Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees - perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss - an undistorted and more veritable world.
Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.
You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves
We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or Thai.
There aint any news in being good. You might write the doings of all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and have room to spare.
If Christian scientists had more science and doctors more Christianity, it wouldn't make any difference which you called in - if you had a good nurse.
Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.
I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
You will be a failure, until you impress the subconscious with the conviction you are a success. This is done by making an affirmation which 'clicks.'
Friends, in my experience, are like ladies' fashions. They come and go with the seasons, and are rarely of such stout stuff as bears repeated wearing.
I find that if somebody is writing and drawing a comic book, planning it to be a movie and a game at the same time tends to lead to a pretty lame job.
I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself.
Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.
Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discardsit with indifference.
Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will.
We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'
The politeness was painful. I wanted to push through it, to return to the glow of the night of the concert, but I was unsure of how to get back there.
Nothing happens without intention, Willem. Nothing. This theory of yours - life is rules by accidents - isn't that just one huge excuse for passivity?
When you work with somebody else, you automatically get a mixed voice. You hope it will benefit the story. But you don't know what the result will be.
Comics are such a powerful educational tool. Simply put, there are certain kinds of information that are best communicated through sequential visuals.
I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock - the sword and sorcery novels - when I was about 13 or 14.
Humans, the supremely social mammals, are ethical and intellectual sponges. We unconsciously absorb, for good or ill, the influences that surround us.
I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.
Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.
Christ's religion needs no prop of any kind from any worldly source, and to the degree that it is thus supported is a millstone hanged about its neck.
Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality.
Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.
I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.
The circle, or ring, dance was seen as an earthly counterpart of the heavenly dance of the angels, which was itself a celebration of the resurrection.
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.
'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.
I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.
It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!
Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.
Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
Like most readers, I tend to skip the acknowledgements at the beginnings of books: the 'To-My-Wife-Without-Whose-Invaluable-Assistance' kind of thing.
I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.
Because golf exposes the flaws of the human swing - a basically simple maneuver - it causes more self-torture than any game short of Russian roulette.
I have found no better way than to value and savor the sacredness of daily living, to rely on repetition, the humdrum rhythm which heals and steadies.
Your past is just that, the past, a place within your psyche with no more reality to it then the picture of a castle on a postcard is made from stone.
I think it should be made clear that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, they have not got into bed together; they are merely sharing a room.
The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.
They haven't any spirit in them - no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or the other-Lord! What is he but funk and precautions.
Oh! the joy Of young ideas painted on the mind, In the warm glowing colors fancy spreads On objects not yet known, when all is new, And all is lovely.