Good Years Quotes (page 9)
For the last century, almost all top political appointments [on the planet Earth] had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to the people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewed political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming...
Arthur C. Clarke
You've always lived here, right?" Sarah asked."Except for the years I went to college."Didn't you ever want to move away? To experience something new?"Like bistros?"She nudged him playfully with her elbow. "No, not just that. Cities have a vibrancy, a sense of excitement that you can't find in a small town."I don't doubt it. But to be honest, I've never been interested in things like that. I don't need those things to make me happy. A nice quiet place to unwind at the end of the day,...
Nicholas Sparks
When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.
Dashiell Hammett
perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit...
Barack Obama
But I was right and the real world seemed increasingly nonsensical. Why train for years to do a job you bitched about all day? Didn't it make more sense to follow your dreams and maybe do a little good at the same time? I didn't want to be a lawyer or a bank manager or a goddamn burger flipper. We only get one life and I wanted mine to be exciting...
Mark Millar
In a thousand years," Alessandro said, "this incident will be remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or a dragon that breathes fire...but we have given this rock a story that will be passed on."What good is that?"It isn't to our advantage, if that's what you mean. However, it's pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously. You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the last judgment.
Mark Helprin
O brother, the gods were good to you. Sleep, and be glad while the worldendures. Be well content as the years wearthrough; Give thanks for life, and the loves andlures; Give thanks for life, O brother, anddeath, For the sweet last sound of her feet, herbreath, For gifts she gave you, gracious andfew, Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Presently comfort came to him, and he thought the she had always given him of her strength though he had never quite realised it until now.Glory had passed him by; fame too perhaps would not endure; it might well be that the incalculable goddess would decree ill fame as his due. Perhaps there might not be included in his epitah the one tribute to his knighthood the he knew he deserved "Ii fut toujours bon et loyal chevalier" (He was always good and loyal knight) But whatever the shadowed...
Anya Seton
Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule.
Jane Austen
So it's back once more, back up the slope.
Why do they always ruin my rope
with their cuts?
I felt so ready the other day,
Had a real foretaste of eternity
In my guts.
Spoonfeeding me yet another sip
from life's cup.
I don't want it, won't take any more of it.
Let me throw up.
Life is medium rare and good, I see,
And the world full of soup and bread,
But it won't pass into the blood for me,
Just goes to my head.
It makes me ill, though others it feeds;
Do see that I must deny it!
For a...
Rainer Maria Rilke
We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us.
Ayn Rand
The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step. Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak butter tea that would give it any meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on...
Terry Prachett
I haven't lost my faith, but I've lost my religion. I still believe in something so deeply. ... I've never really gotten past that quote from Anne Frank in her diary, where she says that people are really good at heart. But I feel like the Catholic Church? no? the Catholic hierarchy has been disinviting people like me, and especially women like me, for so many years that I finally took the hint.
A. Whitney Brown