Popular quotes in last 24 hours

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth...

treasure is crisis, because what you get in the end is yourself.

Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off...

Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.

It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.

there is a great choice that awaits us every day: whether we go around carving holes in others because we have been so painfully carved ourselves, or whether we let spirit play its song through our...

Mrs. Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth! That's right! I can't work to order like a common tradesman! I decided her bridge should be...

Ed, knows power corrupts, they'll have experienced that first-hand. They'll see how I'd be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they'll buy

I've always kept the pleasurable habit of college times, stressing tickets and notes. Much of my notes of pride and prejudice, the heiress, the hill of the howling winds, Madame Bovary and Tom Jones...

Alcohol provokes stupidity; opium provokes wisdom.

He was not accustomed to busying himself with introspection or self-analysis. In this way he was like most people who are rarely alone. His mind did not swing into action until some external force...

Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and...

Their fond Uncle Martin looked anything but gratified, but managed to control his feelings until he found himself out of earshot of his sister. He then declared that if Louisa imagined that he meant...

Do not issue many edicts, and if you do, try to make them good ones, and, above all, ones that are carried out and obeyed; for edicts that are not carried out are as good as nonexistent, and they let...

Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?

Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us,...

... an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Grant liked kids-it was impossible not to like any group so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs. Grant used to watch kids in museums as they stared open-mouthed at the big skeletons rising above them....

Weddings, I began to understand, were vile, filthy things when they ran amuck.

Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them.

...all members of Congress should be required wear NASCAR uniforms. You know, the kind with the patches? That way we'd know who is sponsoring each of them. I think he was kidding; they'd never be able...

If he {John Adams} could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps the ultimate form of control.

The unworthies in power feel danger, like cows uneasily pawing the ground with a great Moo.

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don't know how a...

What you should do, she told Fat during one of his darker hours, is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34. Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion...

It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He...

The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.

I do have an occasional temper - I sort of inherited my dad's short fuse.

Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort. The magic that gleams an instant...

When I was growing up, my mom used to tell my sister and me about a leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But she never mentioned a Russian Neanderthal with a bag of diamonds at the...

We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.

Then came the matter of food. For ten hours he picked grains of rice off the floor and collected pasta, sugar, and individual tea leaves. He would not eat anything that had been tainted with blood,...

It is a terrible thing to interrogate the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be?