Buts Quotes (page 1051)
Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupt? effects, so as to defraud their creditors.
Voltaire


It's a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun...
Margaret Atwood
And if we were not all three in fairyland, certainly I was. I lived principally on Dora and coffee. To have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition. There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spoony; but there was a purity of heart in all this still that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it.
Charles Dickens
Didn’t he have to admit, begrudgingly, that in some extra-perverse corner of his brain the idea of having to be out of town before sundown appealed to him? New Orleans had been the only constant thing in his life. But didn’t he yet an itchy foot sometimes, didn’t he sometimes think about just throwing all his stuff in his car and going?
Of course he did. Everybody did, even normal people, the ones with triple mortgages and orthodontists’ bills and responsibilities to everything except what...
Poppy Z. Brite

Humanity is identity. All men are the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes evil.
Victor Hugo

Do you swim, girl?"Yes." Shelby set down her cards. "But I didn't bring a suit."There's a closetful in the bathhouse," Serena told her. "You won't have any trouble finding one to fit."Really?" She shot Alan a look. "Isn't that handy? A closetful of suits."He gave her an easy smile. "Didn't I mention it? A swim sounds good," he added as he dropped his hands to her shoulders. "I've never seen Shelby in a bathing suit.
Nora Roberts