Being Quotes (page 693)
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I purposefully abstain from dates on this occasion, that very one may be liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people.---I only entreat every body to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and become anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire.
Jane Austen
The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation's pulse, you can't be sure that the nation hasn't just run up a flight of stairs, and although you can take a nation's blood pressure, you can't be sure that if you came back in twenty minutes you'd get the same reading. This is a damn fine thing.
E. B. White
If I existed 200 years ago, all the other farmers in my community would be like, 'That guy is worthless! He's sitting on a rock, jumping up like a frog, coming up with weird concepts and ideas, making faces, and combing his hair into a giant pastry.' It's a good thing I was born in this century, when superfluous television seems to be part of the economy.
Conan O'Brien
She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.
E. M. Forster
Yes it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait—' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— 'let it be. It won't be long.'
Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'
The Professor looked blankly at him.
Douglas Adams
Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void...
Jonathan Lethem
Tell thou the King and all his liars, that IHave founded my Round Table in the North, And whatsoever his own knights have sworn. My knights have sworn the counter to it -- and say. My tower is full of harlots, like his court, But mine are worthier, seeing thy profess. To be none other than themselves -- and say. My knights are all adulterers like his own, But mine are truer, seeing they profess. To be none other; and say his hour is come, The heathen are upon him, his long lance. Broken, and...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Noone has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true. There is no reason...
Bertrand Russell
From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward.
Milan Kundera
Mentally, perhaps she was already three parts glass. So intense was her desire to set up a commemorative window to herself that, when it was erected, she believed she must leave behind in it, for ever, a little ghost. And should this be so, then what joy to be pierced each morning with light; her body flooded through and through by the sun, or in the evening to glow with a harvest of dark colours, deepening into untold sadness with the night....What ecstasy! It was the Egyptian sighing for...
Ronald Firbank
In an age when the difference between prince and peasant was thought to be in the stars, Mr Tzara, art was naturally an affirmation for the one and a consolation to the other; but we live in an age when the social order is seen to be the work of material forces and we have been given an entirely new kind of responsibility, the responsibility of changing society.
Tom Stoppard
They say that Hope is happinessBut genuine Love must prize the past;And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless:They rose first -- they set the last.And all that mem'ry loves the mostWas once our only hope to be:And all that hope adored and lostHath melted into memory.Alas! It is delusion all--The future cheats us from afar:Nor can we be what we recall,Nor dare we think on what we are.
George Byron