Though Quotes (page 108)
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He [Jesus] speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking.
Frederick Buechner
Harry!" said Fred, elbowing Percy out of the way and bowing deeply. "Simply splendid to see you, old boy--"Marvelous," said George, pushing Fred aside and seizing Harry's hand in turn. "Absolutely spiffing."Percy scowled."That's enough, now," said Mrs. Weasley."Mum!" said Fred as though he'd only just spotted her and seizing her hand too. "How really corking to see you--
J. K. Rowling
Say farewell to luck when winning. It is the way of the gamblers of reputation. Quite as important as a gallant advance is a well-planned retreat. Lock up your winnings when they are enough, or when great. Continuous luck is always suspect; more secure is that which changes. Though half bitter and half sweet, it is more satisfying to the taste. The more luck pyramids, the greater the danger of slip and collapse. For luck always compensates her intensity by her brevity. Fortune wearies of...
Baltasar Gracian
We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it," I said. Even if I were such a man as to desire this thing, and even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, still I should take those words as a vow, and be held by them.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn’t want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly—except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect. My love should kindle to inflamed respect. Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance, Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy. Can buy this unprized precious maid of me. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though...
William Shakespeare
What I liked in anthropology was its inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he were no better than God, in terms of what he is not. But my ideas on this subject were always horribly confused, for my knowledge of men was scant and the meaning of being beyond me.
Samuel Beckett
The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness. Sometimes, therefore, a door opens onto a hallway impossibly, and the placement of our heating ducts and storage space borders on the irresponsible. I have great trouble, myself, in imagining the floor plans of split-level homes, though I feel they are important sites of the American condition.
John Updike
Surely, as a rule, some little bit of moonlight would filter through the clouds, through the clinks in the canopy of trees, and find the ground. Not tonight. Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight-a lunar eclipse, a new moon. A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.
Stephenie Meyer