Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid.
Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.
There are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
What are we going to do?" asked the Professor. "At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost.
He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day.
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.
If critics of 'readable fiction' want literature to change the ways people dream, they need first to come down from the mountain and speak to the people.
I'd defend the right for any novelist to experiment with form or language, but if people don't take to it, don't react by making out that they are thick.
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
An organization must always remember that its objective is not getting people to listen to speeches by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves.
In the scientific world I find just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread at last through the entire range of human activity.
Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free.
You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose.
Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.
Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out.
There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.
Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.
We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.
If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.
And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.
A beautifully constructed borshch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.
A critic is a person who rationalizes his likes and dislikes in such impressive language that the layman thinks he is reasoning instead of rationalizing.
I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
When you come, please be so kind as to check your neuroses and psychoses at the gate... Fans and other obnoxious pests would do well to maintain silence.
And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest.
We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
When one remembers how the Catholic Church has been governed, and by whom, one realizes that it must have been divinely inspired to have survived at all.
Imagine the consequences of having the first woman prime minister who is the milk snatcher. [Margaret Thatcher] takes away the nourishment of the nation.
My family settled in Cairo in 1980. I was nine. I missed Libya terribly, but I also took to Cairo. I perfected the accent. People assumed I was Egyptian.
Great. Lookout. I'm a lookout. Another thing to put on my college applications. What do I do if I see someone?" Val looked back. "I'm not sure, actually.
I’m Lila, and yes, he’s crazy. But you must have noticed that before now. He was crazy back when I knew him, and he’s obviously gotten crazier over time.
We must take responsibility for educating ourselves. Being part of a 'smart mob' doesn't guarantee that you're a responsible participant or collaborator.
All good government must begin at home. It is useless to make good laws for bad people; what is wanted is this, to subdue the tyranny of the human heart.
It’s as much a writer’s concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.
Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes.
Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.
I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.
I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
Superhero stories are kind of in my DNA from childhood on, so I think I'm genetically drawn to playing in the genre when the opportunity presents itself.
Venice seemed incredibly lovely, elvishly lovely--to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.
It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.
All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But... I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.
I am wholly in favour of 'dull stodges'. A surprising large proportion prove 'educable': for which a primary qualification is the willingness to do work.
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.