Goodness Quotes (page 249)
But when Ellen throws at me that I have never had to struggle I feel like saying, 'Maybe. But I have had to learn to be capable in a hundred ways that were no pleasure or nourishment really. If I had not been rich, I might have become a good painter.' Instead, right now I had better get the silver out and see what needs polishing.
May Sarton
I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.
No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.
Charles Bukowski
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Charles Dickens
Farewell sweet earth and northern sky, for ever blest, since here did lieand here with lissom limbs did runbeneath the Moon, beneath the Sun, Lthien Tinvielmore fair than Mortal tongue can tell. Though all to ruin fell the worldand were dissolved and backward hurled; unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for thisthe dusk, the dawn, the earth, the seathat Lthien for a time should be.
J. R. R. Tolkien
don't ask me what good and what evil are, we knewwhat it was each time we had to act when blindness was an ex-ception, what is right and what is wrong are simply differentways of understanding our relationships with the others, not thatwhich we have with ourselves, one should not trust the latter
Jose Saramago
Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration ... and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.
Joseph Conrad