Before Quotes (page 230)
When they came to harvest my corpse(open your mouth, close your eyes)cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twicefor the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at themin a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to lookout at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill willstaring then in the foreheadand turn tail. Before, I was not a...
Margaret Atwood
You know nothing... And suppose the vampire who made you knew nothing, and the vampire who made that vampire knew nothing, and the vampire before him knew nothing, and so it goes back and back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing! And we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.
Anne Rice
Once, Lacy had been present at the birth of an infant that was missing half its heart. The family had known their child would not live; they chose to carry through with the pregnancy, in the hope that they could have a few brief moments on this earth with her before she was gone for good. Lacy had stood in a corner of the room as the parents held their daughter. She didn't study their faces; she just couldn't. Instead, she focused on the medical needs of that newborn. She watched it, still...
Jodi Picoult
I will vouch for him before the seat of Denethor,' said Gandalf. 'And as for valour, that cannot be computed by stature. He has passed through more battles and perils than you have, Ingold, though you be twice his height; and he comes now from the storming of Isengard, of which we bear tidings, and great weariness is on him, or I would wake him. His name is Peregrin, a very valiant man.'
Man?' said Ingold dubiously; and the others laughed.
Man!' cried Pippin, now thoroughly roused. 'Man!...
J. R. R. Tolkien
Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Under the stars,' she repeated. 'I never noticed the stars before. I always thought of them as great big diamonds that belonged to someone. Now they frighten me. They make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth.'It was a dream,' said John quietly. 'Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.'How pleasant then to be insane!'So I'm told,' said John gloomily. 'I don't know any longer. At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine...
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let's find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. ...When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book "The Origin Of Species" he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.
Dale Carnegie
He fumbles at your spirit. As players at the keys. Before they drop full music on; He stuns you by degrees. Prepares your brittle substance. For the ethereal blowby fainter hammers, further heard, Then nearer, then so slow. Your breath has time to straighten. Your brain to bubble cool,-Deals one imperial thunderbolt. That scalps your naked soul.
Emily Dickinson