c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have mo prejudice against the Southern people... They are just what we would ben in their situation. If slavery did not now exits amongst them, they wld not inrtoduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up... I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. (p52)
— Russell Freedman, Lincoln: A Photobiography
I don't understand," Belle cried. "I gave you gold. You only gave me grief.
— William H. Hooks, The Ballad of Belle Dorcas
The generation that followed did not have the same concerns; none of its members attempted to follow the example of the past generation. There was no longer anyone with the noble determination to get to know the great men of the world, or if there were some individuals consumed with this curiosity, they were few in number. From then on, there remained only vulgar minds given over to hatred, envy and discord, who took an interest only in things which did not concern them, gossip, slander, calumny of one's neighbors, all those things which are the source of the worst of our troubles.
— Cheikh Anta Diop, Precolonial Black Africa
God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean — walking on the land.
— Timothy Findley, The Wars
There's only one thing a bully respected: bigger bully.
— Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil
How can the removal of beauty from a world so lacking in beauty be anything but tragic?
— William Goldman, The Silent Gondoliers
There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream
— Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
But was that not the task you set me? To defend the helpless against the strong?" "Indeed it was Master Weed. But who is to say who is helpless, and who is strong?" .........."If you seek the power to alter fate, you must also bear responsibility for the consequences. For you cannot change the fate of only one being; all fates are intertwined." "I performed the task," I protest. "I did what you bid me do." "You defended the weak from the strong." Larkspur speaks as if from far away. "But who will defend these poor weak infants against you!?
— Maryrose Wood, The Poison Diaries
A slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, “If you don’t whip me, I won’t work.” He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Knowledge is what enables one to be wrong. (p. 11)
— Mike Higton, Vulnerable Learning: Thinking Theologically About Higher Education
Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us..."Did you...she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms...
— Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine
Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?
— Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
News is something worth knowing that you didn't know already. (by an "earnest young woman" in his journalism class)
— David Brinkley, Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion
How do you explain to your friend's mother why a night out with friends has left her daughter dying from an ecstasy overdose?
— A.C. Flanagan, Ecstasy
Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty of any sin?
— Donna Woolfolk Cross, Pope Joan
But ask us to prove even to ourselves we are right in our belief, and we are in a quandary.
— J.W. Sire
And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked.
— Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
Simply by living in this particular time and space, you're doing something nearly 100% of all other humans ever never could. Don't waste it.
— Bill Loguidice
The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives...he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer.
— Jennifer Haigh, Faith
Given the obstacles to merging these fragile and diverse forms of storytelling into a single tale, it is, paradoxically, by venturing in the opposite direction -- by listening for the silences between accounts; by discovering what each genre of recordkeeping cannot tell us -- that we can capture most fully the human struggle to understand our elusive past. What this past asks of us in return is a willingness to recount all our stories -- our darkest tales as well as our most inspiring ones -- and to ponder those stories that violence has silenced forever. For until we recognize our shared capacity for inhumanity, how can we ever hope to tell stories of our mutual humanity?
— Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History
What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? … Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked’ but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities.When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others — a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The old tales of China tell us that all things may grow and change. A stone may become a plant. A plant may become an animal. An animal may become a human. A human may become a god.Just so, a snake may become a woman. And we are told of one who did.
— Aaron Shepard, Lady White Snake: A Tale from Chinese Opera
We live by our labors from one harvest to the next, there is no certain telling whether we shall be able to feed ourselves and our children, and if bad times are prolonged we know we must see the weak surrender their lives and this fact, too, is within our experience. In our lives there is no margin for misfortune.
— Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve
If these self-anointed leaders did not keep the people aroused with calls to preserve the Revolution, or to defend it from one imaginary foe after another, then the people might shake themselves awake from the trance they were in and begin to question the very men who had drenched their streets in blood and make France pariah among the civilized nations of the world.
— Robert Masello, The Medusa Amulet
There's still a question I must put to you," said the cunger woman. "Can you give up Joshua to keep him?
