Religion explains what man cannot explain. But when I see something before my eyes, and my religion hastens to assure me that I am mistaken, that I do not see it at all . . . No, I may no longer be a...
Reality's such a pain sometimes, you know?
Now, where were we? Read me back the last line.''Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take shorthand.'Not my last line, stupid!' the colonel shouted. 'Somebody else's.''Read...
I am not so afraid that I cannot see the truth.
Alcohol provokes stupidity; opium provokes wisdom.
he believed that there is no end to the mischief and hatred which men harbor deep in themselves and unknown to themselves and no end to their capacity to deceive themselves and that though they loved...
Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.
Huey Newton laid down his life for us," Stokely Carmichael had said the same night. But of course Huey Newton had not yet laid down his life at all, was just here in the Alameda County Jail waiting to...
We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see,we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation...
Tardiness was the greatest insult of them all; arrangements were made to suit those concerned – it was the height of rudeness to overlook other people's needs.
I suspect that scientists are driven by the sense that the world out there - reality - contains a hidden order, and the scientist is trying to elucidate the hidden order in our reality. And that...
You can convert this human system into absolute receptivity, where you can perceive life in ways that you have never believed possible. If you keep all your ideas, emotions and your nonsense aside,...
Marina wouldn't want to be remembered because she dead. She would want to be remembered because she's good.
He hasn't even eaten at Olive Garden, so I doubt he's a connoisseur of hotels. - KatNo Olive Garden? Man, we've got to get that boy some endless breadsticks and salad. Travesty. - Daemon
Most teenage girls don't give old people the time of day which is sad because all old people do all the time is think about how nice it was to be a teenager so long ago.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.
Instinct and study, love and hate;Audacity-reverence. These must mate,And fuse with Jacob's heart,To wrestle with the angel -- Art.
To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.
Round the World! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where...
Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That's exactly how you look to them.
How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?
It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but...
That gin-soaked little Nazi from the Gazette got pissed off when you didn't doff your hat for the national anthem, Burgin explained. He kept bitching about you to the guy in charge of the press box,...
...laughter emerges in the realization that all along the original was derived.
It's hard to decide who's truly brilliant; it's easier to see who's driven, which in the long run may be more important.
A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and...
Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not...
His goading remained gentle. Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think...
pleasure and pain arise from virtuous and non-virtuous actions which come not from outside, but from within yourself.
I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.
The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.
Everything born has to die, in order to make room for the future.
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
if you don't understand something, you can't approximate it. You're really just guessing.
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
