Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's survival.
I'm sure there are many more people who can identify with failure and hardship in life than with the success of an Alexander Hamilton or a John D. Rockefeller.
Every country that aspires to become a nation needs its heroes, its eminent civic and moral leaders, and if it doesn't have them, it's our duty to invent them.
Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.
Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf.
I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?
Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.
The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.
I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.
First of all it's usually women who run these higher primate sanctuaries, rarely men. They are white. They come from privileged backgrounds. They are educated.
I don't want it to be all that self-conscious or artificial, but it really grows out of my having invented myself as a listener so that I could hear her voice.
What often, too often, happens in magazines is that you end up with a great editorial product, and then you're selling things that you don't really approve of.
Remove all the traffic lights, yellow lines, one-way systems and road markings, and let blissful anarchy prevail. I imagine it would produce a kind of harmony.
Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.
A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves.
The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.
It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.
Once I’m done with a book, I’m done! I’m just not a sequel kind of girl. By the time I’ve finished a book I’ve read it so many times that it’s time to move on.
Forest deep, silent bells There's a secret no one tells Valley quiet, water still Lynburns watching on the hill Apples red, corn gold Almost everyone grows old
Kami'd always retold her fairy tales to make the fair maidens braver and more self-sufficient, but she had never had any real objection to the handsome prince.
With my stuff, I think I've tried. I've been courted. I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I've been courted to be someone who could sell a lot of books.
It’s entirely up to you, Artie. He lives or dies by your word. (Acheron) No, akri! Don’t ask her that. She never let me have no fun. She a mean goddess! (Simi)
Don’t ask me any more questions, Keller. I’m just going to lie to you and I’d rather not have the stress of trying to remember what lie I handed you. (Alexion)
C'mon, Tabitha. You stabbed me the night we met without even blinking. (Valerius) Yeah, but you were a dirtbag then. (Tabitha) I think I'm offended. (Valerius)
Fetch Constantine, or I’ll make boots out of your hide, bear. (Arcadian Sentinel) Don’t touch me, or I’ll mount your jewels to the wall over your head. (Aimee)
I want the tigard. (Varyk) And I want you to leave. Guess who’s going to win this argument? And in case you’re even denser than you appear, it’s not you. (Dev)
I would have, had someone not detonated their charges prematurely. (Nykyrian) Yeah, Cruel. You have to watch that premature detonation problem of yours. (Hauk)
No one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.
Don't give up. There are too many nay-sayers out there who will try to discourage you. Don't listen to them. The only one who can make you give up is yourself.
I like everyone who tries to show that madness is, in large part, conditioned by society and particularly by the family, and therefore, strongly affects women.
Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.
I not only saw the possibility of nuclear war, I feared it very much. If they started a military conflagration, it would automatically lead to nuclear warfare.
Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day.
The point to remember about selling things is that, as well as creating atmosphere and excitement around your products, you've got to know what you're selling.
I never took the bus. Never. Walking meant you were eccentric or pious or a loser - riding the bus meant you were insane or masochistic and worse than a loser.
I’m going to carry you now,” he told her, “so we can move even faster. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Any response from you is unnecessary and unwelcome.
I lean over and put my good ear to his lips, which tickle me as he whispers. "Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me any time you like it.
Okay, listen to me, you're stronger than they are. You are. They just want a good show, that's all they want. You know how to hunt. Show them how good you are.
As long as Kline doesn't kiss you." The warning was clear in his voice. "Same goes." "If he kisses me, he's getting decked." I laughed. "You know what I meant.
Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount.
To Islamize doesn't make sense to me. But to center, but to have intellectual empathy and modesty - all these dimensions are important on how we look at truth.
I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.
I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn't have a point.
It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales and Cornwall, that the original British stock flourishes in its unmixed purity only among them.
Look whether it be indifferently, as well for sins secret as open, what you find to be your best cordials to comfort you, whether God's Word, or natural means.
Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.
What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
My father valued patriotism above all other social obligations, but he had his own particular interpretation of just how true patriotism was meant to function.
It's relatively simple. If we're not getting more, better, faster than they are getting more, better, faster, then we're getting less, no better or more worse.