Evenings Quotes (page 217)
I had seen the light, come to believe that a wedding should be about a feeling between two people, not a show for the masses...It was a magical, romantic evening, and although I occasionally wish I had worn a slightly fancier dress, and that Nick and I had danced on our wedding night, I have no real regrets about the way we chose to do things.
Emily Giffin
Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of fishy-eyed vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black, brooding compartments given over to cob-webs and memories and the conqueror worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even the stoutest philosophy can disperse.
H. P. Lovecraft
Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done.
Charles Dickens
we don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
In the "free world" (Natopolis) the centres of ideological orthodoxy are rarely defined. The diversity of intellectual trends within the orthodoxy, the indeterminate and shifting character of its boundaries, the existence of real centres of dissent (and the licence given to even Stalinist opposition)--all these conspire to create the central illusion of "Natopolitan" culture, that there is in fact no orthodoxy but only an infinite variety of opinions among which one is free to choose.
E. P. Thompson
The true meaning of courage is to be afraid, and then, with your knees knocking and your heart racing, to step out anyway—even when that step makes sense to nobody but you. I know that’s not easy. But making a bold move is the only way to truly advance toward the grandest vision the universe has for you.
Oprah Winfrey
She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her. The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to "she was not she," which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink.
Terry Prachett
Then he continues his rant, saying, "And even if I didn't know them, I know their type." "And what type is that?" she asks, leaning foward in her chair, yearning for confirmation that he gets it, that they are like-minded in their observations of others and the circumspect way they view the world. "Oh, let's see," he says, rubbing his jaw. "Superficial. Artificial. Sheep. They're more worried about how they come across to others than who they really are. They exhaust themselves in their...
Emily Giffin
But suddenly, after all this time, I feel there is something to say, and if I don'tquickly write it down, my head will burst. It doesn't matter if you read it. Itdoesn't even matter if I send it - assuming that could be done. Perhaps it comes down to this. I am writing to you because you know nothing. Because you are faraway from me and know nothing.
Paul Auster
I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but theincomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people goto priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek amongphrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, sounspeakably lonely.
Virginia Woolf