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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e5f65b0 | As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question." | happiness psychology | Daniel Gilbert | |
| b19148b | Being seasick at sea is not the same as being homesick at home. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 844e508 | Where does violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones? | Miriam Toews | ||
| 1ec1a89 | We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that.. | guilt nostalgia | Miriam Toews | |
| c4ade33 | It seemed like he could never figure out which Trudie he loved the best, the docile church basement lady in the moon boots or the rebellious chick with the sexy lingerie. I imagine that both of those extremes were just poses and that the real Trudie fell somewhere in between. But that's the thing about this town - there's no room for in between. You're in or you're out. You're good or you're bad. Actually, very good or very bad. Or very goo.. | Miriam Toews | ||
| a7cde82 | She was a strange, unsettled planet that had had once sustained life. She was a language that I had thought I almost understood even though I couldn't speak it. She hadn't always been this way. She used to wear high knee socks and short shorts and tube tops, and travel everywhere on roller skates. | Miriam Toews | ||
| 35e1eaa | To save our friends' nerves, I suggest we meet on a plane of brutal courtesy. It need not interfere with our mutual distrust." -Francis Crawford of Lymond" | lymond | Dorothy Dunnett | |
| 1097e10 | There was a silence. 'You didn't as,' said Jerott at length. 'But I would have forgone even the body for the sake of the mind. And I would have claimed neither body nor mind, had I discovered a soul. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a016934 | It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 1fb46bc | Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 83a38d3 | Subject to intelligence, nothing is incalculable. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a829ca3 | Violence in nature is one thing, but among civilized mankind, what excuse is there? | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 9d78889 | Philippa allowed polite regret to inform every muscle. 'Whatever day it occurs,' she said, 'I feel I have a previous engagement.' 'May I congratulate you,' he said agreeably, 'on your evident popularity.' 'Anything I can do,' Philippa said, 'to save you from the exhaustions of pluralism. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| a5d6bef | Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have got mislaid. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 519f320 | This time, after a moment, he called her bluff. "Perhaps Philippa and I should be thrown together a little more. She might become attached to me if she knew me better." Kate, brightening visibly, ignored the gleam in his eye. "That would make her sorry for you?" "It might. The object of any sort of clinical study deserves compassion, don't you think?" "Snakes don't," said Katherine inconsequently. "I hate snakes." "And yet you feed the.. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 6455e64 | It doesn't do my self-esteem much good though, does it?' 'Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,' said Philippa abstractedly. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 784c050 | Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 0cea108 | And as he followed after the Irishwoman, Margaret Erskine, most levelheaded of women, picked up a Palissy vase, looked at it earnestly and smashed it clean on the floor. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 0796838 | And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| 25cb64a | Though whether the mass murder of strangers for one's principles ranks higher in virtue than attacking one's neighbours for the hell of it is a point I'm glad I don't have to settle. | Dorothy Dunnett | ||
| ce9b9c6 | Men can sense when a wall is coming down, and they can't help the fact that they have to be there to watch it fall, or better yet, help push it over. It has been argued that the fall of the Berlin Wall had nothing whatsoever to do with the collapse of communism: it was just a weekend project that got out of control--thousands of German guys satisfying their undeniable urge to fix things up. | Stuart McLean | ||
| 4c93f3a | The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy, reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all inconstant. | george-r-r-martin lysa-tully tansy | George R.R. Martin | |
| 6ba7ad7 | The Wall can stop an army, but not a man alone. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 732db9c | Dragons die." She stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on an unshaven cheek. "But so do dragonslayers." | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 322c09c | Every book tells a different story to the person who reads it. How they perceive that book will depend on they are. A good book reflects the reader, as much as it illuminates the author's text. | Charles de Lint | ||
| 82d7154 | He had too much cat in his blood - a deep-rooted feline twitch that would travel the length of his nerves to tickle his mind at the faintest sign of a mystery, no matter how small. He could no more let a riddle go unsolved than he could pass by the perfect length of colourful wire without picking it up. | Charles de Lint | ||
| 35a72f4 | Faerie music is the wind", he says, "and their movement is the play of shadow cast by moonlight, or starlight, or no light at all. Faerie lives like a ghost beside us, but only the city remembers. But then the city never forgets anything." | Charles de Lint | ||
| 2fd844b | Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker. It's the intent you put into your work, the pride you take in it--whatever it is. | Charles de Lint | ||
| 828945d | When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explorers such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbook.. | James W. Loewen | ||
| 89bab65 | Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates .. | James W. Loewen | ||
| c2a56b9 | Du hattest ein Bild vom Leben in dir, einen Glauben, eine Forderung, du warst zu Taten, Leiden und Opfern bereit - und dann merktest du allmahlich, dass die Welt gar keine Taten und Opfer und dergleichen von dir verlangt, dass das Leben keine heroische Dichtung ist, mit Heldenrollen und dergleichen, sondern eine burgerliche gute Stube, wo man mit Essen und Trinken, Kaffee und Strickstrumpf, Tarockspiel und Radiomusik vollkommen zufrieden is.. | Hermann Hesse | ||
| 2e2f7c3 | While I would champion any campaign to support Muslim women who do not wish to cover. I would now also protest vigorously for the right of a woman to wear that covering, if it is what she wants and believes in. Ayatollah Khomeini and Jacques Chirac have much more in common than either of them would care to acknowledge. Each tried to solve overarching social problems by imposing his will on the bodies of women. | Geraldine Brooks | ||
| 6c272aa | I recognized the tokens of the time, because I had lived through just such another uneasy season, when every day was tainted by the foul breath of a fear that could not be faced forthrightly, yet could not be ignored. | Geraldine Brooks | ||
| 2c45f07 | Racism. . . . fuelled by bitter assertions that no immigrant ever has the least respect for the environment in his adopted country because he never really believes it's his. | James Hamilton-Paterson | ||
| bbfb8f4 | I also wish I'd been born with a clearly defined talent for something, or else stupid. | James Hamilton-Paterson | ||
| 6620ad6 | Your past comes with you no matter where you go. | young-adult | Dale Peck | |
| 9636ff7 | All my life I have written letters - to our mother, our relatives, a wide circle of friends and acquaintance, to my husband, to you. Correspondence has always been as necessary to my happiness as a well-cooked dinner, and I've found it more sustaining for its generosity: an act of charity that returned to me a hundredfold... | correspondence letter-writing | Delia Sherman | |
| 6a9b7c9 | Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at t.. | Patricia A. McKillip | ||
| c78ffa8 | I don't teach lies, but I do not teach all I know is true. | teaching | Patricia A. McKillip | |
| 0297449 | She smiled. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes, too. Then you touch my face with your scarred hand and read my mind. Your eyes know me. That's why I keep following you all over the realm, barefoot or half-frozen, cursing the sun or the wind, or myself because I have no more sense than to love a man who does not even possess a bed I can crawl into at night. And sometimes I curse you because you have spoken my name in a way that no other man i.. | Patricia A. McKillip | ||
| 0ac145c | that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone. | clutter dust order | Patricia A. McKillip | |
| 8a2e973 | How strange to be in a dream one moment and in the world the next, and to know the difference in the blink of an eye. | Patricia A. McKillip | ||
| 2235a33 | Sorry, he said penitently. It's a book. I have no common sense around them. | Patricia A. McKillip | ||
| a7e6c7e | It is noble to pity a man who is cruel because he is weak, but it is idiotic and dangerous to allow him to have power. | Kate Horsley |