Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The commercial class has always mistrusted verbal brilliancy and wit, deeming such qualities, perhaps with some justice, frivolous and unprofitable.
So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly?' I asked. He looked at me as if I were stupid. 'You die, of course. That's what deadly means.
Goosnargh," said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know what it should be.
Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up.
I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.
Even light, which travels so fast it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars.
The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
By the time they get to 6th grade honor roll students won't risk making a mistake, and sometimes to be successful, you have to risk making mistakes.
Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from something that happens in my head and my heart.
Singularitarians are the munchkins of the real world. We just ignore all the usual dungeons and head straight for the cycle of infinite wish spells.
With every pill we have prescribed for us we should also be given a creative prayer, a suggested way to correct our destructive patterns of thought.
I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.
My parents are highly evolved worriers. ... If worrying were an Olympic sport, my parents' faces would have graced the Wheaties box a long time ago.
Writing is literally transformative. When we read, we are changed. When we write, we are changed. It's neurological. To me, this is a kind of magic.
I dreamed of being a part of the stories—even terrifying one, even horror stories—because at least the girls in stories were alive before they died.
There is one privilege we'll never lose; currently it's called nationality. It means that everyone was born somewhere, which is infact self-evident.
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
Celibacy and suicide are a similar levels of understanding, suicide and a martyr's death not so by any means, perhaps marriage and a martyr's death.
Never use 'submit' as a verb for sending work to magazine or book publishers; say 'offer,' and never, ever submit. Keep your knees unbent. Be brave.
Naturally, business and pleasure can be readily combined, but a certain balance should exist, and the latter should not predominate over the former.
The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.
I'm not paranoid, but I am cautious. I don't drink tea with strangers, I don't fly Aeroflot and I avoid certain countries with close ties to Russia.
Knowledge, like all things, is best in moderation," intoned the Will. "Knowing everything means you don't need to think, and that is very dangerous.
I find the presence of the sea quite inspiring, and sometimes I do just get out and walk around and take in the sea breeze to try and clear my mind.
I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'
It doesn't require much thought for one to realise that any travel book worthy of the name has to be a departure from the standard idea of the form.
The business of taking a book and transforming into a script to make this thing called a film - it's a mysterious process to me; sometimes it works.
Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.
Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
As Coleridge said, "We receive but what we give." The happy life is a life of continual generosity in which we go out to meet and acclaim the world.
The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.
There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary.
To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.
Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.
Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.
Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!
And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?
Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.
Human society is based on want. Life is based on want. Wild-eyed visionaries may dream of a world without need. Cloud-cuckoo-land. It can't be done.
My death is very near to me, and of this I am glad, for I desire to pursue the quest in other realms, as it has been promised to me that I shall do.
Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.
he who finds he has wasted a shilling may by diligence hope to fetch it up again; but no repentance or industry can ever bring back one wasted hour.
The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.
There was no military reason to drop atomic bombs on Japan. They were used as terrorist weapons - killing innocent people to influence other people.
Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness.
We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.
I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.
It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.