Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.
Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well....
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to;...
Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one.
She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size,...
But fates are connected in ways we don't understand.
People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things,...
What is the sweetest happiness in this world?
Some genealogies claimed to be able to trace the Maclean ancestry even further back, going as far as Julius Caesar, and, in some cases, admittedly more tendentiously, to the ancient Celtic god of the...
The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.
Geniuses never pay attention.
Commissioner Harris at the far end stared along the mad pathway. This was his first child and it had already become a murderer.
If you do what you do, you are defeating evil with beautiful kindness.
But you can certainly take fifteen years off everything these days." She paused. "But you can't take height off a mountain.
of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of...
The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.
that weddings are far more than marriage ceremonies; we know that they are occasions for family stock-taking and catharsis; that
...But although the rules are vagueAnd widely disregarded nowSome precepts remain: live with love - That is a rule we all can understand;Forgive those who need forgiveness,Which I think is everybody,...
To be cut down to size is good for all of us, but particularly so for those who forget how transient are our cultures and institutions, how pointless and cruel our divisions, how vain our claims to...
Irene gasped. Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart? she hissed. Have you?Stuart closed his eyes.No, he said. Au contraire. It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say...
And I was and still find talking about it as a young woman who is not boring. And how much that led me to circumambulate his big house, so I can win a look at him, but to no avail. And how much I...
- In these dialogues around us, only the crazy people dream.
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. To the earth...a million years is nothing. This planet lives...
They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been cherished scientific belief since Newton.'And?'Chaos theory...
Travel far enough, you meet yourself.
Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a...
His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday,...
Do I shock you? I think I do. That's the problem these days – nobody speaks their mind. No, don't smile. They really don't. We've been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us...
I have the tendency to be nervous at the sight of trouble looming. As the danger draws near, I become less nervous. When the peril is at hand, I swell with fierceness. As I grapple with my assailant,...
The pollenless trees were genomed to repel bugs and birds; the stagnant air reeked of insecticide.
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
