Underlying Quotes (page 35)
Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one--that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
Alain de Botton
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
Ernest Hemingway
Sir, what can be said of these things? Is it the arm of the flesh that hath done these things? Is it the wisdom and counsel, or strength of man? It is the Lord only. God will curse that man and his house that dares to think otherwise. Sir, you see the work is done by a Divine leading. God gets into the hearts of men, and persuades them to come under you.
Oliver Cromwell
Walk the Bowery under the El at night and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal? the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism.
E. B. White
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
Cheryl Strayed
We'll have a sauna first."Oh, will we?"Yeah." He hooked a hand in the waistband of her trousers and drew her closer. "Open the pores a bit." In a quick move, he unhooked them, then drew them over her hips."Since you insist." Shelby began undoing his tie. "Have you noticed, Senator, that most of the time you wear a great many more clothes than I?"As a matter of fact..." He slipped his hands under her blouse and found her. "I have.
Nora Roberts
There is serenity and calm under the water's surface. You move easily and glimpse a world you have never seen before. You think of running out of oxygen and the idea of sharks dart out at you. You sense that there is something treacherous hiding behind every reef; no matter how much you explore you won't ever know what it is.
Jerzy Kosinski
It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days” or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim,
“thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”...
George Orwell
she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind thescreen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved tobecome butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or eversometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery