Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.
Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction.
Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides.
Your first ritual that you do during the day is the highest leveraged ritual, by far, because it has the effect of setting your mind, and setting the context, for the rest of your day.
I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is.
What I ate for breakfast on school mornings was one buttered roll--a soft roll, not a hard roll--and one cup of cocoa; any attempt to alter this menu I regarded as a plot to poison me.
If a man rejoice not in his drinking, he is mad; for in drinking it's possible ... to fondle breasts, and to caress well tended locks, and there is dancing withal, and oblivion of woe.
The better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christian for many centuries and will not publicly eat human flesh uncooked in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop.
The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver.
This is the real tragedy of America's 'Internet freedom agenda': It's going to be the dissidents in China and Iran who will pay for the hypocrisy that drove it from the very beginning.
The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.
Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.
The Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop.
The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.
He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
I know of a charm by way of a prayer that will preserve a man from the violence of guns and all manner of fire-weapons and engines but it will do me no good because I do not believe it
Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.
Gentle feelings produce profoundly beneficial effects upon stern natures. It is the spring rain which melts the ice-covering of the earth, and causes it to open to the beams of heaven.
I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago.
Preacher is a book that somehow allows me time by its settling on it's characters, that sort of modern gothic western feel. You're not likely to see the boat veering too far from that.
Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.
I think having an open mind about these things is probably the most important thing, because even though I've never had an experience of the supernatural, something I couldn't explain.
I love things on the decline because that's really the natural progression of our lives. We're born, we're feisty for the first couple of years, and then the inevitable decline begins.
The highest goal of spirituality is Self-realization, but what does that mean? It means to feel your Self as a living reality in this moment, and there is always only this moment. (10)
No matter how developed you are in any other area of your life, no matter what you say you believe, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened you think you are, how you eat tells all.
The real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
I was thinking about the legacy of ghosts in fiction, and specifically the moral power of those Dickensian ghosts. Because a ghost can be a very powerful but also manipulative element.
While writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], [idea of inclusion] occurred to me, you either believe in the Constitution or you don't. If you do, it's intense in what it wants of us.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.
Many of the twisted minds and crippled characters in the world were made by careless parents who kept their children away from knives and fires, but put permanent scars on their souls.
You [the teacher] do not merely insert a lot of facts, if you teach them [the students] properly. It is not like injecting 500 cc. of serum, or administering a year's dose of vitamins.
The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.
Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming.
By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.
[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits.
You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.' Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.
The fog lifted in the evening and a blue-black band at the horizon marked the end of the sea and the beginning of thought. Where does a beginning begin when nothing has gone on before?
The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.
There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.
Man can see his reflection in water only when he bends down close to it, and the heart of man, too, must lean down to the heart of his fellow; then it will see itself within his heart.
Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.
Of two evils, had not an author better be tedious than superficial! From an overflowing vessel you may gather more, indeed, than you want, but from an empty one you can gather nothing.
In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything.
If we reverse the outer shell and the essence--in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell--our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand.
Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is.
If we are to be happy, decent and secure of our souls: drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food; go on the water from time to time; dance on occasions, and sing in a chorus.
I thought you needed to be tougher. But I've been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants.
Refills are free,” the waitress tells us with a frown, like she’s hoping we’re not the kind of people who ask for endless refills. I am already pretty sure we are exactly those people.
Nevermore," Lolli said. "That's what Luis calls it, because there are three rules: Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row.