Which Quotes (page 94)
-
-
-
that man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations; that the end justifies the means only within very narrow limits; that ethics is not a function of social utility, and charity not a petty bourgeois sentiment but the gravitational force which keeps civilization in its orbit.
Arthur Koestler
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity? even under the most difficult circumstances? to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal
Viktor E. Frankl
He who has perceived the material out of which the Promethean tragic writers prior to Euripides formed their heroes, and how remote from their purpose it was to bring the faithful mask of reality onto the stage, will also be aware of the utterly opposite tendency of Euripides. Through him the everyday man forced his way from the spectators' seats onto the stage; the mirror in which formerly only grand and bold traits were represented now showed the painful fidelity that conscientiously...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Like a wave that has been building it's strength over a thousand miles of ocean, and which makes little stir in the deep water, but which, when it reaches the shallows rears itself high up into the sky, terrifying the shore dwellers, before crashing down on land with irresistible power - so Iorek Byrnison rose up against Iofur, exploding upward from his firm footing on the dry rock and slashing with a ferocious left hand at the exposed jaw of Iofur Raknison.
Philip Pullman
Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence, without you moving, slicing the noon like a blue flower, without you walking later through the fog and the cobbles, without the light you carry in your hand, golden, which maybe others will not see, which maybe no one knew was growing like the red beginnings of a rose. In short, without your presence: without your coming suddenly, incitingly, to know my life, gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind: since then I am because you are, since then you...
Pablo Neruda
If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of...
Thomas Paine
Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead iventory...
Vladimir Nabokov
The range of the human mind, the scale and depth of the metaphors the mind is capable of manufacturing as it grapples with the universe, stand in stunning contrast to the belief that there is only one reality, which is man's, or worse, that only one culture among the many on earth possesses the truth. To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, "There could be more, there could be things we don't understand," is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself an...
Barry Lopez
Our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism; . . . to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are conscious automata.
Thomas Huxley
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are burnt beyond recognition," he added, looking at his wife as onelooks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered somedamage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed themcritically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking atthem reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husbandbefore leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped theminto her open...
Kate Chopin
A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:"Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!"He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence. (opening lines)
Kate Chopin