Forget It Quotes (page 30)
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.
W. H. Auden
In fact, I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.
Lin Yutang
He scratched his head and frowned. 'Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they'd finally found out what it was?'
'I missed that,' I murmured.
' I saw that, said Sandra. "About two days ago.'
'That's right,' said the bartender.
'What is the secret of life?' I asked.
'I forget,' said Sandra.
'Protein,' the bartender declared. 'They found out something about protein.'
'Yeah,' said Sandra, 'that's it.
Kurt Vonnegut
I feel like a parent whose children prefer to stay inside and watch TV. The father pleads, "It's a beautiful day. Why don't you go play outside?" In this case, I feel like pleading, "It's a completely spooky night. Forget the loud music--come outside and have a blood sacrifice or something! There's a full moon!" (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)
Dave Eggers
Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend this into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of...
Walter Lippmann
Think then what it is to live on here eternally and yet be human; toage in soul and see our beloved die and pass to lands whither we maynot hope to follow; to wait while drop by drop the curse of the longcenturies falls upon our imperishable being, like water slow drippingon a diamond that it cannot wear, till they be born anew forgetful ofus, and again sink from our helpless arms into the void unknowable.
H. Rider Haggard
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity? even under the most difficult circumstances? to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal
Viktor E. Frankl