Places Quotes (page 53)
In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with...
Alain de Botton
A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek. I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting...
Ernest Hemingway
Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.
Charlotte Bronte
That was the trouble. The land is too big out there, and after a while it starts to swallow you up. I reached a point when I couldn't take it anymore. All that bloody silence and emptiness. You try to find your bearings in it, but it's too big, the dimensions are too monstrous, and eventually, I don't know how else to put it, eventually it just stops being there. There's no world, no land, no nothing. It comes down to that, Fogg, in the end it's all a figment. The only place you exist is in...
Paul Auster
If I could live again my life,In the next - I'll try,- to make more mistakes,I won't try to be so perfect,I'll be more relaxed...I'll take fewer things seriously..I'll take more risks,I'll take more trips,I'll watch more sunsets,I'll climb more mountains,I'll swim more rivers,I'll go to more places I've never beenI'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary onesIf I could live again - I will travel light If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the...
Jorge Luis Borges
SoWalter Arensberg,Alfred Kreymborg,Carl Sandburg,Louis Untermeyer,Eunice Tietjens,Clara Shanafelt,James Oppenheim,Maxwell Bodenheim,Richard Glaenzer,Scharmel Iris,Conrad Aiken,I place your names hereSo that you may liveIf only as names,Sinuous, mauve-colored names,In the JuvenaliaOf my collected editions.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself.
David Hume
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so...
Carl Sagan
You've always lived here, right?" Sarah asked."Except for the years I went to college."Didn't you ever want to move away? To experience something new?"Like bistros?"She nudged him playfully with her elbow. "No, not just that. Cities have a vibrancy, a sense of excitement that you can't find in a small town."I don't doubt it. But to be honest, I've never been interested in things like that. I don't need those things to make me happy. A nice quiet place to unwind at the end of the day,...
Nicholas Sparks
One of the creatures in the front circle shook itself all over and, still shaking, moved very, very slowly toward Spock. He didn't move a muscle. The creature put out a long slender pseudopod, gleaming in the sunshine like suddenly blown glass, and poked Spock's boot with it. Then it made the scratchy sound again, more laughter, and said a word: "Gotcha!" It jumped back into place. All the other creatures began to echo the scratch-laughter. Spock looked around him in mild bemusement. ...
Diane Duane