Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
St. Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it.
In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.
Ah! my friend, for whomever is alone, without a god and without a master, the weight of time is terrible. One must then choose a master, God being out of style.
Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate.
Dreaming led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn’t easy to shake. Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark.
Retaining culture takes effort and persistence and discipline. It's a commitment, not a flag. You can't just pull it out and wave it about when it's convenient.
We are the sum total of our memories. Memories are the most precious things we have. Good or bad. That's what make us who we are. What would we be without them?
If you go on stage with the wrong attitude, or something in your performance is off, you can lose an audience in the first minute. That first minute is crucial.
Death itself is too big to take in, she already sees that; the loss comes at you instead in an infinite number of small installments that can never be paid off.
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, "Then there's no hope for me, Mum."
It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.
When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, 'Then there's no hope for me, Mum.'
If I associate with chickens, I will learn to scratch at the ground and squabble over crumbs. If I associate with eagles, I will learn to soar to great heights.
I'm not going to pretend that I never fantasized about winning the Hugo. Or the Nebula, for that matter. I just never thought it was an actual real possibility.
Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding - the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.
You have always had individual directors who begin in the advertising or commercial world, but they are probably exceptions rather than the traditional pattern.
When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.
To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]
Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work; in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat.
Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.
I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.
DO I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ARE BASICALLY GOOD? Yes, I do believe that, and I trust Buddhists and Hindus and Moslems to seek the good and to want to live in peace.
You make me miserable. You really do, I want you to know that. Much as I love you, much as I need you, much as I can't exist without you, you make me miserable.
I cannot mislead people into believing that I support organized religion. In Jesus' name, I cannot be complicit with many of the things organized religion does.
Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.
As civilization grows more complex, it is simultaneously becoming increasingly interrelated. We are converging upon ourselves, and this is forcing us to relate.
No - the light in Tamani's eyes was much more than a reflection. It was the fire that melted her anger and devastated her resolve, every single time she saw it.
I think she's the foundation of everything I've done. I think, definitely, my mother's fear of failure helps make me more resilient and helps make me persevere.
People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.
Love of the republic in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; love of the democracy is that of equality. Love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.
This morning when I left Mom's parting words were, "Come straight home after school." Wow! Like I'm going to get stoned at 3:30—it doesn't sound so bad at that.
..."Good, because I need your help." "Help is my middle name." I was pretty sure she'd already told me bad was her middle name, but I kept my opinion to myself.
Most of us did not learn when we were young that our capacity to be self-loving would be shaped by the work we do and whether that work enhances our well-being.
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.
It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.
The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.
Being a man is bullshit; maybe trying to be a man had been the problem all along. At a certain point you just have to trust someone. Even if it’s only yourself.
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.
I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother's cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.
There is a lovely warmness about feelings of nostalgia as though in one's head one is putting on a pair of comfy old slippers and curling up in front of a fire.
Divine favor causes you to rise to the top in your sphere of influence, and the reality is that favor can be recognized more easily is your start at the bottom.
A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on a Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
It has been preached in every country, taught everywhere, but only believed in by a few, because until we get the experience ourselves, we cannot believe in it.
The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life... I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer.
It's a scary, exhilarating thing to have your work adapted by someone else. There are so many ways it can go wrong or be a poor example of the underlying story.