— William H. Hooks, The Ballad of Belle Dorcas
Take that rose bush, for example. We are all looking at the same plant, but our perception of it varies according to the way we each think and see. One person may see a vigorous rose, another may see a rose that could benefit from a little pruning, and a third may see a mess that no amount of attention would save. The rose bush isn't changing; it's the way we personally perceive it that differs, the way each of us thinks that colors our perception.
— Sydney Banks, The Enlightened Gardener
Be patient with everyone you meet, for you may never know whether your words were the last they ever heard.
— L.J. Kane
I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.
— Han Kang, Human Acts
Disasters are called natural, as if nature were the executioner and not the victim
— Eduardo Galeano, Cuentos Clasificados 0
There's a societal push for conformity in all ways. There's less tolerance of difference. And so maybe for some people having a label is better. It can confer a sense of hope and direction. (interview with Allen Frances)
— Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
It's better to lose something than never to have had
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
It seems fine to revolt in front of all,but apologizing fro the same in a similar situation makes you feel smallIt is an irony! that's what I call..
— Kruthika Swaminathan
Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what 'truthfulness' is.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings
Well, I want novels,' said Tessa. 'Or poetry. Books are for reading, not for turning oneself into livestock.' Will's eyes glittered. 'I think we may have a cope of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland about somewhere.' Tessa wrinkled her nose. 'Oh, that's for little children, isn't it?' she said. "I never liked it much-seemed like so much nonsense.' Will's eyes were very blue. 'There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception
— Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings
If you're as good as your word, words should be good enough.
— Rainbow Rowell, Carry On
We think we are so strong but it is only when others try to prey on our weaknesses that we realize how frail we truly are.”-Skyla (from Twiceborn)
— JP Robinson
There was some little local controversy too, about a fundraising effort called Suzie's Closet--folks getting together in church basements to make care packages for the plantations--blankets and candy bars.....first they interviewed a local advocate for the homeless, asking why our attention shouuld be down there, "when there's so much suffering right here at home."...it was the usual stuff --all the new stories and just the old stories again.
— Ben H. Winters, Underground Airlines
I'm avoiding tomorrow, by spending more time in today.
— Ellie Elisabeth, Army of the Almost Dead
You either WIN or you LEARN. Either way, you WIN!
— Shay Dawkins, iSin: Upgrade To Life Version 2.0
Don't fall in love with me. Not unless you're ready for a God damn fight. I don't do fragility, or friction and fairy tales. I want you to be irrational because I'm irrational. Be bold. Speak your mind. I want your wildfires and obscenities. I want your passion and priorities. Protect what's yours. I'll defend what's ours. Let us fight against routines and bad habits, and anything typical. And don't you dare quit. Not on us, not on yourself. God help the person who threatens us. Forgive me when I let you down, but don't overlook it, or allow it. We're all insecure about something. Show me yours. We're all terrified sometimes. Turn to me. People come in and out of my life so often and easily that I just look for a love that stays. I don't mind your blemishes or scars, I have a few of my own. Don't be another flash in the pan. Falling for me will be easy. Staying with me will be impossible. But you deserve a love that most people don't believe in anymore.
— J. Raymond
When I asked her if she was afraid to fall in love, she damn near doubled over. "Afraid? My heart has been through hell and back. Yet it never quits, refuses to rest, gives without asking in return, and is deeper than the deepest sea. It's love, my dear, that should fear me." That night my heart was signed, by my one of a kind.
— J. Raymond
The number of secrets I receive is in inverse proportion to the number of secrets anyone expects me to have of my own. And this is the real source of my dismay. Being told secrets is not - never has been - a sign that I belong or that I matter. It is quite the opposite: confirmation of my irrelevance.
— Zoë Heller, What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.
— Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People
A superior brain without the saving essence of godliness may turn against the human race and drench the world in blood, or worse, it may loose ideas into the earth which will continue to curse mankind for centuries after it has turned to dust again.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of Man: The Divine Conquest of the Human Heart
Accept who you are. Don’t leave me, Willow. We are all broken, that’s how the light shines through. - Rhydian
— Mira Monroe, Magick
You can be proud of your country and culture and, at the same time, recognize that there is something that's wrong that needs to be changed.
