Than Quotes (page 367)
In sport the mind serves as the acolyte and apprentice of the body. Nothing interferes with the flow of the game more than the athlete who obsesses about his every move on the court. You move, you react, you recover, you drive, and the thinking is seamless and invisible in the secret codes of your game.
Pat Conroy
Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.
Charles Dickens
You don't have to believe in Hell. All you need is to hear someone who really does, who believes in it this minute, today, the way people believe in 1685? all you have to do is see his face, his voice when he says the word... and than you know that anyone who can imagine Hell has the power to make it real for other people.
Peter S. Beagle
I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.
Mahatma Gandhi
Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.
David Foster Wallace
Each of us lives with a sword over his head. There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are the creators of the special myth of their time, because any myth is the creation of the very few who cannot bear reality.
Murray Kempton