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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2a7a0fa | She had something that is gone from the world, from the female world. A sweetness without sentimentality, a limpidity without naivety. She was so easy to hurt, to tease. And when she teased, it was like a caress. | description uniqueness | John Fowles | |
| bfbfce6 | Nu poti sa urasti pe cineva deja infrant.Care, fara tine, nu va mai fi niciodata om intreg. | John Fowles | ||
| 9793e93 | I needed a new mystery. | mystery | John Fowles | |
| be752b6 | When I was going on one day in the car about not having any close friends - using my favourite metaphor: the cage of glass between me and the rest of the world - she just laughed. 'You like it,' she said. 'You say you're isolated, boyo, but you really think you're different. | friendlessness isolation | John Fowles | |
| c16d475 | No doubt our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be. | John Fowles | ||
| 30f7b0f | He had the charm of all people who believe implicitly in themselves, that of integration. | charm confidence integration | John Fowles | |
| ffd264f | I did not pray for her, because prayer has no efficacy; I did not cry for her, or for myself, because only extroverts cry twice; but I sat in the silence of that night, that infinite hostility to man, to permanence, to love, remembering her, remembering her. | John Fowles | ||
| 4be798d | Maurice once said to me- when I had asked him a question rather like yours - he said, "An answer is always a form of death" There was something else in her face then. It was not implaceable; but in some way impermeable. 'I think questions are a form of life" | John Fowles | ||
| 025cb11 | Vot ona, istina. Ne v serpe i molote. Ne v zvezdakh i polosakh. Ne v raspiatii. Ne v solntse. Ne v zolote. Ne v in' i ian. V ulybke. | smile | John Fowles | |
| 7079a75 | I saw that this cataclysm must be an expiation for some barbarous crime of civilization, some terrible human lie. What the lie was, I had too little knowledge of history or science to know then. I know now it was our believing that we were fulfilling some end, serving some plan - that all would come out well in the end, because there was some great plan over all. Instead of the reality. There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing th.. | war | John Fowles | |
| 3ea27f5 | Had we been wed in Scotland, we could have spoken the old vows. Do you know what words, what promises we would have spoken had we been there, not here, this morning?" His hand slid up to her cheek, cupping it as if to soften the effect of his tone, and as Elizabeth gazed at his hard, beloved face in the candlelight her shyness and fears slid away. "No," she whispered. "I would have said to you," he told her quietly and without shame, "'With.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| ccbc70c | The truth is," she said shakily, "that I am scared to death of being here." "I know you are," he said, sobering, "but I am the last person in the world you'll ever have to fear." His words and his tone made the quaking in her limbs, the hammering of her heart, begin again, and Elizabeth hastily drank a liberal amount of her wine, praying it would calm her rioting nerves. As if he saw her distress, he smoothly changed the topic. "Have you gi.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| 8fb27e8 | When Elizabeth finally descended the stairs on her way to the dining room she was two hours late. Deliberately. "Good heavens, you're tardy, my dear!" Sir Francis said, shoving back his chair and rushing to the doorway where Elizabeth had been standing, trying to gather her courage to do what needed to be done. "Come and meet my guests," he said, drawing her forward after a swift, disappointed look at her drab attire and severe coiffure. "W.. | Judith McNaught | ||
| f1f1501 | there is the door,use it.... | Judith McNaught | ||
| ee2315d | The sun was as flirty as Scarlett O'Hara with the Tarleton twins, breaking through the clouds in spectacular bursts that seemed like personal favors and then retreating for hours, days, and making us all ache for just a glimpse. | sun weather | Lorna Landvik | |
| 7d6f6cc | Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever... | coming-of-age growing-up paddy-clarke roddy-doyle | Roddy Doyle | |
| 02f52f1 | There were days when I didn't exist; he saw through me and walked around me. I was invisible. There were days when I liked not existing. I closed down, stopped thinking, stopped looking...There were days when I couldn't even feel pain. They were the best ones. I could see it happening. There was no ground under me, nothing to fall to. I was able to not care. I could float. I didn't exist | Roddy Doyle | ||
| eecf5c7 | we are the product of this universe and I think it can be argued that the entire cosmic code is imprinted in us. Just as our genes carry the memory of our biological ancestors, our logic carries the memory of our cosmological ancestry. We are not just imposing human-centric notions on a cosmos independent of us. We are progeny of this cosmos and our ability to understand it is an inheritance. | Janna Levin | ||
| a5c72d5 | I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class | consumerism curiosity | Pat Conroy | |
| 1256458 | Kandel argues that when psychotherapy changes people, 'it presumably does so through learning, by producing changes in gene expression that alter the strength of synaptic connections, and structural changes that alter the anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells of the brain.' Psychotherapy works by going deep into the brain and its neurons and changing their structure by turning on the right genes. Psychiatrist Dr. Susan .. | Norman Doidge | ||
| 3c6100f | In another moment, when I had drunk exactly the right amount of champagne, I should have a vision. I took a sip. And now, with extreme clarity, without passion or malice, I saw what Life really is. It had something, I remember, to do with the revolving sunshade. Yes, I murmured to myself, let them dance. They are dancing, I am glad. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| 2dd5d77 | For a few minutes, maybe, life lingers in the tissues of some outlying regions of the body. Then, one by one, the lights go out and there is total blackness. And if some part of the non-entity we called George has indeed been absent at this moment of terminal shock, away out there on the deep water, then it will return to find itself homeless. | Christopher Isherwood | ||
| aa522e7 | a minority is only thought of as a minority if it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is quite imaginary...Just ask yourselves: what would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority, overnight? 'All right - now along come the liberals - including everybody in the room, I trust - and they say, 'minorities are just people, like us '. Sure, minorities are people, just like us.. | minority persecution threat | Christopher Isherwood | |
| 891e95d | Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight....what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], "Tell your daughter three things." Tell her to read...Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the .. | reading travel writers writers-on-writing writing | Barry Lopez | |
| c46510e | Something, most certainly, happens to a diver's emotions underwater. It is not merely a side effect of the pleasing, vaguely erotic sensation of water pressure on the body. Nor is it alone the peculiar sense of weightlessness, which permits a diver to hang motionless in open water, observing sea life large as whales around him; not the ability of a diver, descending in that condition, to slowly tumble and rotate in all three spatial planes... | diving intensity nature ocean scuba-diving terror | Barry Lopez | |
| 57f2d51 | Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 8971417 | There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| c886fb7 | The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| f6cf196 | I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 8a47a69 | SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander." | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| b3b7557 | Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| a7c9f2c | It's too late to be studying Hebrew; it's more important to understand even the slang of today. | being-informed culture modern-speech slang technology | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 9df68c2 | There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. | religion routine | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 7c93bdf | Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure | wild wildness | Henry David Thoreau | |
| a610e79 | To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 97a1686 | Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 0e27a6e | See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| f75a9d9 | What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? | knowledge | Henry David Thoreau | |
| cf0f445 | I believe,--"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 0b5e12e | I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals.. | independence independent-vote politicians politics presidency | Henry David Thoreau | |
| 01251a0 | As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under in the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in propo.. | nature spirituality | Henry David Thoreau | |
| e353e6d | Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 30e5d1a | As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. | Henry David Thoreau | ||
| 1719aab | As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. | Henry David Thoreau |