Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
But evil is a cunning force. It can find the weakness in any man, even the bravest. [...] It only takes a single weak moment to let evil in.
And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence.
But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
With a heavy heart, I turned and walked away. I knew that as long as I lived I'd never forget the two little graves and the sacred red fern.
America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
You see, the problem with Dave Cameron is that people know who he is. The less people know about him, the more he's likely to get re-elected.
Like many people in Britain, I have an affectionate respect for the Queen, and am surprised that I should be having such republican thoughts.
The very fact that the jaguar can become extinct while the Pekingese survives indicates to me that someone hasn't thought this thing through.
It’s the glitches and twists, I thought, that make this universe unique and compelling. Without flaws, there would be no depth, no substance.
Strive for the Hereafter according to how long you shall remain there, and strive for this world according to how long you shall remain here.
envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition - only to his getting it.
Counting obligations under Medicare and Social Security, the real debt of the United States is more than 10 times the reported national debt.
Sadness doesn't equal weakness, sweetheart. If anything, it shows the love you have inside of you, and nothing stronger in this world exists.
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console, redeem, guide, comfort, expand and reawaken us.
I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.
Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.
It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.
I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.
We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.
My own perception of Malcolm was one of something that bordered on fascination because I was looking at him and reacting to him as a subject.
As a stoic I must despise injury or, rather, I must not feel it, must not be affected by it so that it cannot violate the freedom of my soul.
We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!
If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds.
Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.
By the law of nature, there is no pleasure in suffering; but divine love, when it reigns in a heart, makes it take delight in its sufferings.
The only consent hinge in life is that everyhin is changing. And that's a little scary, but it means that hints can't be bad or hard forever.
Ignorance and fear are twins whose mother is slavery and whose father is oppression, and the mentality of the whole family is that of slaves.
Great sex is not a pleasant soak in the tub, with the scented candle burning. Great sex is more like a bomb exploding inside your right mind.
I do my business in the morning, and then at 2 P.M., I write fiction for the rest of the day. I like my husband, so I don't work at weekends.
I am not quite myself, I think.But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.
The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.
I dislike loud-mouthed patriots who suggest they like our country more than I do. Some people's idea of patriotism is hating other countries.
A Canadian settler hates a tree, regards it as his natural enemy, as something to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated by all and any means.
But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end
People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.
I had assumed I'd pack my bags and head elsewhere after 'Constellation,' but Chechnya is creeping its way into the margins of my second book.
The important thing is to strive toward a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.
No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.
Those of us with water in our personalities don't pick where we'll flow to. All we can do is flow where the landscape of our lives carries us
Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.
I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.
I have spent myself on all kinds of things ... I have advanced much politically but I have written little and moreover have written it badly.
You have to appear wiser and more prudent than is required by the people you are dealing with if you want to give a high opinion of yourself.