Canned Quotes (page 1087)
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Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does notfear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any commonprizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight thething that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergymanwho gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on hisdeath-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I cangive you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strikeupwards.' So I say to...
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can...
Thomas Pynchon
I watch her do the simplest things: brushing her hair into a ponytail, feeding the dog, tying Sophie's shoelaces, and I want to tell her what she means to me, but I never actually say the words. After all, to acknowledge Delia as a drug, I'd have to face the fact that one day I might have to go without her and this I can't do.
Jodi Picoult
First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and third---before long the best lines cancel out---and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the picture have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children...
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You can be anywhere in the world ... under confetti, under bombs, in cellar or stratosphere, prison or embassy, on the equator in Trondhjem, you'll never go wrong, you'll get a direct response ... all they want of you is that famous Parisian vagina! la Parisienne! your man sees himself wedged between her thighs in epileptic bliss, full nuptial flight, inundating the barisienne with his enthusiasm ...
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
On the contrary, the male has a vested interest in ignorance; it gives the few knowledgeable men a decided edge on the unknowledgeable ones, and besides, the male knows that an enlightened, aware female population will mean the end of him. The healthy, conceited female wants the company of equals whom she can respect and groove on; the male and the sick, insecure, unself-confident male female crave the company of worms.
Valerie Solanas
With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed--he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.
Graham Greene
Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that...
Steven Pinker