Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Every people, every society, needs a culture of resistance, a culture of being difficult and disobedient, that is the only way they will ever be able to stand up to the inevitable abuse of power by whoever runs the state apparatus, the capitalists, the communists, the socialists, the Gandhians, whoever.
From being a dream, dams have become a very cynical corrupt enterprise; a way of letting governments lay their hands on huge sums of money; a way of centralizing resources; a way of snatching rivers away from the poor and giving them to the rich. And so in a sense they've become monuments to corruption.
Some writers like to boil down headlines of liberal newspapers into fiction, so they say there shouldn't be communal riots, everybody should love each other, there shouldn't be boundaries or fundamentalism. But I think literature is more than that; these are political views which most of us hold anyway.
I think the kind of landscape that you grew up in, it lives with you. I don't think it's true of people who've grown up in cities so much; you may love a building, but I don't think that you can love it in the way that you love a tree or a river or the colour of the earth; it's a different kind of love.
It is said that Windham, when he came to the end of a speech, often found himself so perplexed by his own subtlety that he hardly knew which way he was going to give his vote. This is a good illustration of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and of the uncertainties which attend its practical application.
Are you seeing a psychiatrist?' as a conversation opener would nowadays earn you a punch in the nose, but for fifty years it was a compliment. It meant, 'One can plainly see you are sensitive, intense, and interesting, and therefore neurotic.' Only the dullest of clods trudged around without a neurosis.
For some of us, the soul is resident in the sole, and yearns ceaselessly for light and air and self-expression. Our feet are our very selves. The touch of floor or carpet, grass or mud or asphalt, speaks to us loud and clear from the foot, that scorned and lowly organ as dear to us as our eyes and ears.
For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.
I think we are obsessed in the U.S. with the personal, in ways that blind us to more important issues of life. I just think if we could take all the obsession with the personal (inaudible), and personal judgment and have people be concerned about the environment, what a different world we would live in.
The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it wisely or foolishly. The Bisy Backson has practically no time at all, because he's too busy wasting it by trying to save it. And by trying to save it, he ends up wasting the whole thing.
No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments...Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.
A lot of Americans have some view of the Constitution as just this thing that was handed down [intact]. But it really was the result of months and months of wrangling and disputation and ultimately compromise. That's where the brilliance of the American system is -- it's always been built on compromise.
The perpetuators of the Buddha dharma have a moral responsibility to the rest of humanity to be at the forefront of the change away from blood-letting and killing, and not surreptitiously fostering it because of their lack of will to change their habits or mode of thinking concerning the animal kingdom.
Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.
It's important to realize that inquiry is about noticing, not about dropping the thought... Inquiry is not about getting rid of thoughts; it's about realizing what's true for you, through awareness and unconditional self-love. Once you see the truth, the thought lets go of you, not the other way around.
A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.
It doesn't matter if you have the greatest product in the world if no one will buy it. Have an idea of where your customers will come from and how to get to them. Partner with blogs and magazines that target that audience. If you partner with them, hopefully you won't have to spend money on advertising.
Now, what does a vampire do with a computer? Keep track of investments? Send e-mail to other vampires as you all plot to take over the world?” “I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia making corrections to the entries of historical figures I’ve known.” I blinked at him. “Really?” “No, Kitty. That was a joke.
This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet.
Clary grinned. "A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of - " He waved a hand. "Faeries. I know." "I was going to say muggers," said Clary. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you." "That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it," said Jace, looking gratified.
I curse you," it said. "All who love you will die. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin it with her." It snarled in Ella’s direction, and vanished.
When a movie is being made out of a book, there is a mixed reaction on the part of fans because they are both extremely excited and they are also terrified. 'They are going to take my story, and they are going to mess it up; they are going to ruin it; they're going to do this; they're going to do that.'
Following directly behind the bier were the servants who would, in earlier times, have been slaughtered at the graveside, along with a warrior's horse. Musicians and torchbearers came next, with the rear taken up by the mimes- sinister, silent figures in wax masks modelled on dead members of the family.
I used to be an editor and I was editing young adult series. I didn't really like the books that I was reading, so I decided that I would write a book about something I'd want to read if I was 16. It turned into a Cinderella story... I developed a proposal and the characters of 'Gossip Girl' for my job.
You've reached Fantasia, where the undead live again every night," "For bar hours, press one. To make a party reservation, press two. To talk to alive person or a dead vampire, press three. Or, if you were intending to leave a humorous prank message on our answering machine, know this: we will find you.
