1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c86c31b | It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces. | aspirations bitterness disappointments hope life reality | alain de botton | |
| 07af910 | The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true. | philosophy religion religions | Alain de Botton | |
| 52f9843 | We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 839c6a5 | Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 0682fd1 | My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right. | inspirational money parenting religion | James McBride | |
| 6697ff4 | I am using the word as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too." | theory | Philip C. Plait | |
| a297a28 | Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three | secret thoughts | Edith Hamilton | |
| 87ba55e | Think about all the tomorrows of your life. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 1eb404d | Therefore I begin to think, my Lord, you purposely allow us to be brought into contact with the bad and evil things that you want changed. Perhaps that is the very reason that we are here in this world, where sin and sorrow and suffering and evil abound, so that we may let you teach us so to react to them, that out of them we can create lovely qualities to live forever. That is the only really satisfactory way of dealing with evil, not simp.. | Hannah Hurnard | ||
| 5c14060 | Instead of relief or gratitude, more guilt washes over me. Andy's certainly not faultless - no one ever is in a marriage | Emily Giffin | ||
| db0dd31 | I wonder why I miss her and Dex does not. Perhaps it is because I've known her so much longer. Or maybe it's the very nature of a friendship versus an intimate relationship. When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for g.. | Emily Giffin | ||
| a82cf8d | It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving. | Emily Giffin | ||
| 26bc8cc | Whenever you make a big decision in life, at least any decision where you have a viable alternative, there is an inevitable uneasy aftermath. Anxiety is merely a sign that you're taking something seriously. | Emily Giffin | ||
| 3cce051 | Why is a Christmas tree better than a man? Because it stays up, has cute balls, and looks good with the lights on! | christmas-jokes jokes | Emily Giffin | |
| 1daff4e | about William Blake) [Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death." And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of othe.. | creativity faith freedom | Brenda Ueland | |
| 9c53e5e | Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment. | William Blake | ||
| b6f9c82 | Jim has a nice life, he considers, but sometimes Frank has a hell of a lot more fun. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 1b1a116 | I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribing the dogs. | heat trees | Irvine Welsh | |
| 5d34f4d | Living like this is a full-time business. | live | Irvine Welsh | |
| ee2d77e | He really is a cunt ay the first order. Nae about that. The big problem is, he's a mate na aw. Whit kin ye dae? | drunk junkie truth | Irvine Welsh | |
| 356aed6 | y pienso en lo que molaria un Dios asi; uno que odiara a los putos cristianos, a los musulmanes, a los judios y a todos los demas capullos que le tocaran los huevos. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| b523f0d | We don't really communicate [...]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway. | reflection | Irvine Welsh | |
| 2fe1bde | I wouldn't care about hurting myself or anybody else. Because I know now that doing things doesn't hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them | Irvine Welsh | ||
| a834987 | This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares". Bernard's Poem: Did you see her on the telly the other day good family entertainment the tabloids say But when you're backstage at your new faeces audition you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition She was never a singer a comic or a dancer I cant say I was sad when I found out she had cancer Great Britain's earthy northern comedy queen takes the rand, understand from the racist Boer r.. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 2afdbc9 | Ye see, Rab, it's due to the way we feel about our arseholes. We now believe, as a species, if our soul is located anywhere in our bodies, it's up our arses. That's where it all goes. It makes sense. That's why we're obsessed with anal jokes, anal sex, anal hobbies...the arsehole - not the brain, not space - is the last frontier. That's what makes us revolutionaries. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 4d82a60 | THE LILIES This morning it was, on the pavement, When that smell hit me again And set the houses reeling. People passed like rain: (The way rain moves and advances over the hills) And it was hot, hot and dank, The smell like animals, strong, but sweet too. What was it? Something I had forgotten. I tried to remember, standing there, Sniffing the air on the pavement. Somehow I thought of flowers. Flowers! That bad smell! I looked.. | childhood flowers nature | Doris Lessing | |
| 7cae4f3 | That a work of the imagination has to be "really" about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary. The demand that stories must be "about" something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers. The phrase "political correctness" was.. | leftism political-correctness politics | Doris Lessing | |
| e0fbbd0 | The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in. | Doris Lessing | ||
| 5a3d422 | Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing? | Leif Enger | ||
| dc5c390 | We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day. | Leif Enger | ||
| ad01082 | and I'm thinking how nothing is as simple as you guess-not right or wrong, not Judd Travers, not even me or this dog I got here. But the good part is I saved Shiloh and opened my eyes some. Now that ain't bad for eleven. | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | ||
| d6214b6 | Since no one really knows what or who God is, or whether God is at all, why can't God be hope? | religious | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | |
| f06f865 | You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded though.. | criminal-law fear guilt innocence justice justice-system responsibility risk | Michael Connelly | |
| f898105 | She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that somewhere in another place entirely she was known and loved. | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| 88f9d5d | Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?" I said nothing. "What colour's a blackbird?" she said. "Black" "Typical!" | colour drawing nature noticing observation | David Almond | |
| c31664a | It occurred to her that nobody really knew what anybody else was upset about, and that seemed like a terrible thing. | growing-up | Kate DiCamillo | |
| ac10beb | When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about. | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| 98e3846 | Love!' said the princess. She stamped her foot. 'Why must everyone always speak of love? | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| d3e6734 | The world was beautiful. It surprised me, how beautiful it kept on insisting on being. In spite of all the lies, it was beautiful. | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| 6108d0d | I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart." - Gloria Dump" | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| befb733 | Perhaps what matters when all is said and done is not who puts us down but who picks us up. | middle-school resilience | Kate DiCamillo | |
| c1cde2e | I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing... How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother's death, Father Quinel's murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own. | Avi | ||
| 930f585 | Queer Ducks flock together. | Gail Carson Levine | ||
| 2d1e230 | I was just trying to give you the teen-male perspective." "Which is?" "If it moves, screw it." | pescoli teen-male-perspective | Lisa Jackson |