Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.
We blame equally him who is too proud to put a proper value on his own merit and him who prizes too highly his spurious worth.
In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.
The day is for mistake and error, sequence of time for success and carrying out. The one who anticipates is master of the day.
Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.
It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.
To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers. [Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.]
Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.
The soul of man is like to water; from Heaven it cometh, to Heaven it riseth And then returning to earth, forever alternating.
If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.
Let the main object... to seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners learn more.
I have given Him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to Him; how, then, can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor?
As attractive as it is, the idea that nature can exist beyond our dangerous 'instinct for happiness' is never the whole story.
'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.
...it was imaginative people who tended to lie. Lying required making stuff up, and only imaginative people were good at that.
In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.
I've always said my audience is just me. It's somebody out there who's exactly like me and just isn't writing Daring Fireball.
Some of us say, "Lord knows how much I can bear". I think you can assume that you can bear more than you have a right to bear.
The trouble is people leave too much to luck. They get married and then trust to luck. They should be sure in the first place.
Whatever Romney's failings, he certainly doesn't suggest that the United States is teetering on the brink of a moral cesspool.
I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.
Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.
We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King.
I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.
I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone.
She was so beautiful, like someone who you will never meet, but always dream of meeting, like someone who is too good for you.
My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.
That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland
At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.
I still enjoy the tactile sensation of holding a book. But when I need to read fast for work, I use the Kindle App on my iPad.
Man is a question; woman is an answer. The mistake women make today is to offer themselves as answers before being questioned.
We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow.
We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose on the world.
Lovers of literature will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism.
The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew what the practical uses for fire would be, but because it was fascinating.
Christ Not Begotten of Holy Ghost... Christ was begotten of God. He was not born without the aid of Man, and that Man was God!
There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.
A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.
Perhaps, she says (Madame de la Rougierre), Other souls than human are sometimes born into the world & clothed in human flesh.
The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.
The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.
If it were really the case that terrorists "hate us for our freedoms," we'd be getting more popular with Al Qaeda every month.
Sarah had a saying: Der gleichster veg iz ful mit shtainer." "What's it mean?" "The smoothest way is sometimes full of stones.
Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.
It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway because I was going to find a way to make it true.
Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.