c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Taren Ferry folk had a reputation for slyness and trickery. If you shook hands with a Taren Ferry man, people said, you counted your fingers afterwards.
— Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World
To this day I don’t know if he was struggling with the moral implications of gunning down half a dozen civilians, or if he was mentally counting to see if he had that many shells left in the gun.
— David Wong, John Dies at the End
If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
No man should live longer than his teeth.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
You going to be a scientist when you grow up?” That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.
— Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
You know, you remind me of my younger brother. I miss that kid, so much that I sometimes regret killing him.
— Jack Kilborn, Serial Uncut: Extended Edition
Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven’t tears enough for what you’ve done to me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight…I might have had that shape!’ Her pointed finger flew at Madeleine, whose hands had risen to her face, whose eyes were clouded over. Her moan was almost Claudia’s name. But Claudia did not hear her. ‘Yes, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your side.
— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.
— Brian D. McLaren
My dad is shagging your aunt, probably right now. That makes us almost family.
— Jennifer Ashley
Christmas: the one time of year when you can’t avoid the nuts in your family muesli.
— Charles Stross, Overtime
We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Cripes, I can’t keep up on this political correct shit. I don’t even know what to call myself. One minute I’m black. Then I’m African American. Then I’m a person of color. Who the hell makes these rules up, anyhow?
— Janet Evanovich, Visions of Sugar Plums
Diogenes carried a bowl with him for years, but one day saw a man drinking from his cupped palm and declared, ‘I have been a fool, burdened all these years by the weight of a bowl when a perfectly good vessel lay at the end of my wrist.
— Christopher Moore
over his own dark Cealdish beard. “Nothing like your marvelous facebear,
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
We must choose with our agency to obey in faith that the promised blessing will come, that the promise is true because it comes from God.
— Henry B. Eyring, Because He First Loved Us
Cooking wasn’t so bad, I thought. In fact, it was a lot like sex. Sometimes it didn’t seem like such a good idea in the beginning, but then after you got into it …
— Janet Evanovich, Hot Six
little children never get frozen by their selfishness. Like the disciples, they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. They seldom get it right. As parents or friends, we know all that. In fact, we are delighted (most of the time!) to find out what is on their little hearts. We don’t scold them for being self-absorbed or fearful. That is just who they are.
— Paul Miller, A Praying Life
Those who speak of man's "free will," and insist upon his inherent power to either accept or reject the Saviour, do but voice their ignorance of the real condition of Adam's fallen children.
— Arthur W. Pink
Loving means losing control of our schedule, our money, and our time. When we love we cease to be the master and become a servant.
— Paul Miller, Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus
One thing we knew for certain- despite all our certainties, it was very difficult to guess what one individual was thinking at any given moment.
— Joshua Ferris
A child’s bond to her mother cannot be understated, and my bond with Helen was a ragged, baffling, disheartening, chaotic mess. I felt crazy, often, around my own mother. I grew up questioning what was normal, asking what reality was and wasn’t, and not trusting the outcome of different situations. She scared me and I couldn’t predict her behavior, so I was often off-kilter and worried.
— Cathy Lamb, Such A Pretty Face
Has a sense of humor. (Preferably warped.) We know who we are
— Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today
A child’s stories are simpler to understand because the language has not been developed to the point of high abstraction. An adult tells stories far more obtuse in nature.
— John S. Savage, Listening and Caring Skills in Ministry: A Guide for Groups and Leaders
Okay, so there’s just you. Your goals, your career, your crew, your prospects, and your God. All together, chillin’. Before the house, the apartment, the kids, the boyfriend, the wedding, the night you crossed over with your frat brothers, there’s that pivotal point of asking your heart, “Who am I, really? What do I really like? Do I want to change for someone else? Is my soul mate right now, somewhere, finishing this sentence and completing my thoughts?
— Kirk Franklin, The Blueprint
This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time. A sense of destiny is our birthright as followers of Christ. God is awfully good at getting us where He wants us to go. But here’s the catch: The right place often seems like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time.
— Mark Batterson, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day: How To Survive And Thrive When Opportunity Roars
The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes—and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.
— Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
It doesn't promise to solve or erase suffering but to transform it, pledging that by loving one another, even through pain, we will find more life. And it insists that by opening ourselves to strangers, the despised or frightening or unintelligible other, we will see more and more of the holy, since, without exception, all people are one body: God's.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
for God's sake, let's be done with the hypocrisy of claiming "I am a biblical literalist" when everyone is a selective literalist, especially those who swear by the antihomosexual laws in the Book of Leviticus and then feast on barbecued ribs and delight in Monday-night football, for it is toevali, an abomination, not only to eat pork but merely to touch the skin of a dead pig.
— Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches
She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.
— Orson Scott Card, Pathfinder
Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
That’s kind of creepy,
— Amanda Hocking, Switched
In the new American ghetto, the nightmare engine is bubble economics, a kind of high-tech casino scam that kills neighborhoods just like dope does, only the product is credit, not crack or heroin. It concentrates the money of the population in just a few hands with brutal efficiency, just like narco-business, and just as in narco-business the product itself, debt, steadily demoralizes the customer to the point where he’s unable to prevent himself from being continually dominated.
— Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Here’s exclusive Channel 5 video of a local man having his brain eaten by a winged gremlin. Local gremlin experts warn that—
— David Wong, John Dies at the End
I was always amused by the prayers of the saintly. “God do this, God don’t do that.” I thought God probably laughed at them too, unless He was a little annoyed by their temerity.
— Jean Plaidy, The Courts of Love: The Story of Eleanor of Aquitaine
the way it always did.
— Amanda Hocking, Switched
Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.
— Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
People who work in offices are crazy, they create an environment they hate, write rules they want to break, cast each other in roles they despise. It’s like they’re sixth formers in an end of term drama acting out the agony of everything they fear most in their life but they forget to end the play.
— Helen Smith, Alison Wonderland
Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto it "thus far, and no farther!
— Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales
But, if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowledged paternity. All of the Hat Creek Outfit, including particularly Augustus McCrae, want Call to accept the boy as his son.
— Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Obedience to commandments is the way we build a foundation of truth. Here is the way that works, in words so simple that a child could understand: The truth of most worth is to know God our Heavenly Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and Their plan for us to have eternal life with Them in families. When God communicates that priceless truth to us, He does it by the Spirit of Truth. We have to ask for it in prayer. Then He sends us a small part of that truth by the Spirit. It comes to our hearts and minds. It feels good, like the light from the sun shining through the clouds on a dark day. He sends...
— Henry B. Eyring, Because He First Loved Us
He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat...
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen
the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality? Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels and wills is a person.
— R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
He is intelligent enough to get a job that would earn him good money, but too clever to want one.
— Helen Smith, Alison Wonderland
There are at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is a person.
— R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
Josey?” She heard her mother’s voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. “Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she’d been walking in the rain, though there hadn’t...
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen
The mythology of Doctor Who has built into it the continuation, evolution, and longevity of the character’s mythical qualities through his regenerative process. I have to agree with Lou Anders, when he states: “Doctor Who is the truest expression of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces ever conceived. The idea of an alien, come down to earth, repeatedly dying and resurrecting for the salvation of others is as close to the perpetual reenactment of the eternal Hero’s Journey as you can hope to find.”(6)
— Anthony S. Burdge
In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time.
— Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Could we ever switch to this or any of the many other rational systems? Unlikely: tradition is difficult to overcome.
— Donald A. Norman
For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace" (D&C 93:19–20). And then a few verses later the Lord says: And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning. The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth; And no man receiveth...
— Henry B. Eyring, Because He First Loved Us
Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.
— Richard Rohr
We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.
— David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources Of Love, Character, And Achievement
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.
— Lord Dunsany, The Book of Wonder
Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.— Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.
— Plato, Apology/Crito/Phaedo
Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. What does it feel like to be weary? You have trouble concentrating. The problems of the day are like claws in your brain. You feel pummeled by life. What does heavy-laden feel like? Same thing. You have so many problems you don’t even know where to start. You can’t do life on your own anymore. Jesus wants you to come to him...
— Paul Miller, A Praying Life
More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.
— Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored
The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed--the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
I’m saying there is evil in the world,” Master Kit said, hefting the box on his hip, “and doubt is the weapon that guards against it.
— Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path
It’s a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.
— Jason Fried, Rework
Tastykakes are just another of the many advantages of living in Jersey. They’re made in Philly and shipped to Trenton in all their fresh squishiness. I read once that 439,000 Butterscotch Krimpets are baked every day. And not a heck of a lot of them find their way to New Hampshire. All that snow and scenery and what good does it do you without Tastykakes?
— Janet Evanovich, Hard Eight
What makes something simple or complex? It's not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.
