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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7208df7 | For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person. | dehumanization | Clifford D. Simak | |
| 1fd6421 | We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it. | Clifford D. Simak | ||
| 1916e86 | It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them. | Edmund Morris | ||
| fbae3ac | Speaker Reed's] wit was brilliant and usually cruel... Asked to attend the funeral of a political enemy, he refused, "but that does not mean to say I do not heartily approve of it." | Edmund Morris | ||
| d4a7f98 | Theodore," [Theodore Sr] said, eschewing boyish nicknames, "you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." | Edmund Morris | ||
| 00cc953 | Implicit in the stare of those eyes, the power of those knobbly hands, was labor's historic threat of violence against capital. | capitalism labor socialism synecdoche violence | Edmund Morris | |
| be6017a | I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure, in time, until I spent most of my hours searching for such books. Then I devised a plan of study for myself, tracing obscure sciences, one after another, from the dawn of knowledge to the present. Eventually I exhausted even that, and beginning at the great ebony case that stands in the center of the room we of the library have maintaine.. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| adaa513 | All love that which they destroy. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| adb78eb | But I believe there is no difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| cd710a0 | A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| 407f307 | Dorcas belonged, as I now realize, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us--and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts. | Gene Wolfe | ||
| 3e84682 | True, you're not a slave. You're worse off than that by a long, long way. You're a predatory beast shut up in a cage of which the bars aren't fixed, solid objects you can gnaw at or in despair batter against with your head until you get punch-drunk and stop worrying. No, those bars are the competing members of your own species, at least as cunning as you on average, forever shifting around so you can't pin them down, liable to get in your w.. | John Brunner | ||
| 9fcd60c | Damn right I voted for him. But if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have cast a vote--I'd have cast a brick. | voting | John Brunner | |
| e8a2879 | Morality--like velocity--is relative. The determination of it depends on what the objects around you are doing. All one can do is measure one's position in relation to them; never can one measure one's velocity or morality in terms of absolutes. | ethics morals relativity | David Gerrold | |
| e5af397 | When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We c.. | government majority-view truth | David Gerrold | |
| d8112da | know a lot of people who hide out in fantasy because reality is too hard to cope with [...] Fantasy isn't about escape; it's a survival mechanism. It's a way to deal with things that are so much bigger than you are. So I think fantasy is special, something to be cherished and protected because it's a very fragile thing and without it, we're so defenseless, we're paralyzed | fantasy | David Gerrold | |
| 16325de | I was thinking that a life is just the history of what we give our attention to,' said Patrick. 'The rest is packaging. | Edward St. Aubyn | ||
| 0898ddc | Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. | comparison competition | Edward St. Aubyn | |
| f3a56c2 | The shock of standing again under the wide pale sky, completely exposed. This must be what the oyster feels when the lemon juice falls. | Edward St. Aubyn | ||
| 178b16a | But that, after all, was the point of romantic folly. If it hadn't all gone horribly wrong, it wouldn't have been the real thing. | Edward St. Aubyn | ||
| d788f54 | A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently catches the eye.' 'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow branches. 'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Co.. | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| acafe99 | I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather. | weather wry-humor | Elizabeth von Arnim | |
| 79e7b31 | It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life. | helping-others | Elizabeth von Arnim | |
| 3f134a5 | but it's fun being alive, isn't it? I feel as if I'd only got to stretch up my hands to all those stars and catch as many of them as I want to. | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| a225b8a | Thoreau has been my companion for some days past, it having struck me as more appropriate to bring him out to a pond than to read him, as was hitherto my habit, on Sunday mornings in the garden. He is a person who loves the open air, and will refuse to give you much pleasure if you try to read him amid the pomp and circumstance of upholstery; but out in the sun, and especially by this pond, he is delightful, and we spend the happiest hours .. | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| 06b0b21 | The years lay spread out before her, spacious untouched canvases on which she was presently going to paint the picture of her life. It was to be a very beautiful picture, she said to herself with an extraordinary feeling of proud confidence; not beautiful because of any gifts or skill of hers, for never was a woman more giftless, but because of all the untiring little touches, the ceaseless care for detail, the patient painting out of mista.. | happiness | Elizabeth von Arnim | |
| 21907f9 | Nor would I willingly miss the early darkness and the pleasant firelight tea and the long evenings among my books. | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| f525412 | My step-mother looked at me at least once on each of these miserable days, and said: 'Rose-Marie, you look very odd. I hope you are not going to have anything expensive. Measles are in Jena, and also the whooping-cough.' 'Which of them is the cheapest?' I inquired. 'Both are beyond our means,' said my step-mother severely. | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| 810200f | And when I'm with you," she said, "I feel as if I were stuffed with--oh, with stars." | Elizabeth von Arnim | ||
| 2c5650e | She was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one, her experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in hand and gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you. It was quite a mistake to think think that a woman, a really well-dressed woman wore out her clothes; it was the clothes that wore out .. | social-pressure women | Elizabeth von Arnim | |
| a69d660 | Star light, star bright, The first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might, Have the wish I wish tonight. | Alan Moore | ||
| 60f361b | Quatermain (while climbing down): We are above an abyss such as satan's own, Miss Murray.Pray not to look down. Mina: And you, Sir, should not look up.You have me at a disadvantage and I trust you'll not misuse our situation. | Alan Moore | ||
| 02c5973 | In the heart of darkness, a flower blossoms, enriching the shadows with its promise of hope... In the fields of light, an adder coils, and the radiant tranquility is lent savor by its sinister presence. Right and wrong, black and white, good and evil...all my existence I have looked from one to the other, fully embracing neither one...never before have I understood how much they depend on each other. | Alan Moore | ||
| 1bbc732 | Places don't stay where you left them. You go back there, anywhere, and even if it looks exactly how it did before, it's somewhere else. | Alan Moore | ||
| 39ef47b | I found it very difficult to feel easy around the guy, even once I'd got used to the shock of his presence. It's a strange feeling...the first time you meet him your brain wants to scream, blow a fuse and shut itself down immediately, refusing to accept that he exists. This lasts for a couple of minutes, at which time he's still there and hasn't gone away, and in the end you just accept him because he's standing there and talking to you and.. | Alan Moore | ||
| e12a195 | Without my face, nobody knows. Nobody knows who I am. | Alan Moore | ||
| 69edcc8 | Each day and every deed's eternal, little boy. Live them in such a way that you can bear to live with them eternally. | Alan Moore | ||
| 90ad531 | You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat? | humor misfortune | Alan Moore | |
| 6f0d9e4 | When it's done, only our enemies leave roses. | Alan Moore | ||
| 119a5f7 | The wind is calling in a voice I remember | Chris Abani | ||
| e698ebc | Don't worry about me. I'll always come out on top. | Astrid Lindgren | ||
| 8584499 | But I'm the strongest girl in the world, don't forget. | Astrid Lindgren | ||
| 54397dd | Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that the character peaks a little later ;between twenty and thirty, say. And after that we're just stuck with what we've got.. | philosophical psychological the-sense-of-an-ending | Julian Barnes | |
| e853a5d | Every bird you downed bore pebbles in its gizzard from a land the maps ignored. | Julian Barnes |