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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 699ef3a | The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you | of-wolves reflections wolf | Barry Lopez | |
| 09b55f9 | Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget. | enlightenment travel learning landscape meditation | Barry Lopez | |
| ccb0a65 | The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ...but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| f054f72 | I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 9ccfb38 | However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 80bd1f2 | I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 2897ce0 | One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, .. | war wood-pile field red black | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 236b191 | If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. | money work simple-life simple-living productivity | Henry David Thoreau | |
| d580b2d | Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 3684f5b | I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 40759be | Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking. | Terry Eagleton | ||
| 219e0d6 | But that can never be," said Milo, jumping to his feet. "Don't be too sure," said the child patiently, "for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are. You see," he went on, "it's very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it's there, but you just don't know where -- but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that i.. | mathematics | Norton Juster | |
| a3c7e15 | I warned you; I warned you I was the Senses Taker," sneered the Senses Taker. "I help people find what they're looking for, hear what they're listening for, run after what they're chasing, and smell what isn't even there. And, furthermore," he cackled, hopping around gleefully on his stubby legs, "I'll steal your sense of purpose, take your sense of duty, destroy your sense of proportion -- and, but for one thing, you'd be helpless ye.. | sense-of-purpose senses sense-of-humor | Norton Juster | |
| 94c55f3 | You weren't thinking and you weren't paying attention either. People who don't pay attention often get stuck in the Doldrums. | thinking | Norton Juster | |
| 1697e1b | just follow that line forever," said the Mathemagician, "and when you reach the end, turn left. There you'll find the land of Infinity, where the tallest, the shortest, the biggest, the smallest, and the most and least of everything are kept." "I don't have that much time," said Milo anxiously. "isn't there a quicker way?" "Well, you might try this flight of stairs," he suggested, opening another door and pointing up."It goes there, too." | Norton Juster | ||
| 51455c1 | They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been. | Norton Juster | ||
| e3519ac | It's us," Stephen said. "Oh, thank God," said a voice. Callum emerged from behind the Dumpster. Even with all that was going on, it was hard not to take notice of this: he wore only his underpants and his socks and shoes. ...I don't think I hid my staring very well either. "Go ahead and change," Stephen said, handing me the bag. "I'll go and get the car." "Please be quick," Callum added. "This is not as fun as it appears." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 08e7154 | When they separated, the freckleless spot between Pete's eyes was bright red. Before anything else could be said or done, May grabbed her bike and hopped on. She waited until she was six houses down to turn and see if he was still standing in the driveway watching her. He was. She stopped for just a moment, and they caught each other's eyes. Then he slowly started walking backward toward the house. May couldn't see that well, considering th.. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 3a92698 | Something about this boat screamed, "I am a very popular model in the world's oil-bearing regions. I cost more than your soul!" | Maureen Johnson | ||
| b02e565 | Sometimes I even felt like he dated me as part of his plan, like they were going to have a checklist on the application, and one of the things to tick off was going to be, "Do you have a reasonably intelligent girlfriend who shares your aspirations, and who is fully prepared to accept your limited availability?" | Maureen Johnson | ||
| ab2d1c3 | when something happens to me - good, bad, boring it doesn't matter - I have to someone to make it count. There's no point in anything happening if you can't talk about it. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| c9d88b6 | He's been in love with Miss Gina since high school, but he doesn't really know how to talk to girls, so he's just been...staying around her since then. He just tends to go where she goes." "Isn't that stalking?" Jazza said. "Legally, no," I replied. "I asked my parents this when I was little. What he does is creepy and socially awkward, but it's not actually stalking." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 4aef892 | Go talk to her," Boo said. "About what?" "Anything." "You want me to walk up to her and say, 'Are you a ghost?'" "I do that," she replied. "I love it when you get it wrong," Callum said. "Once. It happened ." "It happened twice," Stephen said, looking over." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 5085bbb | She didn't even notice right away that a small animal had come out from behind a nearby car and was slowly making its way toward the trash can she was standing near. She flipped through some old files in her mind, trying to come up with what this thing might be, and after a few seconds decided that--impossible as it seemed--it was a fox. | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 898729d | What are you?" I asked. "I'm the Ghost of the Night Before Exams." "And how long did it take you to come up with that?" Jazza asked. "I'm a busy man," he replied." | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 66e9375 | I feel warm and reassured," I whispered. "He's like Santa." -- | Maureen Johnson | ||
| 3728dff | This law ... defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war. | philosophy ecology exploitation | Daniel Quinn | |
| dbdc53c | As Cinderella would probably tell you, even a prince who only recognizes your footwear is preferable to a lifetime of cleaning grates. | Barbara Hambly | ||
| 7c237db | Doubtless we cannot see that other higher Spaceland now, because we have no eye in our stomachs. | observed-reality | Edwin A. Abbott | |
| f655713 | Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you. | Edwin A. Abbott | ||
| 2ce0197 | I don't know why you're enjoying this so much." "Because I am a connoisseur of fine irony. 'Tis a bit like fine wine, but has a better bite." | Lynn Kurland | ||
| 3fec8ab | Forgetting used to be a failing, a waste, a sign of senility. Now it takes effort. It may be as important as remembering. | James Gleick | ||
| f31a1fb | We do not ask for wealth because he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him. | Chinua Achebe | ||
| ca858d9 | When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight. | Chinua Achebe | ||
| 4b5a64f | White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption--which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negroes accept and adopt white standards--is revealed in all kinds of striking ways, from Bobby Kennedy's assurance that a Negro can become Presid.. | racism white-people | James Baldwin | |
| 0c544b0 | Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils. Sometimes, in the days which are coming--God grant me the grace to live them-- in the glare of the grey morning, sour-mouthed, eyelids raw .. | James Baldwin | ||
| b0589f9 | Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding at that moment would have locked me forever in that room with him. And in a way this was exactly what I wanted. | James Baldwin | ||
| 7fa7ccf | The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the air too thick to breath. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, licked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall, and th.. | James Baldwin | ||
| 3b622b3 | Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty. | James Baldwin | ||
| 97ee163 | I remember what it was...to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting-everything- was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete. | James Baldwin | ||
| 5785037 | In the beginning--and neither can this be overstated--a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that the treatment accorded him has nothing to do with anything he has done, that the attempt of white people to destroy him--for that is what it is--is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard for him to think of white people as devils. | racism | James Baldwin | |
| 77e62b5 | What are you doing all the time? And why do you say nothing? You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you smiled at me I hated you. I wanted to strike you. I wanted to make you bleed. You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone-- and you tell nothing but lies. What are you always hiding? And do you think I did not know when you made love to me, you were making love to no one? No one! Or everyone--bu.. | James Baldwin | ||
| 45b4338 | Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care. | James Baldwin | ||
| b00876a | I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had no meaning. | James Baldwin |