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5dbc95b When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. Harper Lee
415f266 Nothing like being with people you've known almost your entire life. Having a shared history is something you just can't create with the new ones. No matter how much you like that, it just isn't the same. Jane Green
b70971b If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves? love Alain de Botton
d9b9619 One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in. Marshall McLuhan
427b969 Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and.. chance coincidence fine-tuning fred-hoyle id intelligent-design science serendipity theism Paul Davies
2cf9932 Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work. Scott Westerfeld
54e5559 He loved her...It was noble of him. It was beautiful." -"It was stupid." -- comedy comical funny humor humorous ironic satire sharp witty Lloyd Alexander
b96f2e6 1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight. food health hunger wealth Mark Bittman
c3731f0 The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale. G.K. Chesterton
9e19cbf Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordai.. Leo Tolstoy
59fbff2 Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them. inspirational Margaret Mitchell
afb3f93 Will you never grow up?" "I doubt it, and I certainly hope not." David Eddings
c0ca85c The only reason there's such a thing as a morning in the first place is to keep night and afternoon from bumping into each other. -Kheldar David Eddings
d3f7bf4 And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference... good-and-evil lancelet Marion Zimmer Bradley
a63d34a I promise to tidy up before company arrives, wouldn't want my socks and daydreams all over the carpet Sarah Kay
65871e5 La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fele ou nous battons des melodies a faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les etoiles. Gustave Flaubert
61a12b0 Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. jealousy George Eliot
ae2f72b There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle. George Eliot
ba4cb7f I was wishing I was invisible. Outside, the leaves were falling to the ground, and I was infinitely sad, sad down to my bones. I was sad for Phoebe and her parents and Prudence and Mike, sad for the leaves that were dying, and sad for myself, for something I had lost. Sharon Creech
4c72584 Every tounge bit had another word to say. Ned Vizzini
75aef9b I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. funny Elizabeth Gilbert
0d84296 I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants u.. god intelligence religion science universe Elizabeth Gilbert
730f9c1 My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the planet--that's not a problem. The problem is that I just can't live anywhere on the planet. Elizabeth Gilbert
371cad6 Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own. reading schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer
d6ba4d6 If life -- the craving for which is the very essence of our being -- were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. existence life value Arthur Schopenhauer
375ded0 Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be .. transcendence Simone de Beauvoir
2f4820a On the whole, stories don't write themselves. Neil Gaiman
0ccad9c I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and the end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And t.. Neil Gaiman
a37d136 I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. 'Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive. Neil Gaiman
68837ac At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune teller. "Now," said Wednesday, "at the start of any quest or enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns." He dropped a coin into the slot. With jagged, mechanical motions, the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more. A slip of paper chunked out of the slot. Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up and put it in his.. Neil Gaiman
dfc7cf8 Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world. Lorrie Moore
64cefaf It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures. goals pleasure selfishness Robert Greene
6ac4e66 Sometimes, love brings you together even as life keeps you apart. love Mitch Albom
fbe2723 We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks--we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? looking-back mundane-life realization truth wrapped-up Mitch Albom
7974375 ql lnfsh nh l nj@ lh l bljnwn. ljnwn wHdh hw ldhy yts` llymn wlkfr, llmjd wlkhzy, llHb wlkhd`, llSdq wlkdhb, 'm l`ql fkyf ytHml hdhh lHy@ lGryb@? kyf yshym 'lq lnjwm whw mGrws Ht~ qm@ r'sh fy lwHl?! life philosophy sanity Naguib Mahfouz
bd014db Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are Mark Nepo
679a815 Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was. major-major mediocre mediocrity Joseph Heller
5920a40 Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He .. Joseph Heller
d0cc78e The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era--but nobody guessed back then that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything. 60s Hunter S. Thompson
8bd0af4 Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective. So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle everyday? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything anther than galloping neurosis? Hunter S. Thompson
433d0a3 It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach confor.. Hunter S. Thompson
67493e7 The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel-white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange. Hunter S. Thompson
347d068 A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. intellect life-lessons reality Hunter S. Thompson
2540cd7 My life has been the polar opposite of safe, but I am proud of it and so is my son, and that is good enough for me. I would do it all over again without changing the beat, although I have never recommended it to others. That would be cruel and irresponsible and wrong, I think, and I am none of those things. Hunter S. Thompson