Our Quotes (page 476)
The world - whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved...
Wislawa Szymborska
The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death...
Ken Wilber
I’m not scared, though. Norman has kind of thick glasses, and I bet he couldn’t actually hit anything, even with a machine-gun, which even a lunatic like Norman is allowed to buy in this country thanks to our totally unrestrictive gun laws, which Michael Moscovitz says in his webzine will ultimately result in the demise of democracy as we know it.
Meg Cabot
Who do you think our champion will be today? Have you seen Mace Tyrell's boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now there's a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei's face. I laughed till my sides hurt.
George R. R. Martin
Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our hearts, minds and spirits. A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs!
Martin Luther
The reason the program is so successful is because alcoholics help other alcoholics. I've never met a Normie (our lingo for a person who doesn't have a problem with drugs and alcohol) who could even conceive of what it's like to be an alcoholic. Normies are always going, 'There's this new pill you can take and you won't want to shoot heroin anymore.' That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of alcoholism and drug addiction. These aren't just physical allergies, they're obsessions of the...
Anthony Kiedis
The "herrenvolk" [master race] are all around you, threading their way on their bicycles between the piles of rubble or rushing off with jugs and buckets to meet the water cart. It is queer to think that these are the people who once ruled Europe, from the Channel to the Caspian Sea and might have conquered our own island, if they had known how weak we were.
George Orwell
Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am...
Albert Einstein