Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the state of society in which we now find ourselves, it is difficult to imagine a nation which lived solely on bread and vegetables.
Once fire was discovered, the instinct for improvement made men bring food to it. First to dry it, then to put it on the coals to cook.
Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.
Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.
Maybe there was no happily ever after [...] but there was happiness sometimes and she had it now, doing what she knew she was born for.
I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.
Sometimes, when you catch someone unaware at just the right time and in just the right light, you can catch sight of what they will be.
I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.
My lazy, unfair assumption is that everything's easier when you're young and stunning. And maybe it is! But I'd like to see for myself.
You don't really know when the last time you're going to do something is; the middle can often be a bit blurry. Firsts are very potent.
We learn so much about the world by what we take in through movies and TV and books - we learn who's worthy of having their story told.
But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
How much better might human communication be if words were as precious as diamonds? If each of us were allotted only 100 words per day?
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. . Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.
War is a stage brought about by the standardizing of thought, revolt, and life - not by the freedom of life, not by the revolt of life.
Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one or of the many. It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar.
If you do not give your children freedom, when they grow up, they will break away from the family, and then your hearts will be broken.
Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.
Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.
I haven't really spoken to God since I was a boy and I've rediscovered god and prayer in the process and all of that has come together.
In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.
Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.
There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste. [Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.]
It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation.
No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge.
Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
Whoever would understand the poet Must go into the poet's country. [Ger., Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.]
Farewell, I wish our souls may meet with comfort at the journey's end.- The Heavenly Footman: A Puritan's View of How to Get to Heaven.
Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.
That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.
You look at the Pyramids. They're not one fraction of an inch off in terms of their alignment. They were built without a bonding agent.
Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.
I am of this mind, that might and malice, deceit and treachery perjury and impiety may lawfully be committed in love; which is lawless.
It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.
The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate.
My first day as an intern in the books department at 'Cosmopolitan' also happened to be the day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced.
A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.
Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.
We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against.
I said, 'I need to know how he died.' He flipped back and pointed at, 'Why?' So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.
Haven't you done enough for a lifetime? Think about it - two power - crazed magicians killed, a hundred power - crazed magicians saved.
It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.
Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
The violet sea longs for the birth of gods, for to be born here is an unspeakable feast, a drumroll of commanding retinues and tritons.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
The goal is to live with God like composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.
Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.
No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's end.