View Quotes (page 29)
Who was she, what was she that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that she pretended to be larger than this large occasion? If she would not do this, then she must do great things, she must do something greater.
Henry James
The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor — not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the...
Stephen Jay Gould
The world can be made beautiful again by viewing it as a battlefield. When we have defined and isolated the evil things, the colors come back into everything else. When evil things have become evil, good things, in a blazing apocalypse, become good. There are some men who are dreary because they do not believe in God; but there are many others who are dreary because they do not believe in the devil.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall...
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Dialogue in the works of autobiography is quite naturally viewed with some suspicion. How on earth can the writer remember verbatim conversations that happened fifteen, twenty, fifty years ago? But 'Are you playing, Bob?' is one of only four sentences I have ever uttered to any Arsenal player (for the record the others are 'How's the leg, Bob?' to Bob Wilson, recovering from injury the following season; 'Can I have your autograph, please?' to Charlie George, Pat Rice, Alan Ball and Bertie...
Nick Hornby
We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to...
Francis Schaeffer
Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.
Dick Francis
Conrad,Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination however, requires that I stay in the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.
Orhan Pamuk
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, comdemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
Ayn Rand
Now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain. Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes. That witnessed huge affliction and dismay. Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels ken he views. The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round. As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames. No light, but rather darkness visible. Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace. And rest...
John Milton
Call it a good marriage -For no one ever questioned. Her warmth, his masculinity, Their interlocking views; Except one stray graphologist. Who frowned in speculation. At her h's and her s's, His p's and w's. Though few would still subscribe. To the monogamic axiom. That strife below the hip-bones. Need not estrange the heart, Call it a good marriage: More drew those two together, Despite a lack of children, Than pulled them apart. Call it a good marriage: They never fought in public, They...
Robert Graves