Without Quotes (page 137)
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THE POLITICIAN
If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish!
CATHERINE
Especially since you can't rob the people anyway.
THE POLITICIAN
Sure...How was that?
CATHERINE
What you rob, you spend. And what you spend goes back to the people. So where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books.
THE POLITICIAN
That book should be in every home!
Preston Sturges
Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm. That could abash the little bird. That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land. And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
And what was worst of all was that *It* drew his attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at *It*, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly. And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations -- new screens -- and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and...
Leo Tolstoy
I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing.
Christopher Hitchens
I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find the answer as to why we were ever alive. [...] Do you realize that! We'll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it's over! We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaningless will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witnesses to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead,...
Anne Rice
And therefore it is so important to be solitary and heedful when we are sad: because the seemingly uneventful and inflexible moment when our future sets foot in us stands so much nearer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous instant when it happens to us as if from without. The more patient, quiet and open we are in our sorrowing, the more deeply and the more unhesitatingly will the new thing enter us, the better shall we deserve it, the more will it be our own destiny, and when one day...
Rainer Maria Rilke
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.
Jodi Picoult
