Times Quotes (page 85)
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When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is becoming more and more the situation...Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his...
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.
Arthur C. Clarke
And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!”
He paused a moment. “Come up and see,” he suggested. “I can give you a cup of tea in no time—and you won’t meet any bores.”
Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
“Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk,” she declared.
“Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key.
In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment. He...
Edith Wharton
Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse. A sea of black oil and dead things. No wind. No light. Nothing stirring, not even an ant, a spider. A silent universe. Such is the end of the flicker of time, the brief hot fuse of events and ideas set off, accidentally, and snuffed out, accidentally, by man. Not a real ending of course, nor even a beginning. Mere ripple in Time's stream.
John Gardner
And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when...
Carson McCullers
Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey…delays…sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling...
Gordon B. Hinckley
The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I'd been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.
Jhumpa Lahiri
The Party denied the free will of the individual - and at the sametime it exacted his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity tochoose between two alternatives - and at the same time it demanded that heshould constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguishgood and evil - and at the same time spoke pathetically of guilt andtreachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, awheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and couldnot...
Arthur Koestler
Father," she said late one night. "I can't keep up. Our goats are dying. We're going to have to ask the neighbors for help."Have we ever done that before?" he said."We've never needed help before," said Capable."Well I'm against it," he said. "If we haven't done it before, it stands to reason that this time is the first time we've done it, which means that, relative to what we've done in the past, this is different, which I am very much against, as I always have been, as you well know. I have...
George Saunders
Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?...As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you, like a pressed flower... both strange and familiar.
Cornelia Funke