Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I could probably use some tips from a vocal trainer or something about breathing, but we all know it's not about technical prowess.
Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.
I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.
As to myself, if I were not a Calvinist, I think I should have no more hope of success in preaching to men, than to horses or cows.
It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.
Part of living your life is an awareness of the opportunities that can be missed and an awareness that time moves in one direction.
The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.
In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.
The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.
The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.
God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.
What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.
I quit Paris unwillingly, because I must part from my friends; and I quit the country unwillingly, because I must part from myself.
The law is not abstract, impartially arbitrating between conflicting social classes; it is a tool in the hands of those who govern.
There is no peace to be taken With poets who are young, For they worry about the wars to be fought and the songs that must be sung.
Brilliant minds make errors, brave souls falter, kind hearts leave scars. We are none of us perfect, but we're all perfectly human.
Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.
I smiled at her, but she was already lost in thought, looking around the library as if it held all the answers to all our problems.
I have a superhero complex. If I see anything bad happen, I run towards it, rather idiotically because, after all, what could I do?
I am hard-pressed to find a successful writer who doesn't have a similar story to mine - transformation through the public library.
A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.
Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.
I think that in many ways, just as forgiveness is impossible without love, sometimes love requires forgiveness for it to work, too.
Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister.
As a writer who writes poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, I think it's important to always maintain a firm grasp on genre and ethics.
He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt and had stopped in the middle of the hall, furiously scratching one bare forearm. "Fleas?" I said.
Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.
Cancer is a growth hormone for empathy, and empathy makes us useful to each other in ways we were not, could not have been, before.
Maybe it was for the best that she'd been so foolish, for if she'd known how hard this would be, perhaps she wouldn't have done it.
Alcohol and marijuana, if used in moderation, plus loud, usually low-class music, make stress and boredom infinitely more bearable.
If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next
They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.
I could go on to speak of sanity as compared with insanity, decency as compared with vandalism, friendship as compared with rabies.
He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.
Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: "Well, who are the best people to live with?
Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th.
I hate women who complain about being fat when they're like a size 5. Anything under size 5 isn't a woman. It's a boy with breasts.
Worry about the things you can control; the rest will either work themselves out, or they'll kill you. Either way, no more worries.
The fey in this country keep to themselves, and are a separate nation, much like the American Indians, but with even more autonomy.
His eyes widened just a bit, his lips flexed. I realized he was trying not to laugh. I hate it when people find my threats amusing.
You look wonderful", Jason said. "No compliments, Jason. I'm uncomfortable enough in the lingerie." "Then by all means take it off.
I didn't like being alone. Being alone was slightly better than having to deal with people, that's all. Or so I'd convinced myself.
It's unfair how the kids who are starving for attention tended to be so annoying that people had no inclination to give it to them.
There are no conditions to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.
I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.
The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!