Being Quotes (page 333)
If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those...
Maya Angelou
You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It’s only kids in high school who are convinced they’re never going to change. There’s always going to be a pep rally and there’s always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future.
Stephen King
Friend of fatherless! Fountain of happiness! Lord of the swill-bucket! Oh, how my soul is on. Fire when I gaze at thy. Calm and commanding eye. Like the sun in the sky, Comrade Napoleon! Thou are the giver of. All thy creatures love, Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon; Every beast great or small, Sleeps at peace in his stall, Thou watchest over all, Comrade Napoleon! Had I a sucking-pig, Ere he had grown as big. Even as a pint bottle or a a rolling-pin. He should have learned to...
George Orwell
I dust a whole shelf of books on pregnancy, breastfeeding, the first six months, the first year, the first two years? and I wonder what the child care-deprived Maddy makes of all this. Maybe there's been some secret division of the world's women into breeders and drones, and those at the maid level are no longer supposed to be reproducing at all. Maybe this is why our office manager, Tammy, who was once a maid herself, wears inch-long fake nails and tarty little outfits? to show she's...
Barbara Ehrenreich
What were the odds that she'd turn away at the same instant the ball came flying her way? And that she'd be holding a soda in a crowd at a volleyball game she didn't even want to watch, in a place she didn't want to be? In a million years, the same thing should probably never happen again. With odds like that, she should have bought a lottery ticket.
Nicholas Sparks
... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
Mortimer Adler
Dear me! how long is art! And short is our life! I often know amid the scholar's strife. A sinking feeling in my mind and heart. How difficult the means are to be found. By which the primal sources may be breached; And long before the halfway point is reached, They bury a poor devil in the ground.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Herman Hesse