Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
When mental energy is allowed to follow the line of least resistance and to fall into easy channels, it is called weakness.
To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.
There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the most progressive minds.
One naked star has waded through The purple shallows of the night, And faltering as falls the dew It drips its misty light.
If we want to enlighten people or give them new thoughts and ideas, we have to be willing to do the work of educating them.
Of all the things you can spend a lot of money on, the only things you expect to fail frequently are software and medicine.
I'm hoping the reader can see that artificial intelligence is better understood as a belief system instead of a technology.
Usually, when somebody really hates your book, they're not going to waste time on it, telling you what you need to work on.
Man has here two and a half minutes-one to smile, one to sigh, and a half to love: for in the midst of this minute he dies.
Poverty can turn a person into a flaming torch for change and revolution, without which mankind would come to a standstill.
That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?
Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.
This is a quantum universe ... neither random nor determined. It is potential at every second. All you can do is intervene.
When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.
The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
My dad is an entomologist and research chemist. That's why he was in Fiji, studying the rhinoceros beetle invasive species.
Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off.
Or that I couldn't stand to watch anything bad happen to you, because it was like it was happening to me too. Is that love?
One thing I've learned over these last 30 or 40 years is that people make history. There's no fait accompli to any of this.
It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.
If you wish to produce a perfect rose, you must cut off the other buds which are spoiling the growth of the perfect flower.
There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all
Good heredity and environment are necessary. You cannot compare the child of a savage with the child of a civilized person.
I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.
Our world was brutal, immoral, smug and conventional. We had unbounded contempt for all those who did not sin as we sinned.
I was a very polite schoolgirl who did her work very well and hid under tables. I'd hate to think I haven't changed at all.
Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.
Hold your powers together for something good and let everything go that is for you without result and is not suited to you.
Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.
I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light… Mephistopheles, from Faust.
Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.
Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine , guard it well.
Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.
Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.
No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.
We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.
He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that.
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
With my life comes my heart, yours now to crush or cherish as you will. It is my hope you will have a care in keeping both.
If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me.
When I'm doing the brute work, I do it early in the morning; that's the best time for me to get the stuff down on the page.
Chestnuts are delicacies for princes and a lusty and masculine food for rusticks, and able to make women well-complexioned.
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In a believer's ear! It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, And drives away his fear.
Time, by moments, steals away, First the hour, and then the day; Small the daily loss appears, Yet it soon amounts to years
I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it.
Knowing makes all the difference... It's the difference between just trying to keep alive, and having something to live for
Sometimes it is the smallest thing that saves us: the weather growing cold, a child's smile, and a cup of excellent coffee.
I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.