Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.
To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?
Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.
A poignant paradox is that sometimes the very desire to be a good mother or father will lead the parent to mistake duty for love.
Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.
It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us
If you're bored, it's because someone else is fulfilling his dream. Become a bore. It's the most interesting thing you'll ever do.
Harry S. Truman had his moods. His birthplace is the only tourist attraction in America where you don't see Japanese with cameras.
One is not allowed a grief for a life never lived. Yet one has buried the fruit of love, and a great deal of hope and many dreams.
If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.
You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes ... without stirring it up from the bottom. That's where the bitter dregs are!
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
Jacob is a German Shepherd. (I have never understood why they aren't called German Sheepdogs. What do the Germans call shepherds?)
I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail.
I'm the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN'T imaginary.
The Conservative Party is a religion in that they are bound together by belief. Almost any organization has its religious aspects.
Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
That's what true love should be like-the person should be part of your soul and you should know what they're feeling all the time.
Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.
You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.
I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.
D'Artagnan, my friend, thou art brave, thou art prudent, thou hast excellent qualities, but- women will destroy thee!" -D'Artagnan
Be free always, because of all things, freedom is best, though it is not easily won and must be chosen by those who will enjoy it.
I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.
Theory without practice is of little value, whereas practice is the proof of theory.Theory is the knowledge, practice the ability.
And I have two eyes. I’ve seen that little melodrama play out between you and that other tracker. Fish? Flounder? What’s his name?
James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.
If the 20th century was marked by travel - planes in flight - then the events of 9/11 ushered in the age of the burning aftermath.
The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.
No human being really begins on the day which appears in the passport as their date of birth. We all begin much much much earlier.
People have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.
I also had nightmares. Somehow all the feelings I didn't feel when each thing had actually happened to me I did feel when I slept.
Being gay is immutable. Maybe someday we'll figure out more of the science and it will be changeable, but we have no leads so far.
Fixing is the illness model; acceptance is the identity model; which way any family goes reflects their assumptions and resources.
My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination.
All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.
Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.
Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.
You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life... but what is that something?
If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!
The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.
Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.
It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.
Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.