Being Used Quotes (page 55)
-
-
-
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world... Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.
Neal Stephenson
Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I’ll be dead,' you’ve said the word 'I,' and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul—it was a consequence of grammar.
Margaret Atwood
How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box,...
Adam Smith
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness -
I’m so accustomed to my Fate -
Perhaps the Other - Peace -
Would interrupt the Dark -
And crowd the little Room -
Too scant - by Cubits - to contain
The Sacrament - of Him -
I am not used to Hope -
It might intrude upon -
Its sweet parade - blaspheme the place -
Ordained to Suffering -
It might be easier
To fail - with Land in Sight -
Than gain - My Blue Peninsula -
To perish - of Delight -
Emily Dickinson
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.
Carl Sagan
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculou? Almost, at times, the Fool.
T. S. Eliot
A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations
Milan Kundera