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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c46b488 | Good begets good; evil begets evil; and even if the good you give is met by evil, you have no choice but to go on giving better than you get. Otherwise-and these were Willy's exact words-why bother to go on living? | Paul Auster | ||
| 2fdb4a0 | Existence was bigger than just life. It was everyone's life all together, and even if you lived in Buffalo, New York and had never been more than ten miles from home, you were part of the puzzle, too. It didn't matter how small your life was. | Paul Auster | ||
| 23c63e5 | but the truly frightening thing was to learn that his mother was no stronger than he was, that the blows of the world hurt her just as much as they hurt him and that except for the fact that she was older, there was no difference between them. | life parents parents-and-children | Paul Auster | |
| fecfa83 | an exercise in the art of paying attention, and paying attention, Ferguson discovered, was the first step in learning how to be alive. | Paul Auster | ||
| dd3e64f | They had come to the end of what they could talk about. Beyond that point there was nothing: the random thoughts of men who knew nothing. | Paul Auster | ||
| dc16a06 | If the world weren't such a beautiful place, we might all turn into cynics | Paul Auster | ||
| 013e446 | For only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves. | Paul Auster | ||
| bdbd31d | nHn dy'man mwjwdwn fy lnhy@ , dy'man nqf `l~ Hf@ llHZ@ l'khyr@ , wlmdh ynbGy 'n ntwq` 'n nkwn mkhtlfyn lan ? | Paul Auster | ||
| cab1149 | SHyH 'n bTn qdmyk mthbWt `l~ l'rD, lkn kl m tbq~ mnk m`rWD llhw | Paul Auster | ||
| 87ed32d | There is no escape from this. Either you do or you don't. And if you do, you can't be sure of doing it the next time. And if you don't, you never will again. | Paul Auster | ||
| f9bd6ad | Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one's private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history - which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance. | memory past | Paul Auster | |
| d611860 | Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there is nothing more to be said. | Paul Auster | ||
| f0b1957 | But the present is no less dark than the past, and its mystery is equal to anything the future might hold. Such is the way of the world: one step at a time, one word and then the next. | Paul Auster | ||
| c8de7f2 | No, she can weather his disappointments if she has to, that isn't the problem, she can put up with anything as long as she feels he is solidly with her, but that is precisely what she doesn't feel anymore, and even if he seems content to glide along with her out of old habits, the reflex of old affections, she is becoming ever more certain, no, is probably too strong a word for it, she is becoming ever more willing to entertain the idea t.. | paul auster | ||
| 205e79e | l~ lrGm mm qd tftrD, fnaW lHqy'q l ymkn `ksh. wmjrWd kwnka qdr `l~ ldkhwl, l y`ny 'naW fy stT`tk 'n tkhrj. flmdkhl l ttHwl l~ mkhrj, wl shy yDmn 'n ybq~ lbb ldhy jtzth qbl brh@ fy mknh `ndm tstdyr ltbHth `nh mn jdyd. | Paul Auster | ||
| a8ada7f | All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that. | children love moon palace | Paul Auster | |
| 9a817f5 | Life got in the way -- two years in the army, work, marriage, family responsibilities, the need to earn more and more money, all the muck that bogs us down when we don't have the balls to stand up for ourselves -- but I had never lost my interest in books. | Paul Auster | ||
| 58258b8 | The thing is---fear can't hold you any more than a dream... | William Golding | ||
| 576d1ac | Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the cruelest of men, flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men, moments of simplicity and gra.. | caesar ethics historical-fiction john-edward-williams morality politics roman-empire rome | John Williams | |
| 8331491 | He forgot his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear | William Golding | ||
| 7054189 | ROMEO There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murders in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee. | money | William Shakespeare | |
| 5d7500b | There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. | greed money murder poison | William Shakespeare | |
| 5bc04aa | Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean. | William Golding | ||
| c040db6 | She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house--it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body. | Alice Sebold | ||
| f206109 | Well, as my dad would say, it means she's out of this shithole. | Alice Sebold | ||
| c2b81d8 | You save yourself or you remain unsaved. | inspirational rape self-responsibility | Amy Reed | |
| 92257de | How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home? | secret | Alice Sebold | |
| d3bfa0d | There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 73f9dde | It is a sin to write this. | Ayn Rand | ||
| a199aaf | To a life; which is reason unto itself. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 46dc295 | You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark | society | Ayn Rand | |
| 60fab14 | Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice...It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an isolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibili.. | philosophical philosophy | Ayn Rand | |
| 28fe5dc | Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgme.. | individual rationality | Ayn Rand | |
| afeb781 | Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. | Ayn Rand | ||
| e152caf | The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too. | politics-of-the-united-states | Jon Stewart | |
| 97b1f6a | You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state. | messiness | Brian Greene | |
| dca2e85 | It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3a33938 | And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| df9e814 | And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'thou mayest'. | john-steinbeck man soul theology | John Steinbeck | |
| 992dc5d | And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in between anywhere. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 82081ba | But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man - he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's us.. | john-steinbeck lives money the-grapes-of-wrath value worth | John Steinbeck | |
| 8b0fef3 | It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. | subconscious-mind | John Steinbeck | |
| 23018ac | Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn't last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can't you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors? | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3303830 | You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too. | John Steinbeck |