— Sarah  Benson, Born of Shadow
You’re more capable than you know. Deep down, you have… a magick inside you that you’ve tucked away. That needs release. It’s a connection to who you are and what you are capable of. - Evan
— Mira Monroe, Magick
Sometimes money is the only thing that people have and they feel threatened when they think they are losing it.
— Mika Chanell, Just as the Sky is Blue
In the end, after kingdoms and armies had fallen, the religions were still fighting, weren't they?
— Brandon Sanderson
The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.
— James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
On whose authority, who gives the right to religion, the law, medicine, the others, to choose on my behalf but without consulting me, the way, the place and the time I am allowed to die?
— Alexandros Velios, My and My Death: The Right to Euthanasia
I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.
— Flannery O'Connor, Good Country People
Willow, there is a lot of prejudice around magickal families. I think your terms are snobby and over privileged brats. Whether it be light dark or anything between, they will have it measured in percentages like DNA. For Wiccan culture, it’s about purity above all. One with nature, the goddess, and the spirit. It’s not that different with other magickal beings. - Aiden Warrington
— Mira Monroe, Magick
I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't want to see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big...mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
There's a reason you feel the need to blame yourself," he continues, "from all accounts you're a very careful girl. If you accept the blame, decide you took a rare misstep, you can reassure yourself this was not a random event. If you blame yourself you can believe you're still in control of your universe. You're not, you never will be.
— Julia Heaberlin
Yet weren't all human beings simply human beings no matter what name you applied to them[?]
— Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire
I am someone who has always run from difficulty, and it dawns on me that I don't have to go on that way. We write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice. But a tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses. You don't have to keep being the thing you have become. It is never too late.
— Rachel Joyce, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
People were funny about things they couldn't see. If they couldn't see it, it wasn't there. Or at the least, it didn't affect them. But the world didn't work that way, did it? There were things all around that you couldn't see, and these things had power.
— Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death
Grown-ups love figures. When you talk to them about a new friend, they never ask questions about essential matters.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
But we live in a karaoke society... Many people feel they have to dance to someone else's tune, to sing someone else's song.
— Francis Dewar
Once they had been equal in their separate freedoms. They had set out to have children as lightly as if they were playing house, and now her necessarily domestic life bored him, and she was bound to it in her body and imagination. This imbalance was fated, built into their biology.
— Tessa Hadley
None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.
— Lydia M. Child
Sweet and savory, it was the honey of our existence, DNA with the message: This is who I am.
— Atom Yang, Red Envelope
Man sees what he knows, not what he seesShort story, The Mallard
— S.L. Northey
Most epiphanies happen after great loss or tragedy. The soul is equipped to deal with dynamic events because of its elastic quality. Energy is mutable, it can change its presence, but not its tone.
— S.L. Northey, Good Grieving: Narrative Perspectives of Loss and Bereavement
Broken wings don't mend that way
—  the way you think broken wings do. Once that wing has taken time to mend
WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love.
— Annette Janic, War Child: Survival. Betrayal. Secrets
You're just a coward, like all those who stand behind the suffering of others.
— Sonya Hartnett, The Children of the King
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
— John Ruskin
We sometimes hear of things that can travel faster than light. Something called 'the speed of thought' is occasionally proffered. This is an exceptionally silly notion especially since the speed of impulses through the neutrons in our brain is about the same as the speed of a donkey cart.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Perfectionism is a delusion that can rob one of a very successful, enriching life if not careful.
— April Bryan
Too much time will do that to you. Blur the edges between your memories and your imagination until everything feels like something you saw in a movie instead of your life.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Redemption
Bullying is wrong. It is not okay to bully others back because they bullied you.We learned our lesson with Don the Goat
— T.R. Durphy, The Pumpkin Family: A Halloween Story with a Very Important Lesson on Bullying!
