Giving Quotes (page 152)
Riches I hold in light esteem, And love I laugh to scorn, And lust of fame was but a dream. That vanished with the morn. And if I pray, the only prayer. That moves my lips for me. Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!'Yes, as my swift days near their goal,'Tis all that I implore -In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.
Emily Bronte
They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.
Henry James
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked.
Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’
The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.
Toni Morrison
The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness... The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious mind will hush if you give it an egg.
Annie Dillard