Which Quotes (page 443)
To part with money is a sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. There is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for giving his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, not from a beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five pounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man...
William Makepeace Thackeray
...is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Suddenly the lights of the Universe seemed to be turned down. As if some demon had rubbed the heaven's face with a dirty sponge, the splendour in which they had lived for so long blenched to a pallid, cheerless and pitiable grey... What had been a chariot gliding in the fields of heaven became a dark steel box dimly lighted by a slit of window, and falling.
C. S. Lewis
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
Herman Melville
in that small [time] most greatly lived this star of England: Fortune made his sword, By which the world's best garden he achiev'dAnd left it to his son imperial lord. Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd Kingof France and England did this King succeed; Whose state so many of had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed.
William Shakespeare
The mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest order of merit.
Edgar Allan Poe
When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I’m writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what’s already there in front of me. That said, it won’t be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of...
Tanith Lee
In this world in which we live, there is a tendency for us to describe needed
change, required help, and desired relief with the familiar phrase, ‘They ought to do
something about this.’ We fail to define the word they. I love the message, ‘Let
there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
Thomas S. Monson