Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.
It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know.
The curly red lines across the African deserts had the fascination of a magnet, and I hoped fervently that the pioneers who were writing their names over the blank spaces, would leave just one small desert for me.
Climate change is not an environmental problem. It is a civilizational problem. Climate change is not just another issue. If it is not addressed in very short order, it will swamp every other issue facing us today
I could have sworn that the man's eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving him joy beyond measure.
Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.
People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.
It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.
I'm afraid I'm still trying to find that balance. Especially now that everyone wants a piece of me. I find that I have to become more and more reclusive, and pick and choose when I am public and when I am private.
We all fantasize about work that uses our creativity, is self-directed, happens during the hours we choose, and occurs in an attractively lit setting with fascinating people - you know, jobs like women have on TV.
Most fledgling and mid-list writers are lucky to be offered a 4-figure sum and are not only expected to deliver copy that needs minimal editing but also take an active part in marketing and publicizing their work.
Sometimes rescue comes to you. It just shows up, and you do nothing. Maybe you deserve it, maybe you don't. But be ready, when it comes, to decide if you will take the outstretched hand and let it pull you ashore.
Spouting quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclearpowered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.
Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
Back when George W. Bush was identifying his Axis of Evil, it struck me that a longer and more instructive list could be compiled of the Axis of the Humiliated (or Insulted and Injured, to borrow from Dostoevsky).
I assure you he died screaming like a girl. (Daimon) Oh, I am so offended by that. What is the deal with that sexist statement? I’m a female and I don’t scream. But I’ve killed many a male Daimon who did. (Danger)
I didn’t know I could do that. I mean I knew I could do that before, but I didn’t know it was actually working now until you screamed. I thought I was just imagining it. And don’t give me that look…sorry? (Xypher)
I learned a long time ago not to judge people by what they look like, sound like, or by the clothes they wear. Just because a house is nice and shiny out front doesn’t mean it’s not rotting on the inside. (Kyrian)
It wasn’t a gun wound. I just fell. (Zarek) No offense, but you’d have to fall of Mount Everest to have those kinds of wounds. (Astrid) Yeah, maybe next time I’ll remember to take my climbing gear with me. (Zarek)
What an alliance, huh? A Dark-Hunter and a Spathi united to guard an Apollite. Who would have ever imagined? (Wulf) Love makes strange bedfellows. (Acheron) I thought that was politics. (Wulf) It’s both. (Acheron)
People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, "The baby is crying, you should feed her," and the maternal grandmother will say, "Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired?
To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice; hence, freedom takes a positive and constructive step which causes being to pass to existence in a movement which is constantly surpassed.
The hardest thing is spending twelve hours a day accommodating the rest of the world, then going home at night and criticizing it. I would be curious about what I'd write if I didn't have to worry about offending.
I'd really like having a couple days of being a rock star, although I'd rather be a backup - like maybe the drummer for Muse It would also be fun to be gorgeous, like be Charlize Theron, just for a couple of days.
As far as expense, I think if 'Twilight' does well enough, then we should be able to do the big expensive stuff for the sequels. I mean, we have to have werewolves, there's no way around it. They have to be there.
You create a path of your own by looking within yourself and listening to your soul, cultivating your own ways of experiencing the sacred and then practicing it. Practicing until you make it a song that sings you.
There was no discussion between them; it was as if the bugs had worked out this whole scenario long ago. Temp put on a burst of speed for the end of the bridge, and Tick turned to face down the army of rats alone.
society has no qualms about a masseuse who is paid for touching people, or about laborers, or professional athletes or dancers, all of whom make a living with their bodies. Why should we make an exception for sex?
When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.
I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you of all people. Throughout my life you were the one person I could turn to. The one person I could always count on to understand. And now that I’ve lost you, I’ve lost everything.
'Theogony' should be read before the great Homeric epics because it gives an account of the cosmology that is taken for granted by Homer. It does for paganism what the Old Testament attempted to do for monotheism.
I really just don't think that teenagers and adults are maybe as different as people think, and so the best roles, to me, are treated like real people and not like these 'crazy kids we don't know what to do with.'
People talk about Obama in the same way 12-year-olds talk about Bieber, and speculate about what he and Michelle are like behind closed doors the same way those 12-year-olds wonder what Justin and Selena are like.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you have a friend who says he does not believe in conspiracy, look him straight in the eye and tell them that they are ignorant. 'I love you brother, I love you sister, but you are stupid.
Nonjudgmentalism is not really nonjudgmental. It is the judgment that . . . everything is the same, nothing is better. This is as barbaric and untruthful a doctrine as has yet emerged from the fertile mind of man.
It is the easiest thing in the world to obey God when He commands us to do what we like, and to trust Him when the path is all sunshine. The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark, and through the dark.
It is a bad sign when a new-born babe has not lungs enough to make itself heard over the whole house. It is equally a bad symptom when the new convert is born dumb, and cannot find his voice to praise God audibly.
I've hung around in absolute exhaustion and starvation waiting for an idea to hit, which might have been months. I've talked things over with editors, found out what they wanted, and when they wanted it delivered.
Solitude is so necessary both for society and for the individual that when society fails to provide sufficient solitude to develop the inner life of the persons who compose it, they rebel and seek false solitudes.
The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.
It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue.
In the West, we have become addicted to work. Americans now work the longest hours in the world. And the result is not health, wealth and wisdom, but rather a lot of anxiety, a lot of ill health and a lot of debt.
Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.
I am simply pointing out that at the rate at which we are going the whole genetic engineering technology will end up in the hands of the political system to be used for the complete control and subjugation of man.
What we need in fantasy is the sudden balm of clarity - a temporary reprieve from life's white noise and clamor of pain, a kind of time-out. Such clarity, a new perspective, is made possible by fantastic metaphor.
I am terrible at doing nothing. I'm not brilliant at doing one thing at a time, either. Ideally, I would fill out my tax return while watching a film; peel potatoes while reading the post; send emails in the bath.
Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.
Above all things, be not made an ass to carry the burdens of other men if any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou has to spare if he presses thee further, he is not thy friend at all.
It appears to be among the laws of nature, that the mighty of intellect should be pursued and carped by the little, as the solitary flight of one great bird is followed by the twittering petulance of many smaller.