Knowing And Doing Quotes (page 52)
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...most cannibalism is not a primitive or even a bestial habit. It is artificial and even artistic; a sort of art for art's sake. Men do not do it because they do not think it horrible; but, on the contrary, because they do think it horrible...It is by no means clear, so far as I know that the Eskimos ever indulged in human sacrifice. They were not civilised enough.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
That guy back there had a gun,” Christopher went on. “Brandon Stark didn't even have a gun, and he managed to kidnap you just by threatening to do mean things to your friends. How do you think you're going to cope with his dad, who's a real gangster?”
“Well,” I said. Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so encouraged. There were actual tears in my eyes. “That's why this time I'm asking you for help. I know I can't do it alone anymore. I need you, Christopher.”
“You're damn right you do,” he said....
Meg Cabot
What is war?' I asked.Oh, it's a messy, stupid business,' he said, 'Two sides wave flags and beat drums and shoot one another dead. It always begins this way, making speeches, talking about rights, and all that sort of thing.'But what is it for? What do they get out of it?'I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I don't think they know themselves.
Hugh Lofting
I laughed. “You’re too young to be so … pessimistic,” I said, using the English word.
“Pessi-what?”
“Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.”
“Pessimistic … pessimistic …” She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. “I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.
Haruki Murakami
Ah!" I cried, springing up. "But no! no! My uncle shall never know it. He would insist upon doing it too. He would want to know all about it. Ropes could not hold him, such a determined geologist as he is! He would start, he would, in spite of everything and everybody, and he would take me with him, and we should never get back. No, never! never!"My over-excitement was beyond all description.
Jules Verne
The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore...
Augusten Burroughs
The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a white albatross, each local rep has a cover known as the Ego, and their mission in this world is Bad Shit. We do know what's going on, and we let it go on. As long as we can see them, stare at them, those massively moneyed, once in a while. As long as they allow us a glimpse, however rarely. We need that. And they know it - how often, under what conditions...
Thomas Pynchon
There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four.
Albert Camus
I know about her, although she has never crossed my path," he said softly. "I know about her struggles and her defeats. It is because of her defeats that she is to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats she has been born a new quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy. I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile. It is the quality of being strong to be loved. It is something men need from women and that they do not get.
Sherwood Anderson
Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But...
Paul Auster
Or maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't even know the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning - and you read more into it than maybe...
Doug Coupland
You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?' he asked. 'You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So—this is my point—what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are....'
The trouble is,' Teddy said, 'most people don't want to see things the way they are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where...
J. D. Salinger
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
Ernest Hemingway
You know, Dag and Claire smile a lot, as do many people I know. But I always wondered if there is something either mechanical or malignant to their smiles, for the way they keep their outer lips propped up seems a bit, not false, but protective. A minor realization hits me as I sit with the two of them. It is the realisation that the smiles that they wear in their daily lives are the same as the smiles worn by people who have been good-naturedly fleeced, but fleeced nonetheless, in public and...
Doug Coupland
It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and draw new ones.
John Steinbeck