Key

Key is word which refers to physical devices used to open locks such as those in a door, or presentation devices which provide information necessary to proper understanding of other things, such as a guide to a map, chart, graph, plot or diagram, or a key to a cryptography algorithm. Metaphorically, it is often applied to anything considered important or indispensable.

• I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
  • Anonymous; this is often misattributed to Bill Cosby, who actually cites this as a sound advice he once read elsewhere, in "Dr. Bill Cosby" in Ebony, Vol. 32, No. 8 (June 1977), p. 136

• Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.
  • M. H. Abrams, as quoted in "Honored literary scholar M.H. Abrams continues his labors (of love)" in The Cornell Chronicle (10 June 1999)

• A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.
  • Richard Bach, in The Bridge Across Forever : A Lovestory (1989), p. 388

• Pierre Del Rio: What happens when she reaches 100%?
  Professor Norman: I have no idea. But she is the key — to everything.

• Luc Besson, in lines regarding the main character of the 2014 film Lucy; though some of these lines occur in the film, the portrayed conversation does not, and only appears in the International trailer for the film.

• "Lock him up and throw away the key." This is one you hear a lot from men. Men like to talk that way; it makes 'em feel tough. A guy sees a rapist on the TV news, he says, "You see that guy? They oughta lock him up, and throw away the key." This is really stupid. First of all, every time the guy's gotta take a shit, you're gonna have to call the locksmith. If he's in prison thirty years, even if he's eatin' government cheese, it's gonna cost you a fortune. Second, where do you throw the key? Right out in front of the jail? His friends'll find it! How far can you throw a key? Fifty, sixty feet the most. Even if you hold it flat on its side and scale it, whaddaya get? An extra ten feet, tops! This is a stupid idea that needs to be completely rethought.
  • George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty (2002), p. 155

• This kid may be the key not just to all human potential, but to all spiritual unexplained paranormal phenomena. The key to everything in The X-Files.
  • Chris Carter, in The X-Files episode "The End" [5.20] (17 May 1998) Mulder to Scully

• Symbolically, Ganesha represents the basic unity of the macrocosm and microcosm, the immense being (the elephant) and the individual being (man). This highly implausible identity is however a fundamental reality and the key to all mystic or ritual experience as well as to Yogic possibilities. Without being aware of Ganesha, and without worshipping him, no accomplishment is possible.
  • Alain Daniélou, in Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus (1992), p. 90

• When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.
  • Meister Eckhart, in Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Chapter 9 : The German Mystics, p. 448

• The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
  • Epictetus, as quoted in The Art of Living : The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness, A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell (1994)

• These are the things he says who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens so that no one will shut and shuts so that no one opens.
  • John the Evangelist, Revelation 3:7, NWT

• My body is a cage
  That keeps me from dancing with the one I love
  But my mind holds the key.
  • Peter Gabriel My Body is a Cage

• If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because man, they're gone.
  • Jack Handey, in Deeper Thoughts : All New, All Crispy (1993)

• Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.
  • Introductory narration of Professor Charles Francis Xavier, in the X-Men (2000), written by David Hayter, Tom DeSanto and Bryan Singer

• Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe.
  • Frank Herbert in God Emperor of Dune (1981)

• Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as "Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness."

• I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
  • Jesus, to Peter, in Gospel of Matthew 16:19 (KJV)

• Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, and the living one, and I became dead, but look! I am living forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of the Grave.
  • Jesus, Revelation 1:17-18, NWT

• We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Nobel Lecture, delivered in the Auditorium of the University of Oslo at (11 December 1964)

• In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, as quoted in Perfecting Ourselves : Coordinating Body, Mind, and Spirit (2002) by Aaron Hoopes, p. 64

• I got a brand new pair of roller skates,
  You got a brand new key.
  I think that we should get together and try them out, to see ...
  I roller skated to your door at daylight [...]
  I'm okay alone, but you got something I need.
  • Melanie Brand New Key

• Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
  • Herman Melville, in Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851), Ch. 1 : Loomings

• People say money is not the key to happiness, but I've always figured if you have enough money you can get a key made.
  • Joan Rivers, as quoted in Seriously Funny (2009), by G. Nachman, p. 606

• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, in Parliament of Whores (1991)

• The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.
  • Tom Robbins, in "The Green Man : Tom Robbins" interviewed by Gregory Daurer, in High Times (12 June 2002)

• You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
  • Rod Serling Twilight Zone opening seasons 4&5

• Children are the keys of Paradise … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.
  • Richard Henry Stoddard, in Songs of Summer (1856), p. 113

• Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.
  • W. Clement Stone, as quoted in Teen Ink : What Matters (2003) by Stephanie H. Meyer, John Meyer, and Peggy Veljkovic, p. 309

• AWARENESS is the path to better choices.
  Self-AWARENESS is the key to peace.
  AWARENESS opens the mind and heart to new possibilities.
  • Iyanla Vanzant in One Day My Soul Just Opened Up : 40 Days and 40 Nights Towards Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth (2000), p. 87

• The problem can usually be solved by verbalizing the tasks as we do them . . . When you wind the clock and set the alarm, say, ‘I have wound the clock and set the alarm.’ When you lock the door, say to yourself, ‘I have locked the door.
  • Dr. James D. Weinland, in his book How to Improve Your Memory.

• I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.
  If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
  The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,
  The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
  No shutter'd room or school can commune with me,
  But roughs and little children better than they.
  • Walt Whitman, in Song of Myself (1855; 1881) § 47, in Leaves of Grass

• He is the Answerer,
  What can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd he shows how it cannot be answer'd.

  A man is a summons and challenge,
  (It is vain to skulk — do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you hear the ironical echoes?)

  Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,
  He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.

  Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely by day or by night,
  He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs.

  His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is,
  The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.

  • Walt Whitman, in "Song of the Answerer" (1855; 1856; 1881), in Leaves of Grass

• Of these States the poet is the equable man,
  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,
  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less,
  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,
  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
  He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,)
  He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round helpless thing,
  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. (10)
  • Walt Whitman, in "By Blue Ontario's Shore" (1855; 1867; 1881) in Leaves of Grass

• I present you with a Key.
  • Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643), Preface

• We receive His peace when we ask Him for it. We keep His peace by extending it to others. Those are the keys and there are no others. Spiritual wisdom is now available to everyone, disseminated to the masses as never before in world history.
  • Marianne Williamson, in Illuminata : Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage (1994), Part I : Thoughts, Ch. 2 : The Luminous Mind, p. 29

• Jig Saw: Hello, Michael. I want to play a game. So far, in what loosely could be called your life, you have made a living watching others. Society would call you an informant, a rat, a snitch. I call you unworthy of the body you possess. Of the life you've been given. Now we will see if you are willing to look inward, rather than outward, to give up the one thing you rely on in order to go on living. The device around your neck is a death mask. The mask is on a string timer. If you do not locate the key in time, the mask will close. Think of it like a Venus Flytrap. What you're looking at right now is your own body, not more than two hours ago. Don't worry. You're sound asleep, and can't feel a thing. Taking into account that you are at a great disadvantage here, I am going to give you a hint as to where I have hidden the key. So listen carefully. The hint is this: [TV screen shows an x-ray.] It's right before your eyes. How much blood would you shed to stay alive, Michael? Live or die, make your choice.
  • Saw II written by Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman.

• Lock