— Donald A. Norman
When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles or read Wordsworth. This was a sport? This counted for gym requirements?
— Rob Sheffield, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut
Time to the face the music,
— J.R. Ward, Crave
In my father’s scheme of things, there were Italians and then there was the rest of the world.
— Janet Evanovich, Visions of Sugar Plums
Less abject but more shocking was the letter from the Founder of the Calvary Tabernacle Association in Oklahoma: Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer you, 'We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ, but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of this nation, to go back where you came from.' I have done everything in my power to be a blessing to Israel, and then you come along and with one statement from your blasphemous tongue, do more to hurt the cause of your people than all the efforts of the Christians who...
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
this is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others,
— Plato, Apology/Crito/Phaedo
Hats, like first husbands in my experience, are usually a mistake.
— Danielle Ganek, The Summer We Read Gatsby
But Marisa already knew the answer and it was too late for recrimination. The chance of even a rational discussion of the problem was forever shut out of Mama’s brain. A brutal bastard was steadily sucking the intelligence and the very life from the mother who had once been witty, wise and loving. The scourge had a name Marisa had come to equate with hell: Alzheimer’s Disease.
— Anna Jeffrey
and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—
— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
There’s always a bear,
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
As J. B. S. Haldane said when asked what evidence might contradict evolution, 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
My skin tingled, and suddenly, Deanna materialized before us. I jumped.
— Richelle Mead, Iron Crowned
adults forget how difficult that task was.
— Donald A. Norman
joking and laughing as they headed off to their new life
— Markee Anderson, Touchdowns And Potions
Decide, first, to simply be.
— Patrick Rhone, Keeping It Straight: You, Me & Everything Else
Ser Cleos looked like a weasel, fought like a goose, and had the courage of an especially brave ewe.
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere.
— Stephen King, The Stand
He was so handsome, so beautiful. Inside and out.
— Jay Bell, Something Like Summer
Strange clothes you wear, Child of the Dragon. Has the Wheel turned so far? Do the People of the Dragon return to the first Covenant? But you wear a sword. That is neither now nor then.
— Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World
So that’s what art is, for the artist,” said Crake. “An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
The cable news channels have cleverly seized on the creed of objectivity and redefined it in populist terms. They attack news based on verifiable fact for its liberal bias, for, in essence, failing to be objective, and promise a return to “genuine” objectivity.
— Chris Hedges
All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you.
— Brian D. McLaren
Call me Richard. That’s my real name. Call me that.
— Stephen King, The Stand
going to have an industrial society you must have places that will look terrible. Other places you set aside—to say, ‘This is the way it was.’ 
— John McPhee, Assembling California
For all our penny-wisdom,’” he said, “‘for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts.
— Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
Accountable Authentic Collaborative Courageous Passionate Lifelong learner Welcomes feedback Biased toward action Solution oriented Change agent
— Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today
In the previous few minutes, I had seen the most beautiful thing that eyes can see: the glory of God shining in the radiance of creation. I had heard the most beautiful thing that ears can hear: friends telling friends that they love one another. And I had felt the most beautiful thing that any heart can ever feel: the love of God and the love of others.
— Brian D. McLaren
Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit.
— George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire
Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." "True - true," I replied;
— Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales
at points in our lives, we have to choose the hills we’re willing to die on.
— Christa Allan, Walking on Broken Glass
Here’s another example of the difference in our worldviews. A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, “Dear God, that family needs grace.” She replied firmly, “That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Recovering Leah knows fear stands for false expectations appearing real.
— Christa Allan, Walking on Broken Glass
you have to come of age when it's your time. If you try to rush it or put it off, it only gets you into trouble.
— Donna Clayton, Mountain Laurel
Lore: Making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!
— Wil Wheaton, Memories of the Future - Volume 1
This is a book about getting naked—not physically, but spiritually. It’s about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion—the Sunday-dress version people often call “organized religion.” And it’s about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin.
— Brian D. McLaren
It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we know the Holy Spirit as a person.
— R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. (Ether 12:4–6.)
— Henry B. Eyring, Because He First Loved Us
I. All the distinctive characteristics of personality are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
— R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
He said, “Americans look upon water as an inexhaustible resource. It’s not, if you’re mining it. Arizona is mining groundwater.
— John McPhee, Assembling California
and like most people who have spent much of their adult life being emotionally dishonest, I overcalculated the sympathy a final being honest would bring
— John Fowles
Doing, in a life of balance, should be driven from who you have decided to be.
