Workings Quotes (page 247)
The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.
Oscar Wilde
When your hero falls from grace, all fairy tales are uncovered Myth exposed and pain magnified, the grace pays uncovered He told me to be strong, but I confused to see it so weak You say never to give up, and it hurts to see what comes to be When your hero falls soley the stars, and so does the reception of tomorrow Without my hero, theres only me alone, to deal with my sorrow Your heart ceases to work, and your soul is not happy at all What are you expected to do, when your only hero falls
Tupac Shakur
In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn't get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of...
Michael Crichton
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806? 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. He clearly set forth the premises of the...
John Stuart Mill
Years ago I predicted that these suffragettes, tried out by victory, would turn out to be idiots. They are now hard at work proving it. Half of them devote themselves to advocating reforms, chiefly of a sexual character, so utterly preposterous that even male politicians and newspaper editors laugh at them; the other half succumb absurdly to the blandishments of the old-time male politicians, and so enroll themselves in the great political parties. A woman who joins one of these parties...
H. L. Mencken
Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action--like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish...
George Eliot
He suggested I play golf, but finally agreed to give me something that, he said, "would really work"; and going to a cabinet, he produced a vial of violet-blue capsules banded with dark purple at one end, which, he said, had just been placed on the market and were intended not for neurotics whom a draft of water could calm if properly administered, but only for great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries.
Vladimir Nabokov
There too he had been treated with revolting injustice. His struggles, his privations,his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, hadfilled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justic? the standard of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual. The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of resignation.
Joseph Conrad
The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.
Malcolm Gladwell