Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There,” she said triumphantly. “Like that.” He began to wonder if they were speaking the same language. “Like what?” “That! What you just said.” He crossed his arms. It seemed the only acceptable reply. If she couldn’t speak in complete sentences, he saw no reason why he had to speak at all.
I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.
I think when it comes to women who write or who fancy ourselves 'hip downtown literati', there is a certain contempt for being overly sexual or really looking for boyfriends. We tend to be marginalized as some 'Sex & The City' Carrie Bradshaw chick-lit dummies who just want shoes and a ring.
Here she was, a women who could bolt-load a crossbow in under a second, put half a dozen long arrows in the air in fewer than five, blade a target dead through the sweet spot at six meters, on the run, on an off day; and yet knitting a pair of baby booties seemed completely beyond her power.
Only recently have we begun to understand the specific cognitive skills that contribute to business success and how to measure them. Hopefully, this insight will allow us to more keenly focus our attention on indentifying and cultivating decision-making abilities in the executive population.
Nightfall. “What a strange word. ‘Night’ I get. But ‘fall’ is a gentle word. Autumn leaves fall, swirling with languid grace To carpet the earth with their dying blaze. Tears fall, like liquid diamonds Shimmering softly, before they melt away. Night doesn’t fall here. It comes slamming down.
All I know is, he found out you left and he locked himself in the shed and barricaded the door. No one's seen him since," Doug said. "When I bolted, Sean and Evan were trying to boost Caleb up onto the roof so he could look through the skylight and make sure the kid wasn't dead or something.
I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside you like a stone.
Often in the morning I will sit in a favorite chair in my study with a cup of coffee, with classical music playing, not trying to form a prayer with words but waiting, listening, until perhaps I sense the Spirit bringing to the surface a word from God. Then I offer just a simple 'Thank you.'
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.
Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs. Lose hope and you die. They may not bury you for awhile, but without hope you are dead inside. The only way to face the future is to fly straight into it on the wings of hope....hope is the energy of the soul. Hope is the power of tomorrow.
As members of a minority, one that was often persecuted, that entrepreneurial perspective was burnished with a sense of "outsider" status - so not only were we committed to finding our own way of achieving success, we also grew up to believe that we'd have to fight to get whatever we wanted.
I've always started every day by going to the window for a glimpse of the sky. But now I won't have to." "Why not?" She asked softly. "Because I'll see the blue of your eyes instead." "How romantic you are," she murmured with a grin, kissing him gently. "But don't worry. I won't tell anyone.
Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.
Anyone with a heart, with a family, has experienced loss. No one escapes unscathed. Every story of separation is different, but I think we all understand that basic, wrenching emotion that comes from saying goodbye, not knowing if we'll see that person again-or perhaps knowing that we won't.
I was still more concerned (a preference which you may be far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him.
Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.
It was Alec who brought their lips together. Seregil's first reaction was disbelief. But Alec was insistent, clumsy but determined. It lasted an instant, an eternity, that one awkward kiss, and it spoke silent volumes of bewildered honesty. The moment that followed was too fragile for words.
I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships.
the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically.
When we're feeling fully alive, we're able to fully feel love. This doorway also relates to feeling our feelings fully. Not suppressing our feelings of anger, sadness or grief but allowing them to be felt. What's amazing is that when those feelings are felt, they actually dissolve into love.
The basis of all love is self-love and we certainly suffer a lot in our society from lack of self-love. When we don't take care of ourselves, it's really just a symptom of not loving ourselves. So the worst thing that we can do is to beat ourselves up for how we've already treated ourselves.
When I was just writing books and giving lectures, if people disagreed, they just didn't buy your book or attend your lectures. But, if you're leading a congregation, people feel they have the right to tell you what you should or shouldn't talk about. And that hasn't always been easy for me.
I've never written about a situation involving real people that I haven't directly taken part in. I've never made things up about other people. None of my stories were written with ill-intent towards the other people in them, even though I doubt people will believe that about "Adrien Brody."
Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking....I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.
It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.
A truly wise person will constantly move forward, striving for self-improvement, knowing that daily repentance is needed for progress. He will realize the good life is simply conforming to a standard of right and justice. The joys of happiness can only be realized by living lofty principles.
Adultery is like, here's the way it is, and here's exactly what you're supposed to do. It's like cheating at Monopoly. For me, it just doesn't apply to human relations. I mean, I use the word sometimes because it's fair and everybody knows what it means, but I find it a very irritating word.
The moral angle to the foreclosure crisis - and, of course, in capitalism we're not supposed to be concerned with the moral stuff, but let's mention it anyway - shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence.
Children delight in folk-tale and fairy lore, but the very little child loves best the story which mirrors the familiar. And it is for him, and for the mother who is striving in this age of profusion to guard the innate simplicity of her child's nature, that I have written my little stories.
Well I just so happened to bump into a chess book in the library at school and I didn't know that there were books on chess and so I take this book out and I'm like this is going to be cool, I'm going to whoop on this guy now, so I studied the book and I go back and the guy crushes me again.
They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.
The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history.
When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter.
One of the things I benefited from when I started this business was that I didn't know anything. I was just instinct with no preconceived notions. This enabled me to learn and change quickly without having to worry about maintaining any kind of status quo, like some of my bigger competitors.
I'm not here to tell you what your average needs to be, but it would seem to me that one way to protect yourself, as an entrepreneur, from the dreaded average is to understand what that looks like in your industry, your business, and your personal life and take the steps to be above average.
Millar Burrows of Yale observes: 'Archeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics. It has shown in a number of instances that these views rest on false assumptions and unreal, artificial schemes of historical development. This is a real contribution and not to be minimized.'
I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.''s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian''s hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion.
Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here.
When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.
There's a set of unspoken rules we live by when it comes to fighting. We can't help it. It comes from living in a civilized world. Even when you're fighting your hardest, somewhere deep down, you know how far you can go. But today the rules are gone. Today I fight not to win, but to destroy.
Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.
You can't just boss bacteria around like that," said the younger Mrs. Hempstock. "They don't like it." "Stuff and silliness," said the old lady. "You leave wigglers alone and they'll be carrying on like anything. Show them who's boss and they can't do enough for you. You've tasted my cheese.
There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber,” she explained. “There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.” “I may still be hung over,” sighed Richard. “That almost made sense.
There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stumbles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular.
Women are the worst. They zero in on some guy.Oh boy, he's the one, gotta get me that one. So they do. Then they spend the rest of their time trying to figure out how to change him. Then if they manage it, they're not all that interested anymore, because guess what? He's not the one anymore.
You are who you are. I know you. You believe that? "Yea but--" "You're Eve Dallas. You're the love of my life. My heart and Soul. You're a cop, mind and bone. You're a woman of strength and resilience. Stubborn, hardheaded, occassionally mean as a badger, and more generous that you'll admit.
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
I've been asked several times over the years to become president, and I've always said no, because I didn't want to give up all the time from my work. The position won't be open for another year, but if they still want me then, I'll do it; I'll speak out as often as I can from that platform.