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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 8abda30 | All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view. | Jean-Paul Sartre | ||
| 2f94840 | I had been born in order to fill the great need I had of myself. | Jean-Paul Sartre | ||
| 4d68511 | It's just what people do when they're getting old, when they're sick of themselves and their life; they think of money and take care of themselves. | Jean-Paul Sartre | ||
| f3e3074 | What is there to fear in such a regular world? | Jean-Paul Sartre | ||
| 99d8709 | The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices. [...] They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems. [...] "A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record.. | Frank Herbert | ||
| 2e749de | Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some . Always do it for an overriding purpose--and ! | Frank Herbert | ||
| 8b03c51 | All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building t.. | urban-sprawl | Neal Stephenson | |
| c8996a3 | Because, Jack, you volunteered to be taken down into eternal torment in place of her. This is the absolute (unless I'm mistaken) that any female requires from her man. | relationships women | Neal Stephenson | |
| f7a1744 | I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. | staring trouble women | Raymond Chandler | |
| 8ffec29 | You go in through double swing doors. Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in the world. They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don't have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever quite being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real i.. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 18d159d | Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 0d87abb | She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might,if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 70eade6 | Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may--until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can. Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good. Or until I'm hauled before somebody that can make me.. | interrogation police trust truth | Raymond Chandler | |
| dcccca0 | Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity. | Daniel C. Dennett | ||
| 9638352 | Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. | Michael Cunningham | ||
| 5876a54 | Please, God, send me something to adore. | Michael Cunningham | ||
| bfd4b4e | Suffering is an oxymoron. There is unfathomable peace and satisfaction in suffering for Christ. It is as though you have searched endlessly for your purpose in life and now found it in the most unexpected place: In the death of your flesh. It is certainly a moment worth of laughter and dance. And in the end it is not suffering at all. The apostle Paul recommended that we find joy in it. Was he mad? | Ted Dekker | ||
| 2cc0c40 | Dr. Luce introduced the concept of "periphescence". The word itself means nothing; Luce made it up to avoid any etymological associations. The state of periphescence, however, is well known. It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of the beloved's hair. Periphescence denotes the inital drugged and happy bedtime where you sniff your .. | Jeffrey Eugenides | ||
| a6bf587 | Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. | literary-criticism literary-theory narrative nineteenth-century novels plot postmodernism reading semiotics victorians | Jeffrey Eugenides | |
| 61dc2c4 | This, then, is a story of Lincoln's political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of th.. | Doris Kearns Goodwin | ||
| 40fe8bb | Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality? | Elisabeth Kübler-Ross | ||
| 0764d4d | The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. | Stephen R. Covey | ||
| 57e227f | And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?" "The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped..." "That's not what I asked. Where is it?" "I don't know - how can I answer that?" "That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is cam.. | ignorance seriousness understanding | Dan Millman | |
| 02385a1 | Shoot, boy, the country's just fulla folks what knows everything, and don't understand nothing, just fullofem. | Truman Capote | ||
| 646ac94 | She made no answer, and he went on: "What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring--that's all." | love reality | Edith Wharton | |
| c6ba9f2 | But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 9f510e4 | He had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against famil.. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 531509d | I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap! | life-and-living rubbish-heap | Edith Wharton | |
| 8ad29a9 | In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conduction frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans. | Douglas Adams | ||
| 65a5ffd | Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this -- partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties. | physicists | Douglas Adams | |
| 2976437 | Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe." | Douglas Adams | ||
| a1d954b | If you've done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? | science | Douglas Adams | |
| 4101a1c | One day old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had declared that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches. The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't looking. 'Have faith,' Old Thrashbarg said, 'or burn!' They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed easiest. | Douglas Adams | ||
| cacf4fb | Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day." | Douglas Adams | ||
| 06fa495 | Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, r.. | biro hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy hitchiker humor pens | Douglas Adams | |
| d012683 | Goosnargh," said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know what it should be." | Douglas Adams | ||
| 1388808 | To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. | Douglas Adams | ||
| bf865e1 | He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon. | depressed scared solitude thinking thoughts | Douglas Adams | |
| ade3877 | One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. You did rightly. | J.R.R. Tolkien | ||
| 2a58421 | Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow. | justice manwë silmarillion valar | J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| 5d76388 | But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning. | power | J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| c62d228 | How could such a large door be kept secret from everybody outside, apart from the dragon?" [Bilbo] asked. He was only a little hobbit you must remember." | hobbits | J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| da7f7f8 | Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him. | extraordinary sf | J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| 7bdd240 | And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!" "I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered." | saruman | J.R.R. Tolkien |