He said, You know, whoever hurt youdies every time they look in the mirror.That is how they pay."She crossed her arms."And one day, Maria, you will die too,but there's no reason for you to dieevery day.
— Toby Barlow, Sharp Teeth
The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who grew up with TV and movies and now the internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Do you not know? Dolls are nothing until someone decides to pick them up and use them. During that time they are whatever they are expected to be. Whatever is commanded of them. You say I am not a doll, but like everyone else that is exactly what you want me to be. A lovely toy you may amuse yourself with... But remember, General, that when playtime is over and the doll has been returned to her shelf, the pretty shell you see? That is what she really is. Everything else is pretend.
— Roselynn Cannes, Fallen
For who can we be, but ourselves.
— Molly Vonk
WE MUST ALL FACE THAT FINAL DAY, WHEN ALL THAT WE ARE LEFT WITH IS WHO WE ARE. LEAVE WITH YOUR TRUE SELF
— Lorenzo Victory
Arshan, The Lord of Hounds has been let out of his prison once, should the heroine, Salarn trust him now?
— LJ Fuler
Destiny is like gravity. You may stray from it a bit but it will always be there.
— Oliver A. Kennon
...Dickey Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them - look hard. Some day if you are clever - cleverer than anyone in the Jago right now - if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough - one of a thousand - maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is - that's your aim in life - there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps - It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devil most, or God help you, Dicky Perrot - though he wont: for the Jago's got you!
— Arthur Morrison
I often ponder....Isn't 'Light, Grey & Dark' similar to 'I, Me & Myself' ?
— Saurabh Singal
People who talk too much are tiresome, especially those who are not informative, thought-provoking, or funny.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.
— Carl Sagan, Contact
Some pasts exist as a fog that rolls in and out of the present, formed not by air that condenses into mist but memories that condense into tiny doors that open to forgotten moments. Maybe you glance at a stranger on a crowded street who reminds you of a childhood friend or hear a song that was popular the first summer you fell in love, and in the space of that single beat of time you are flung backward to a who or when long past. And yet it is only for that one beat. Those tiny doors never remain open for long for most of us. They ensure our former times are kept as relics, and the dust upon them is wiped clean only occasionally
— Billy Coffey, The Devil Walks in Mattingly
If you love someone, you don't act like they annoy you. You like them, and you try and make them think they're the most important person in the world to you.
— Susan May Warren, Evergreen
If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Have you ever wondered which hurts more:Saying something and wishing you hadn't, or saying nothing and wishing you had?
— Various
I wonder...," she said, "if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
If I stood you in front of a man, pressed the cold metal of a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?''No, sir.''Are you sure?''Of course, sir. No ways!''What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then? Would you?
— Jason   Wallace, Out of Shadows
The greatest of all faults is to imagine you have none".
— Unknown Author 692
A king may rule the kingdom but the queen still moves the board.
— Donna Marie Timney
But what Jamie was saying just mixed it all up, selfish and selfless. I wasn't even sure what the words meant anymore. or if it was possible to be one without the other.
— Phoebe Kitanidis, Whisper
People sometimes forget how to be happy due to a "failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal footing. That was the only moral a story must have.
— Ian McEwan
Greed and corruption isn't in the world.It's in the people".
— Suzanne Collins
The essential ingredients of these struggles for justice are human beings who, if only for a moment, if only while beset with fears, step out of line and do "something", however small. And even the smallest, most unheroic of acts adds to the store of kindling that may be ignited by some surprising circumstance into tumultuous change.
— Howard Zinn
Are you a Christian? she said.I answered:I am a Christian, I am a Jew, I am a Catholic, I am Muslim.I am each and everyone of you, look into the mirror and you will see me,as i see you..
— Faruk DML
At one point, I began to think that I had a divine doorman. Lenny was the most unlikely incarnation of God I could imagine, and yet, I kept drifting irresistibly towards this absurd conclusion. Despite my staunchly atheistic inclinations, I couldn't explain Lenny any other way. But eventually I came to my senses and realized that he was just one of those game show freaks with an encyclopedic memory. That didn't make him God, did it? Would God proclaim so regularly how much he likes Patsy's Pizza?
