Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the world we live in everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.
Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognize indifference to human suffering as a fact.
Look, I'm smiling at you, I'm smiling in you, I'm smiling through you. How can I be dead if I breathe in every quiver of your hand?
Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.
What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.
Wrong is wrong; no fallacy can hide it, no subterfuge cover it so shrewdly but that the All-Seeing One will discover and punish it.
You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Other people can cope with the waves, it's his job to watch the tide.
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?
He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.
We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.
He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.
The dark side of blogging is, of course, people can be (and are) just savage and uncivilized, deeply cruel and fully unaccountable.
The wise have a solid sense of silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of secrets. Their capacity and character are respected.
It is better to have too much courtesy than too little, provided you are not equally courteous to all, for that would be injustice.
Be known for pleasing others, especially if you govern them. Ruling other has one advantage: you can do more good than anyone else.
Dreams, though, are cheap, and the real task comes when you start putting in place the steps needed to make those dreams a reality.
It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don't even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?
If you are intent on drawing or painting on your prints, you must first learn to draw and paint at least as well as you photograph.
Heads of warring nations could learn a lot about how to achieve lasting peace by watching dogs and cats who live in the same house.
She refused to think of Neil, brave and quiet, whose reward for a heroic rescue was to be slowly devoured by strange cave balloons.
...even misplaced faith can help us gain knowledge. We try to be smart about where we put our faith and we adjust as we learn more.
Breeze turned to look out the window. "You were always the best of us, Sazed," he said quietly. "Because you believed in something.
If you are anything like me --- Clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome --- then you have undoubtedly read many books.
One of the problems with fame is they try to pigeonhole you... like I'm stuck with The Greening of America for the rest of my life.
Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.
Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.
Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn.
Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation.
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Stick to Facts, sir!
We part with tender relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed, and with others dawning - yet before us.
"Some persons hold," he pursued, still hesitating, "that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart..."
The cooperation of NASCAR - or any other system, it turns out - persists only when everyone believes he has the opportunity to win.
There are systems called zero discharge emission systems that would prevent any pollution from making it into the water or the air.
We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.
It really bothers me when I see people doing my mother in drag. I mean, just imagine if you saw people doing that with your mother.
You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?' Aunty Ifeka said. 'Your life belongs to you and you alone.
Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.
There's a melancholy sense of things lost in the shabbier British seaside towns; of comfortable failure and better times long gone.
...as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into the middle of a teddy bear orgy and the only survivors had had their fur blown off.
I'm not nearly as outrageously brave as many of my rascals that I write. But I think the rascal spirit must reside in me somewhere.
Thought is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught.
Once a decision is made to be tasteful and risk-free, all spark, soul, variety, sleaze, spontaneity and fun go right out the window