Habitable Quotes (page 11)
It seemed to me when I wrote The Life and Loves of a She-Devil that women were so much in the habit of being good it would do nobody any harm if they learned to be a little bad - that is to say, burn down their houses, give away their children, put their husband in prison, steal his money and turn themselves into their husband's mistress.
Fay Weldon
There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.
Gustave Flaubert
You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you hadbeen as much used as myself to hear poor little children firstlearning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had everseen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and howtired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit ofseeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that totorment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonimouswords.
Jane Austen
Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit..."--Ivan Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The habits of liberals, their automatic language, their knee-jerk responses to certain issues, deserved the epithets the right wing stuck them with. I'd see how true they often were. Here they were, banding together in packs, so I could predict what they were going to say about some event or conflict and it wasn't even out of their mouths yet. I was very uncomfortable with that. Liberal orthodoxy was as repugnant to me as conservative orthodoxy.
George Carlin