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
I had always been an atheist until I met Lenny. He was too wonderously complex and good for there to be no benevolent and intelligent force behind our marvelous cosmos. Lenny gave me the actual proof my fiercely skeptical mind had always demanded. Not some logical, 37-step proof of God's existence. It was a personal proof. And it was irrefutable.
— Zack Love, The Doorman
Are you a Christian? she said.I answered:I am a Christian, I am a Jew, I am a Catholic, I am Muslim. I am each and everyone of you my child, look into the mirror and you will see me,as i see you..
— Faruk H.T.
Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.
— Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith
What about an amnesiac, who awakes having lost his memories and must learn of his past from scratch? Has he died? How can we be just memories? How does that leave us with enough?
— Bernard Beckett, Lullaby
My life is like an O Henry story....the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.
— Mark  Lawrence, Emperor of Thorns
We'd stared into Death's eyes and Death blinked first.
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?
— Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Exactly what good are our eyes if they are not willing to see what's right before us?
— Mark W. Boyer
If they'd given her a proper time machine, she probably would have used it to cuddle with him. Let somebody else kill Hitler.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
We are forever changed by the moments that we live but the moments we live cannot be changed. 
— Taylor Coleman
Yes, I still believe in God. That hasn't changed. I just needed some time away.”“Ah.” Inspector Carrola clicked his tongue. “For your sake, I hope that God does not need some time away from you.
— Richard Devin, The Third Hour
Don't turn over rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Re-examine all that you have been told, dismiss that which insults your soul.
— Walt Whitman
Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up---dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much.
— J.C. Carleson, The Tyrant's Daughter
Anytime a group of people assemble for a common cause, amazing things can happen.
— DeiAmor Verus, Talk to God
bottom of page 33:We all want to feel needed, and we also want to be with people who can manage on their own, if needbe.
— Sara Eckel, It's Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single
... if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!', the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.
— George Orwell, 1984
Talk To God Ch 13 p. 90: No it doesn't have to be a prayer. It could be someone just concentrating extremely hard, wishing or hoping that will create "the vibe" if they are so moved. And that vibe, as you will learn, becomes extremely powerful beyond earth. That vibe drives the universe. But don't confuse this. Forget about prayers. You don't need to pray to communicate with others. That's a religious definition, not a human or a God thing. When you are concentrating on your wishes, focusing on something you desire or wish to share, your soul and spirit are reaching out to all other humans near you, using your brain as the communicator and returning the support to you. If people near you are aware and are moved to respond, they will. And that response is a powerful, electric, spirited response that carries with it the ability to give that person the supporting power, the strength and the ability to assist them in doing whatever it is they desire. And what all humans desire, and the energy that is exchanged with one another, in human terms, is love.
— DeiAmor Verus
An entire aisle of cereal...hundreds of choices....Of course I had eaten cereal before. I'm not a savage....Cereal was a small, affordable luxury. An effort. A point of pride. Something special....Those crates of cereal meant that we deserved what others do not.... Here the choices that stand before me in the store aisles seem to exist only to mock me. Cereal isn't a luxury...the boxes laugh at me...Two aisles down I count 27 varieties of peanut butter....it is really necessary?
— J.C. Carleson
GOD IS YOUR THOUGHTS
— Colin Tegerdine, You Can't Google Life
COMMITMENT WITH WORK IS WORSHIP ATTITUDE BY EXPERTISM SPIRIT IN ALL HUMAN OFFICIAL DEALINGS IS LACKING AROUND IN THIS MODERN CENTURY GLOBE IN SPECIFIC IN YOUTH AND IN GENERAL IN ADULTS.IT IS A DANGEROUS SINGNAL FLASH AND ALARM BELL TO FUTURE WORLD GAME DRIVE.SO,BE READY TO PLUG-UP LOOP-HOLES IN TIME IF NOT?GOD WILL GIVE US A GRAND LESSION SLAP WHAT WE MODERN HUMANS NEED IN THIS CENTURY
— Various
Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
— Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.
— Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone
Maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all. It's like somebody gave me a puzzle, but I don't have the box with the picture on it. So I don't know what the final thing is supposed to look like. I'm not even sure if I have all the pieces.
— Sharon M. Draper, Out of My Mind
All I hear is my own grating thoughts. Is there anything more horrid than being trapped inside yourself with nothing but your own insecurities.
— Sarah Jio, Goodnight June
Sometimes I worry that belief and hope are the same thing, and that truth is something else entirely.
— Adi Rule, Strange Sweet Song
Because thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter never disappears...
— Wendy Wunder, The Probability of Miracles
Sometimes I wonder if we're all a little like Harold (a rooster). Real life carries on around us while we strut around in our own yards, thinking we're the ones in charge of things.
— Suzanne Woods Fisher, The Letters
If Lord Duryodhana was an evil man, why did great men like Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Karna, entire army of Krishna fight war on his side??
— Anand Neelakantan, Ajaya: Roll of the Dice
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are
— Mason Cooley
If you have to think about relaxing, are you really relaxing?
— Janice   Thompson, Swinging on a Star
Everything that isn't permitted by The Law is forbidden.
— Ayn Rand, Anthem
I have watched the tears of frustration of a stroke victim or the autistic child who struggles to communicate a need or thought, but no one understands. Eventually, the soul grows quiet and gives up. At every stage of life, and in every circumstance, we search for someone who understands what we are going through.
— Donna Mull, A Prayer Journey Through Deployment
One of the first lessons a warrior is taught is that denial of one's circumstances only results in failure to recognize real danger.
— Karen Marie Moning, The Highlander's Touch
It seems to me that really crazy people don't think they're crazy. Why would you?
— Elizabeth Chandler, Soulmates
A life is no less valuable or beloved if one lives in an age of decline, than in an age of progress.
— Mathew Barrett Gross, The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us about America
How many of us would ever explore the dark extremities of our own humanity were we not from time to time thrown into them involuntarily? 'Necessity is laid upon me,' wrote the apostle Paul; and mostly it is only of necessity, through the inescapability of life's misfortunes, and not in free discipleship or loving service, that we enter into solidarity with those who suffer and die, often in despair and hope. One there was who set his face toward Jerusalem, a shepherd who of his own accord laid down his life for sheep. For the rest of us, not as volunteers but conscripts, not in freedom but in the chains of accident or sickness, do we make our Easter Saturday graves with the wretched or the wicked.
— Alen E. Lewis
Alone in the worn mahogany paneled library surrounded by hundreds of books that filled every shelf and lined every wall from floor to ceiling, Lady Butler contemplated, How odd it is that a room filled with millions of words can be so silent.
— Lance Taubold, Ripper: A Love Story
If we are interested in a writing life - as opposed to a writing career - then we are in it for the process and not the product - for the body of work and not for the quick hit of one well-realised piece.
— Julia Cameron
That's a lot of what the ghetto is, a reflection of poor self esteem
— Michele McKnight Baker, Sandpaper Sisters
How many young men fear that there is a monster inside them? People are supposed to fear others, not themselves. People are supposed to aspire to become their fathers, not shudder at the thought.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Life is going to beat you up, it wouldn't be fair if you didn't throw some punches back at it
— Bradley Bowman
Sometimes when we’re standing at the edge, we don’t need anyone to talk us down...we just need a push.
— Buffi Neal
At what point in life should we stop searching for a better one?
— Buffi Neal, Wonderfully Dysfunctional - It Must be Genetic
And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
It is uncertain where Death will await you
— there expect it everywhere.
Is a dream the ultimate freedom, or the ultimate prison?
— Buffi Neal, Wonderfully Dysfunctional - It Must be Genetic
No one has yet tested the pencilTo see how many words it can write
— Xi Chuan, Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems
It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.
— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
The glories of our blood and stateAre shadows, not substantial things;There is no armor against Fate.Death lays his icy hand on kings...
— James Shirley, Poems
I've been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on the island....Lord of the Flies what about it....You know how you said it wasn't a true measure of humanity since there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls...Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's watching them so they can be who they really are.
— Libba Bray, Beauty Queens
There had been something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.
— Libba Bray, Beauty Queens
The idiotic industry of an ant building his hill in the path of a glacier, and imagining that he is free.
— John Clellon Holmes, Go
Camera's are everywhere, the walls have eyes the sidewalks have eyes. Nothing completely happens without someone knowing about it.
— ricky star
And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
— Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
I am a Beacon of Light. I attract so many different kinds of people from all walks of life. Like a moth to a flame. Different ages,different races, different genders,different social classes,the homeless,the mentally disabled and addicts. So you have to excuse me when I turn off my porch light. Cause that is the time I find peace in the darkness.
— ricky star
Maybe she'd needed her dream to come true to realize it was the wrong dream.
— Tom Franklin, The Tilted World
Organised religion generally gets in the way of spiritual experience.
— Alan McCluskey, The Reaches
Truth, like diamond, has many facets.
— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture—it won’t accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy’ time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.
— Jamaica Kincaid
How curious it was, how ironic, he decided, that the human brain seemed capable of understanding almost everything but itself.
— Edward B. Hanna, The Whitechapel Horrors
Many people pretend to be in thought, proving thought to be a beautiful thing. But the bald man doesn’t need a comb, the tiger doesn’t need weapons, the fool doesn’t need thought. The person with no needs is practically a sage, but the sage also needs to count the rivers across the iron bridge to pass the time. This is the difference between the sage and the fool.
— Xi Chuan, Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems
It's like a lion at the door;And when the door begins to crack,It's like a stick across you back;And when your back begins to smart,It's like a penknife in your heart;And when your heart begins to bleed,You're dead, and dead, and dead, indeed.
— John Newberry
Don't give yourself a limit and you may discover you don't have one.
— Veronica Blade, Something Witchy This Way Comes
All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away-by standing still
— Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind
We can fly!“We can become butterflies!“There’s nothing at the topand it doesn’t matter!”As he heard his ownmessage he realized howhe had misread the instinctto get high.To get to the “top” hemust fly, not climb.
— Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
I have been quiet today because fear in my heart has been fighting with frustration in my brain, leaving little energy for my mouth.
— Camron Wright, The Rent Collector
I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.
— W.H. Auden
Once you are a butterfly,you can really love – thekind of love that makes anew life. It’s better than allthe hugging caterpillars cando.
— Trina Paulus
That’s what the prom is—St. Patrick’s Day for the young.
— Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now
It's ironic..here is life passing, like clouds drifting over the sky, yet they don't see what's in front of them. They believe there is something more substantial going on in that little screen in their hands.
— Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken
Hasn’t stopped us before. And besides, if they wanted to kill us, we’d be dead by now and would be having an entirely different conversation. I wonder if I’d still be mad at you, or if we would talk in words or pictures. Maybe in smells. That would be cool.” -Janco
— Maria V. Snyder, Power Study
Stripe felt frozen. To be so high and not high at all!It only looked good from the bottom.
— Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Hakeem: A wise man once said that suffering produces perseverance, character; and character, hope.Andre: Since when did spouting masochism make one wise? And the sacraments of a bitter existence? Who deemed that a vaunted prize? Nihilistic philosophy only births more pain. It's fruitless to espouse folly, repackage it as wisdom, and spew it in a wise man's name.
— Booker T. Mattison, Snitch
A vast field opened like a blossoming tulip, flowers blooming in the rippling airs of spring. High and frothy trees hugged air and sun as they gallantly cast a shade over the earth. On the horizon a florid vessel of mountains trailed to the never-ending, blue as memories distant, poised as statues embroidered into time’s eternal drift.
— Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla
The Stars shine down and watch us live Our little lives And weep for us
— Monet Nodlehs
What she'd done was give him a glimpse of something that scared the bejesus out of him, something never meant for men like him that could start a hunger that would eat away what little was left inside him that didn't need to be shoved into the dark place.
— Ellen O'Connell, Beautiful Bad Man
As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.
— Pythagoras
That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it.
— Jim Rohn
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness.
— Noah Hawley, The Good Father
We don't always get the journey we want. But we always get the journey we need.
— Alyson Noel
The humans were protecting their heritage, or so they thought. Strange that Mud Men seem more concerned about the past than the present.
— Eoin Colfer
Religion would have us believe that immortality is reserved for the gods. We remain skeptical.
— Fiona Paul, Venom
Why do we always think our pain will be less if we can make others suffer more?
— Michael J. Collins, Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf, complete with a translucent spine and brittle veins, blowing away in a stiff wind, up, up, up into a crisp blue sky.
— Julie Gregory, Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood
It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.
— Michael J. Collins, Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
... one would like to be both [loved and feared], but as it is difficult to combine both love and fear, if one has to choose between them it is far safer to be feared than loved
— Niccolò Machiavelli
Civilized beings regard the act of intercourse as the highest expression of romantic love. One need only observe the behavior of animals, however, to realize that the act is often a form of violence.
— Fiona Paul, Venom
The real strength of therose bush is not in the flowers but in the roots and the branches.
— Dorcas Kareithi
Much time is spent on meaning while precious little time wasted has none!
— M.B.JONES
The way he was talking to me earlier… makes me think he’s starting to feel like God’s the cosmic sadist again and he’s the marionette.”“In other words, God’s just torturing him for the kick?”Thomas sighed and set his mostly untouched plate down. “Something like that.”“That’s not a healthy outlook.”“He doesn’t feel loved right now, so it’s the natural one.
— Jessiqua Wittman, A Memoir of Love
With food still scarce,there was no longer a right to exist. You needed to earn your spot. 
— Eric Liu, Re:union
Futures can and do change, something as simple as you're supposed to turn right down a street one day... In your bones u know it, and yet for reasons no one understands, you decide to debunk fate and go left. Now instead of meeting your spouse of your dreams and having a house full of kids, you get flattened by an ice-cream truck and spend the next 5 years in physical therapy recovering from the injuries; or worse you die from it. And all cause you exercised free will and turned the opposite way on a whim.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon
I have lost patience with the idea of an insignificant human being standing up above the rest of us--whether he is called Reverend or Doctor or Judge--and shouting at us all about this thing or that. As soon as someone starts to pontificate in this way, I am apt to cut him off or leave the room, or, if this can't be done gracefully, I simply arrange that sweet vapid smile on my face that was so useful during the trial but that so infuriates Dr. Cole. After all, I have already taken the measure of my own insignificance, and I survived.
— Charlotte Rogan
A worst thing is thinking about health who show interest in non-vegetarian
— Raghava
The desperate resilience,the annoyed flamboyance;his personable passivity and his phobic aggressiveness; all trapped in the clever wrinkles of his fingers, the hard unsociable cast of his knuckles, the safe hopelessness of the pads.
— Brandon Shire
Either way, Grayson found it ironic how such dissimilar circumstances, colleges, and mental hospitals, had led to the same awful apartment.
— Dorothy McFalls, The Huntress
With wisdom comes responsibility. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced both.
— I.E. Castellano, Bow of the Moon
But only a leper shows its sins to the world.
— Alan Rawlings, Eyes of the Sparrow
Vicki M. Taylor's "Not Without Anna," is a gripping, hard-hitting, thought-provoking look at the escalating crisis of teen alcohol and drug abuse. Charlene Austin
— Vicki M. Taylor, Not Without Anna
In the land of the blind, a one eyed man is king
— Michael  Grant, Fear
Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I wondered if all a person could hope for was illusion and luck, for I was forced to conclude that the world was fundamentally and appallingly dangerous. It is a lesson I will never forget.
— Charlotte Rogan, The Lifeboat