I knew, as sure as I knew my name, that tomorrow he would send me another coat, in a big fancy box, with a big bow on it. It would be the right size, it would be a top brand, and it would be warm. ............... It was cranberry red, with a removable liner, a detachable hood, and tortoiseshell buttons.
Remember that you are not called to produce successful, upwardly mobile, highly educated, athletically talented machines...Givi ng your children great opportunities is good; it is not, however, the goal of parenting. Christlikeness is. Above all, seek to raise children who look and act a lot like Jesus.
How do I know that I know this, except that I've always been taught this and never heard anything else? [...] How sure am I of my own views? Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay, because you're in the safely moral majority.
From the inheritance series book one Eragon. Broom The sands of time cannot be stopped years pass whether we will them or not, but we can remember.......what has been lost may yet live on in memories, that which you will hear is imperfect and fragmented yet treasure it for without you it does not exist.
Why was Christ so compassionate towards sexual sinners, especially women? Think of the woman caught in adultery. Think of the prostitute who wept at his feet. Could it be because Christ knew that these women, who had been deceived by counterfeit loves, were actually looking for him, the true Bridegroom?
Every possible opinion is authored about everything. What's going to eventually happen is someone will look back on this period and have to sift through it. The overwhelming majority of those opinions are going to be ignored, because if every opinion is being offered, really no opinion is being offered.
A decade ago, critics suggested biotech crops would not be valuable in the developing world. Now 90 percent of farmers who benefit are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. These helped alleviate 7.7 million subsistence farmers in China, India, South Africa, the Philippines from abject poverty.
Any student of the New Testament eager to understand its Greco-Roman setting will profit greatly from this excellent book. I commend it highly for its up-to-date perspectives and usefulness. Jeffers writes with a breadth of expertise on the Greco-Roman world that few New Testament specialists can match.
Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces, primarily by TV commercials.
I remember getting my first cell phone in New York, getting into a taxi and thinking "This is the end of solitude in the back of a taxi." What used to happen in the back of a taxi? You looked out the window. My brain has become less able to spend lengths of time without shifting, and I worry about that.
Electronic culture created soulless replacements for connective rituals- television supplanted tribal legends told by the fire; 'fast food' consumed in distraction took the place of a shared meal. We substituted matter for Mater (feminine principle), money for mother's milk, objects for emotional bonds.
If all the people around you are happy with you, you are not doing great work. When you stop being like other people, they stop liking you. That's just how it goes. There's no escaping it. And it's okay. What you need to understand about that disapproval is that it's a sign you're doing something right.
Albert Einstein, who discovered that a tiny amount of mass is equal to a huge amount of energy, which explains why, as Einstein himself so eloquently put it in a famous 1939 speech to the Physics Department at Princeton, 'You have to exercise for a week to work off the thigh fat from a single Snickers.'
If a story is funny, and I made it up, then the big message is, `Aren't I clever?' .. If a story is funny and it actually happened, the big message is, `Isn't the world funny?' And actually I think that's a better message. I kind of want to think that about the world -- and it sounds less like boasting.
God works to over throw the ungodly, and increasingly the world will come under the dominion of Christians, not by military aggression, but by godly labor, saving, in vestment, and orientation toward the future... This is where history is going. The future belongs to the people of God, who obey His laws
So what do you have to confess now?" I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. "I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this." "What is 'this'?" "Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
And still, for all the jealously, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. That someone like me could find someone like you --- it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events.
We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances.
Among my favorite half-dozen topics is the field of Victorian female explorers, the intrepid women who packed up their parasols and petticoats and roamed the world in search of adventure. Some were scientists, some artists, some unabashed curiosity-seekers who simply went out to see what they could see.
Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never even have imagined. The coincidences or little miracles that happen every day of your life are hints that the universe has much bigger plans for you than you ever dreamed of for yourself.
In other fitness pursuits, you may have learned to go through the motions first and perfect your form second. In Pilates, it's the other way around. You learn to control your abs first and then proceed through a series of more progressive movements. At all times, you should feel in control of your body.
Obama has a strong record on immigration enforcement, outdoing both Republican and Democratic predecessors. He has deported over 1 million immigrants, focusing on those with criminal records. As documented by many nonpartisan sources, by 2011, Obama had reduced illegal immigration crossings to net zero.
The character I created, 'Commissario Brunetti,' who appears in all my books, shares similar reading, artistic and musical tastes with me. Subconsciously, I knew that if I was to spend however long it would take to write this book with him, this man would have to be someone I'd like to have dinner with.
Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.