Allowance Quotes (page 54)
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We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with...
Susan Sontag
You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
John Thorpe [...] was a stout young man of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to be easy.
Jane Austen
The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstance should one pay attention to those who tell one "Don't criticize, since you are not capable of carrying out a reform." that's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this then is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument of those who fight, who resist and refuse what is...
Michel Foucault
I don't allow people of your sort to stand in my way. That's what you're leaving out of account. I'm having Christine because it's my right. Do you understand that? If I'm after something, I don't care what I do to make sure that I get it. That's the only law I abide by; it's the only was to get things in this world...With me you just haven't a hope in hell.
Kingsley Amis
The trick was to refuse to allow your pain to prevent you from living honorably. In Japan, she said, a person learned not to complain or be distracted by suffering. To persevere was always a reflection of the state of one’s inner life, one’s philosophy, and one’s perspective. It was best to accept old age, death, injustice, hardship – all of these were part of living
David Guterson
I had a fascination with 3D that goes back to the View-Master. I'd always dreamed of making a film in 3D. It's like a combination of theatre and film. There's something 3D gives to a movie that takes you to another land. Working with RealD creatively was a liberating experience. Thank you RealD for allowing us to make something like Hugo.
Martin Scorsese
No one can get reall drunk on a novle or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's night, Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and percussion or the Beatles' White Album? He loved mozart as much as rock. He considered music a liberating force, it liberated him from lonliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of hi body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends, He loved to dance an regretted that Sabina did not share his passionpg 92-93
Milan Kundera
A warrior of light respects the main teaching of the I Ching: 'To persevere is favourable.'He knows that perseverance is not the same thing as insistence. There aretimes when battles go on longer than necessary, draining him of strength andenthusiasm. At such moments, the warrior thinks: 'A prolonged war finally destroys thevictors too.'Then he withdraws his forces from the battlefield and allows himself arespite. He perseveres in his desire, but knows he must wait for the best moment to...
Paulo Coelho
For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry.
Thomas Pynchon
Don't you see? We've become smart enough to justify stupid behavior. Like, 'I'm angry at him and I didn't express it, so I turned my anger inward and now it's depression, so in order to feel good again, what I should do is call him and express my anger.' It's like, if we can make it sound smart enough, we're allowed to do stupid things.
Carrie Fisher