, it was not a negative virtue, it was a definite “fruit of the spirit”. False humility was horrible of course (vide Uriah Heep) but real humility, growing from within, was beautiful.

Fifteen minutes had already passed, and Tolkachev had one more request. He handed Rolph a piece of paper. When Rolph looked down, he saw it was printed in English in block letters: 1. LED ZEPPELIN 2. PINK FLOYD 3. GENESIS 4. ALAN PARSONS PROJECT 5. EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER 6. URIAH HEEP 7. THE WHO 8. THE BEATLES 9. THE YES 10. RICK WAKEMAN 11. NAZARETH 12. ALICE COOPER

That’s not what Charley says,” I returned. I felt, illogically, that I was scoring a point. “He says that feelings are a mind picking up on things it doesn’t always understand.

Pasifika culture has a concept called the va,” I said, despite myself. It was something we’d learned about in law school. “The space between two people, or cultures. Sort of an imaginary landscape, made up of the social, personal, and spiritual bonds that comprise the relationship.

Words on paper are quiet, and porous; in the right mood, I sink down between the gaps in the letters and they close over my head.

Pasifika culture has a concept called the va,” I said, despite myself. It was something we’d learned about in law school. “The space between two people, or cultures. Sort of an imaginary landscape, made up of the social, personal, and spiritual bonds that comprise the relationship.” […] „So could you see conversation as navigating a liminal space?

We changed again, and yet again," I read, "and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

It's not fair. I know that life isn't. But stories are. Or if they're not fair, they're not fair with a purpose. I wish I could tell better where stories end and life begins.