Buts Quotes (page 424)
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If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world,...
J. K. Rowling
We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.
Joan Didion
[...] and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side. It wasn't easy, and I'm still not sure that I managed it properly, but it's just something I like to do when things aren't going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before...
Hugh Laurie
Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.
Emma Goldman
Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew George Gipp. He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy."
Knute Rockne
Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not...
Ayn Rand
Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded ofhim. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knewdifferent parts of the whole story, but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separatefragments of what had ... once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunderabout in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought.
Tom Clancy
Francie said nothing more. Katie knew that she was letting them down. But she couldn't help it, she just couldn't help it. Yes, she should go with them to lend the comfort and authority of her presence but she knew she couldn't stand the ordeal. Yet, they had to be vaccinated. Her being with them or somewhere else couldn't take that fact away. So why shouldn't one of the three be spared? Besides, she said to her conscience, it's a hard and bitter world. They've got to live in it. Let them get...
Betty Smith
Sometimes she would cry. I was so lonely, she'd say. You have no idea how lonely I was. And I had friends, I was a lucky one, but I was lonely anyway. I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not...
Margaret Atwood
The Lost Tribe. How long, how long must I regret? I never found my people yet; I go about, but cannot find The blood-relations of the mind. Through my little sphere I range, And though I wither do not change; Must not change a jot, lest they Should not know me on my way. Sometimes I think when I am dead They will come about my bed, For my people well do know When to come and when to go. I know not why I am alone, Nor where my wandering tribe is gone, But be they few, or be they far, Would I...
Ruth Pitter
Progo,' Meg asked. 'You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?'
How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.'
But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.'
I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.'
But how many?'
What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.
Madeleine L'Engle
Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.
Dean Koontz