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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| bb4c29a | Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal Sout.. | columbus-day columbus | Bill Bryson | |
| 087e369 | We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandes.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| b7e0c76 | The dandelion was long popularly known as the 'pissabed' because of its supposed diuretic properties, and other names in everyday use included 'mare's fart', 'naked ladies', 'twitch-ballock', 'hounds-piss', 'open arse', and 'bum-towel'. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 7f1dd51 | it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a remarkably small world Britain is. That is its glory, you see--that it manages at once to be intimate and small scale, and at the same time packed to bursting with incident and interest. I am constantly filled with admiration at this--at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few hundred yards pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley foun.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 88e5edd | London isn't a place at all. It's a million little places. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 749691b | Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of ti.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 9faa568 | As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place. He chuckled rather heartily at my naivete. 'I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a ve.. | science | Bill Bryson | |
| 5adf2e7 | a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. | myth reading-books novels | Karen Armstrong | |
| dd1b416 | It's harder to appreciate what you don't have to look hard to find. | Laura Dave | ||
| d12b85c | You have to grow about eight hundred grapes to get just one bottle of wine. If that isn't an argument to finish the bottle, I don't know what is. --Anonymous | Laura Dave | ||
| 5591fe0 | The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to. | past | Dan Simmons | |
| 70f89d6 | But, Dad..." She hesitated. "It will mean raising me all over again. It means suffering through my childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that." Sol managed a smile. "No parent would refuse that, Rachel." -- | love parenting | Dan Simmons | |
| cca0f14 | Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." | Dan Simmons | ||
| 14a77be | Although it wasn't raining anymore, the air was still heavy with water, and rain gutters were ringing all over Point Breeze. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 412e507 | Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| 111cb73 | Jamie, you know, you could go clear around the world and still come home wondering if the tuna fish sandwiches at Chock Full O'Nuts still cost thirty-five cents. | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| 7948161 | They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life. | E.L. Konigsburg | ||
| 04097e5 | Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 6f6692e | The girl was a labyrinth to him; only by chance and error did he ever stumble blindly into her heart. | Michael Chabon | ||
| c521364 | He didn't want to be what he wasn't, he didn't know how to be what he was. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 45e3bc1 | Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or internment of his mother and grandfather, not even the drowning of his beloved brother, had ever broken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him | Michael Chabon | ||
| aa982ad | When he walked outside again, the sky was shining like a nickel and the air was filled with the smell of sugared nuts. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 4a8e991 | With patience and calm, persistence and stoicism, good handwriting and careful labeling, they would meet persecution, indignity, and hardship head-on. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 755d2ce | I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction. | Michael Chabon | ||
| da08e44 | Her hair was a glory of tendrils for the snaring of husbands. | tendrils | Michael Chabon | |
| d5e6ce3 | The exaltation of understanding; then understanding's bottomless regret. | Michael Chabon | ||
| 539c004 | A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county .. | travel freedom life wandering repression | Michael Chabon | |
| 6c04054 | One loves because Love is the Greatest Gift, not because it gives us something in return. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| dfc8c5f | God's love never ceases. Never. Though we spurn him. Ignore him. Reject him. Despise him. Disobey him. He will not change. Our evil cannot diminish his love. Our goodness cannot increase it. Our faith does not earn it anymore than our stupidity jeopardizes it. God doesn't love us less if we fail or more if we succeed. God's love never ceases.1 | Max Lucado | ||
| 2cbd79d | The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer someone else up. | Max Lucado | ||
| 3b8ae51 | fl'nk knt 'syr lmDy ; fshlt w 'DHyt tkhf mn hzym@ jdyd@ | bast novel | Paulo Coelho | |
| 33d227e | Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honor of losing and the joy of winning. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 2d26ff8 | I savour the idea of my new state: single and a millionaire. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 7a725cf | Je t'aime parce que tout l'Univers a conspire a me faire arriver jusqu'a toi. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| d093558 | lshj`@ khwf ySly. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| c4c93fa | We are always prepared to defend ourselves, because we all live with the fear and paranoia that other people don't like us. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 3eb0a9a | Nous ne choisissons pas nos vies, mais nous decidons quoi faire des joies et des tristesses que nous recevons. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 71430c6 | And although you have mastered the words, you haven't yet mastered the blank spaces. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 3ae3bcb | To injure your opponent is to injure yourself. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 7ea2df7 | The rain is falling ever harder, and all I can hear is the sound of the water. | Paulo Coelho | ||
| ff5e507 | The art of love is like your painting, it requires technique, patience, and above all, practice by the couple. It requires boldness, the courage to go beyond what people conventionally call "making love." | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 209a989 | ldhy '`rfh 'nh stGrq mny thlth@ '`wm ky 'drk 'n lHy@knt tdf`ny fy tjh lm 'rGb 'n mDy fyh | Paulo Coelho | ||
| 9508aad | f`ndm nHb ykwn ll'shy m`n~ 'kbr | Paulo Coelho | ||
| fd3b508 | l ttrk nfsk lly's fhdh yHwl bynk wbyn lHwr m` qlbk | Paulo Coelho |