Momentous Quotes (page 51)
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Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he has yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid’s mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her son’s hand. I see the pain I’ve caused. I see the man I could have been, and the man I was, and then...
George Saunders
Every generation of humans believed it had all theanswers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumedwould be solved at any moment. And they all believed theirancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the oddsthat you are the first generation of humans who will understandreality?
Scott Adams
Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)
Knut Hamsun
He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there, there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands Shakespeare's words, her meaning.
Virginia Woolf
I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out, 'Oh, a horrid rat!' I shouldn't like people to scream and jump and say, 'Oh, a horrid Sara!' the moment they saw me. And set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
There are times when one
feels liberated from one’s
limits and human
imperfections.
At such moments, we see
ourselves there, in a little
corner of our little planet,
our eyes fixed in wonder on
the cold and yet deep
beauty of that which is
eternal, that which is
elusive.
Life and death are fused
together and there is no
evolution, nor destination,
there is only BEING.
Albert Einstein
But the spectacle perceived does not partake of pure being. Taken exactly as I see it, it is a moment of my individual history, and since sensation is a reconstitution, it pre-supposes in me sediments left behind by some previous constitution, so that I am, as a sentient subject, a repository stocked with natural powers at which I am the first to be filled with wonder.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty