Never Quotes (page 587)
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It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled...
Alexis de Tocqueville
No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work, - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Joseph Conrad
I watch her do the simplest things: brushing her hair into a ponytail, feeding the dog, tying Sophie's shoelaces, and I want to tell her what she means to me, but I never actually say the words. After all, to acknowledge Delia as a drug, I'd have to face the fact that one day I might have to go without her and this I can't do.
Jodi Picoult
I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We don't want to lose you Lord Rahl. We don't want to go back to way things were." She sounded on the verge of tears. "We like being able to do simple things, like make a joke, and laugh. We could never do such things before. We always lived in fear that if we said the wrong thing we would be beaten, or worse. Now that we have seen another way, we don't want to go back to that. If you throw your life away for the Midlands, then we will.- Cara
Terry Goodkind
Louise, I would gladly fire the past for you, go and not look back. I have been reckless before, never counting the cost, oblivious to the cost. Now, I've done the sums ahead. I know what it will mean to redeem myself from the accumulations of a lifetime. I know and I don't care. You set before me a space uncluttered by association. It might be a void or it might be a release. Certainly I want to take the risk. I want to take the risk because the life I have stored up is going mouldy.
Jeanette Winterson
You can be anywhere in the world ... under confetti, under bombs, in cellar or stratosphere, prison or embassy, on the equator in Trondhjem, you'll never go wrong, you'll get a direct response ... all they want of you is that famous Parisian vagina! la Parisienne! your man sees himself wedged between her thighs in epileptic bliss, full nuptial flight, inundating the barisienne with his enthusiasm ...
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - 'this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad' - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks.
Russell Brand