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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5606251 | But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with. The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked go.. | business-leaders careerism company-culture corporate-culture human-nature ladder-of-success military promotion success unfairness-of-life | Orson Scott Card | |
| 1d3e2e0 | Every time, I've won because I could understand the way my enemy though. From what they did. I could tell what they though I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I'm very good at that. Understanding how other people think. - Ender Wiggin | Orson Scott Card | ||
| 265192d | The Earth is deep, and right to the heart it's alive. We people only live on the top, like the bugs that live on the scum of the still water near the shore. | Orson Scott Card | ||
| e06ae43 | When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best. | Orson Scott Card | ||
| 6d53e01 | Friendship is the greatest gift one can give to another. | Brian Jacques | ||
| 618274f | The crafty otter produced a flat pebble from his helmet, spat on one side of it, and held it up for the bird to see. 'Right, I'll spin ye. Dry side, I win, wet side, you lose. Good?' The honey buzzard nodded eagerly... Buteo's keen eyes watched every spin of the stone until it clacked down flat on the deck. Garfo grinned from ear to ear. 'Wet side! You lose! | Brian Jacques | ||
| e1755e8 | Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe. | Robin McKinley | ||
| 54d225d | Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too-particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the bottom. But I did know. was what was at the bottom. I was already there. | grief | Robin McKinley | |
| d6c803d | I said with perfect honesty, "I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no." -- | Robin McKinley | ||
| c63add8 | at four o'clock in the morning, when the world is full of magic, things may be safely said that may not be uttered at any other time, so long as the person who listens believes in the same kind of magic as the person who speaks. | Robin McKinley | ||
| 1dd2cb4 | I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice. | fiction life | Robin McKinley | |
| 48ea18c | Say yes, babe, or I'll spill you off over the Wall next time - got it? | Robin McKinley | ||
| c0319f8 | She fell in love with him, and he with her; that's a spell if you like. | Robin McKinley | ||
| c6b4697 | and again she wished for Sherwood, and the dappled roof of leaves that never weighed upon her. She pulled her scarf closer around her and thought, I would rather live in a hut in the woods; a hut like the one of my first memories, with a clean-swept dirt floor, and a brown-eyed boy watching me from behind his mother's skirts as I watched him from behind mine. | Robin McKinley | ||
| d538d1e | She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical problems and councillors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a man who had ever been able to enter into a child's games, but she might have noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it.. | Robin McKinley | ||
| e814fdf | I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 640d44b | Oh, Mr. Cuthbert," she whispered, that place we came through--that white place--what was it?" "Well now, you must mean the Avenue," said Matthew after a few moments' profound reflection. "It is a kind of pretty place." "Pretty? Oh, PRETTY doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just .. | nature | L.M. Montgomery | |
| d324371 | It was November--the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 13b2b6c | But the trouble is there aren't any bends in my road. I can see it stretching straight out before me to the sky-line...endless monotony. Oh, does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness...its swarms of cold, uninteresting people? | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 4c82a0b | It's different when the person you love dies. There's an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there's the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help, believe me. When the object of your love just disappears, there's no way to deal with the grief and pain. | finality grief love pain | Barbara Taylor Bradford | |
| 8abb022 | Yes, damn it, I love you! But the bedroom is not the boardroom, Robert. In the boardroom only one person can be in charge. | Barbara Taylor Bradford | ||
| 6da3e0e | That machine's a great invention!" he said. "Other folks can stick to old-fashioned ways if they want to, but I'm all for progress. It's a great age we're living in. As long as I raise wheat, I'm going to have a machine come and thresh it, if there's one anywhere in the neighborhood." | Laura Ingalls Wilder | ||
| 30afdb6 | Snow as fine and grainy as sugar covered the windows in and sifted off to the floor and did not melt. | nature snow | Laura Ingalls Wilder | |
| 1353f0f | Love's language is imprecise, fits more like mittens than gloves. | Jeannine Atkins | ||
| bc6d8e2 | one should never assume anything | wisdom | Dick Francis | |
| 21f0972 | I hadn't had a mother since I was two, and from then until seven I had believed God was someone who had run off with her and was living with her somewhere else... (God took your mother, dear, because he needed her more than you do) which had never endeared him to me | Dick Francis | ||
| a68618c | It's people with obsessions who do the real harm in the world. | Dick Francis | ||
| 9eef52c | Punctuation is no more a class issue than the air we breathe. It is a system of printers' marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for the past half-millennium, and if its time has come to be replaced, let's just use this moment to celebrate what an elegant and imaginative job it did while it had the chance. | Lynne Truss | ||
| 90dcead | That man was Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515) and I will happily admit I hadn't heard of him until about a year ago, but am now absolutely kicking myself that I never volunteered to have his babies. | Lynne Truss | ||
| 2400bba | When you by nature subscribe to the view that everyone except yourself is a berk or a wanker, it is hard to bond with anybody in any rational common cause. | Lynne Truss | ||
| 31659a0 | I mean, full stops are quite important, aren't they? Yet by contrast to the versatile apostrophe, they are stolid little chaps, to say the least. In fact one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burn-out from all the thankless effort.. | Lynne Truss | ||
| 51cea15 | Well, damme, William, I am sorry: I am very sorry, indeed I am. But injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends. | Patrick O'Brian | ||
| 0779e1f | A puma is not a bird," said Tobias, after a hundred paces. "It is a kind of cat - felis concolor. You may see it soon: it is moving along with us, on the right." The word brought nothing into Jack's mind but a fleeting image of a shabby, brownish-black little creature called Tib that disgraced the drawing-room at home, and he plodded on in silence. Every hundred yards or so they changed shoulders, and during the third change there was a c.. | Patrick O'Brian | ||
| 9344c0f | For my own part,' said Captain Aubrey, 'I have no notion of disliking a man for his beliefs, above all if he was born with them. I find I can get along very well with Jews or even...' The P of Papists was already formed, and the word was obliged to come out as Pindoos. | Patrick O'Brian | ||
| 17ccc17 | It's unfair that women are expected to stay at home when there's a fight to be won. If a woman has the strength to bear a child, she can swing a sword as well as any man. | Karen Hawkins | ||
| 1d43a63 | I don't know which is more telling about a soul, their laughter or their tears. I suspect the latter, but hope for the former, | Karen Hawkins | ||
| 52d1b17 | For a real knight, rescuing maidens would be an everyday event." ... "Perhaps a true knight saves himself for the right maiden" | Karen Hawkins | ||
| 2def26e | Excitement is never comfortable. When it comes, you just hang on and hope you don't fall off. | Karen Hawkins | ||
| ba57165 | Jack looked at the paper. Devonsgate had listed all twelve footmen: John, Mark, Luke, Thomas...Bloody hell, his butler had hired the entire New Testament. | Karen Hawkins | ||
| ab45d0c | If you ever find yourself presented with a fork in the road of life and you do not know the correct direction, close your eyes and listen to your heart. I have found more adventure, more love, more happiness, and more life by listening to who I am, rather than attempting to tell myself. | Karen Hawkins | ||
| 3b17715 | Once ye made up yer mind to do somethin', 'tis better t'stumble o'er the small hillock of jump-ahead than t'bash yer head on the jagged rocks of did-nothing. Old Woman Nora of Loch Lomand to her three wee granddaughters one cold evening | romance | Karen Hawkins | |
| 8d705d1 | Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they'll stumble on the right one. | Gore Vidal | ||
| 47d4750 | We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance. | Al Gore | ||
| d53230f | Go ahead into life, full-blooded, courageous and leap for the adventure. But you must do it soon--before the summer of your youth has cooled off into caution. You are magnificently charming--and you come like a torrent. But you will be spent on the futility of little things. You are not a watercolor. You are carved out of life--and there can be no petty hesitancies about you. | Ruth Reichl |