Then Quotes (page 132)
-
-
-
Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" "Does he collect butterflies?" They ask: "How old is he?" "How many brothers does he have?" "How much does he weigh?" "How much money does his father make?" Only then do they think they know him.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Master Meriadoc,’ said Aragorn, ‘if you think that I have passed through the mountains and the realm of Gondor with fire and sword to bring herbs to a careless soldier who throws away his gear, you are mistaken, If your pack has not been found, then you must send for the herb-master of this House, And he will tell you that he did not know the herb you desire had any virtues, but that it is called westmansweed by the vulgar, and galenas by the noble, and other names in other tongues more...
J. R. R. Tolkien
It was a quiet way -He asked if I was his -I made no answer of the tongue. But answer of the eyes -And then He bore me on. Before this mortal noise. With swiftness, as of Chariotsand distance, as of Wheels. This World did drop away. As acres from the feetof one that leaneth from Balloon. Upon an Ether Street. The Gulf behind was not, The Continents were new -Eternity was due. No Seasons were to us -It was not Night nor Morn -But Sunrise stopped upon the place. And Fastened in Dawn.
Emily Dickinson
One of the less attractive aspects of human nature is our tendency to hate the people we haven't treated very well; it's much easier than accepting guilt. If we can convince ourselves that the people we betrayed or enslaved were subhuman monsters in the first place, then our guilt isn't nearly so black as we secretly know that it is. Humans are very, very good at shifting blame and avoiding guilt.
David Eddings
I don't want any inheritance from my father. Do whatever the hell you want with it." "Wrong. You can do what you want with the inheritance. My job is to see to it that you have the opportunity to do so." "I don't want a single ore from that pig." "Then give the money to the Greenpeace or something." "I don't give a shit about whales.
Steig Larsson
The ants were busy on the ground, big black ones with shiny bodies and the little dusty quick ants. Kino watched with the detachment of God while a dusty ant frantically tried to escape the sand trap an ant lion had dug for him. He watched the ants moving, a little column of them near to his foot, and he put his foot in their path. Then the column climbed over his instep and continued on its way, and Kino left his foot there and watched them move over it.
John Steinbeck
The days that followed passed slowly. I lay in my hotel room and watched the kind of strange European TV that would probably make perfect sense if I understood the language, but because I didn’t, the programs just seemed dreamlike and baffling. In one studio show a group of Scandinavian academics watched as one of them poured liquid plastic into a bucket of cold water. It solidified, they pulled it out, handed it around the circle, and, as far as I could tell, intellectualized on its random...
Jon Ronson
you only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics, you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure, in time, until I spent most of my hours searching for such books. Then I devised a plan of study for myself, tracing obscure sciences, one after another, from the dawn of knowledge to the present. Eventually I exhausted even that, and beginning at the great ebony case that stands in the center of the room we of the library have maintained for three hundred ...
Gene Wolfe