Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.
Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.
Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all.
Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial.
Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.
I have idea files of books that I want to write one of these days, stories I want to write one of these days, but I'll probably never get to them.
Every once in a very long while, Lord Tywin Lannister would actually threaten to smile; he never did, but the threat alone was terrible to behold.
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.
As for the fan, she agreed that it was a most amusing trifle: just what she would wish to buy for herself, if it had not been so excessively ugly!
I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.
I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself.
I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.
It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.
In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.
Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.
Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues.
The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.
What do you mean fainted? Took a dive, kissed the pavement. Swooned like a southern belle after her first kiss. Had a dreadful case of the vapors.
Choose life … I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?
But even Es and cocaine, over the years they blow holes in your brain, rob you of your memories, your past. Which is fair enough, convenient even.
The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.
We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days.
Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs.
Why can’t I drink the potion instead?” asked Harry desperately. “Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable,” said Dumbledore.
Someone creeping into his yard in the dead of night? More likely there's a very shell-shocked cat wandering somewhere, covered in potato peelings.
Everyone wanted my emotions to be very simple. They wanted me to say, "I was poor and I was unhappy, and now I've got money and I'm really happy."
I just didn't know how much of this I was capable of. How far this - whatever it was - would actually go before old fears overshadowed the warmth.
For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.
G'on now.' he murmured with that Southern drawl. 'Lie on back and let me take care of you. I promise to go slow...real slow.' - Issac Rothe, Crave
I’m talking to you more than I speak with my mahmen.” “I thought your mother was dead.” “She is.” “You have a very low standard for communication.
What was said about him, what the females needed to believe about him, was just oral masturbation for mouths that needed to be otherwise occupied.
When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.
The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.
You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.
An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.
I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.
Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted on his mug.
There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.
To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind
It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable.
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.
I'm not sure my books would translate into movies very easily. So rather than have someone do a terrible job, I haven't been willing to sell them.
There is no particular source my stories come from. The stories always seem to be there waiting for me, though sometimes shrouded in mist and fog.