— Patrick Rhone, Keeping It Straight: You, Me & Everything Else
Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,” he once wrote. “Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
— Michael   Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
God is in the résumé-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.
— Mark Batterson, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day: How To Survive And Thrive When Opportunity Roars
I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,
— Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path
Faith, for me, isn't an argument, a catechism, a philosophical “proof.” It is instead a lens, a way of experiencing life, and a willingness to act.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.
— Michael   Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of the Emyn Muil, and down into the Land of Shadow.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Nesse’s research focuses on the evolutionary origins of depression. Why does depression exist at all? If it’s stayed in our gene pool for so long, he argues, there must be some evolutionary benefit. Nesse believes that depression may be an adaptive mechanism meant to prevent us from falling victim to blind optimism—and squandering resources on the wrong goals.11 It’s to our evolutionary advantage not to waste time and energy on goals we can’t realistically achieve. And so when we have no clear way to make productive progress, our neurological systems default to a state of low energy...
— Jane McGonigal
For instance, when people press their lips together in a manner that seems to make them disappear, it is a clear and common sign that they are troubled and something is wrong.
— Joe Navarro, What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People
People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane’s gunners. On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead. Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had winnowed down to skeletons. Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting.
— Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Even on especially hard days, I began to notice him everywhere, setting a table before me in the presence of my enemies, pursuing me with his love. Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.
— Paul Miller, A Praying Life
The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.
— Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
It’s far too rarely stated that the technology industry is not in the business of making people productive. It is only in the business of selling more technology.
— Mark Hurst, Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload
mass indoctrination of uneducated young men with such ideas is in itself a lethal danger to society and to international order.
— Christopher Hitchens, The Enemy
prayer is the one discipline in the Christian faith that makes us feel entirely dependent on God and thus sets us up for profound disappointment when God doesn’t respond to our needs and requests.
— Gerald L. Sittser, When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer
I think the world is often like that.” “Like what?” “Comic, but only at the right distance.
— Daniel Abraham, The Dragon's Path
I pulled the dress out of the bag and held it in front of me. Ella sat up straighter and squinted her eyes, while Michael and Paco made the noises men make when a woman says, “What do you think?” Fathers probably teach those noises to their sons when they’re young—“Stand up when you’re introduced to a lady, use your napkin instead of your sleeve, and make admiring noises when a woman shows you anything, no matter what it is, and asks you what you think about it. Never, never, never say you have no opinion.
— Blaize Clement, Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof
For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God’s presence resides? a
— John Eldredge
I love the unabashed over-buttered, over-creamed, deep-fried, gooey, over-sugared excessiveness of Amish food,
— Blaize Clement, Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues
Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision latitude.” Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it’s another way of describing autonomy—and lawyers are glum and cranky because they don’t have much of it.
— Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
I write down the three measurements which Lou and I agreed are central to knowing if the company is making money: net profit, ROI and cash flow.
— Eliyahu M. Goldratt
I didn’t share her concern. “Damn it. I should have banished you the first time I saw you. I don’t have time for this, not with everything else. You should be in the Underworld by now. Kiyo isn’t going to kill me.
— Richelle Mead, Iron Crowned
Most locals knew who Della Lee was. She waitressed at a greasy spoon called Eat and Run, which was tucked far enough outside the town limits that the ski-crowd tourists didn’t see it. She haunted bars at night. She was probably in her late thirties, maybe ten years older than Josey, and she was rough and flashy and did whatever she wanted—no reasonable explanation required. “Della Lee Baker, what are you doing in my closet?” “You shouldn’t leave your window unlocked. Who knows who could get in?” Della Lee said, single-handedly debunking the long-held belief that if you dotted your...
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen
silence across the field. When they reached the edge of the forest, Claire’s anxiety faded. It really would be easier
— Christine Johnson, Claire de Lune
Lance told me his father didn’t think much of him. “He wishes I was better. More better. At everything. I don’t do anything right, you know, Stevie. Nothing.” He said this matter-of-factly. He believed it as truth. Polly told me her father never said anything nice to her, but she kept trying as hard as she could to make him pay her some attention. “He always says, ‘Don’t get fat as your mother has,’ but I don’t think Mom’s fat at all, but I try not to eat much, but he keeps saying it to me. Do you think I’m fat, Stevie? When my hair is messy do you think I look like a stray...
— Cathy Lamb, Such A Pretty Face
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics.
— Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Perhaps our matching black outfits - even Phoebe wears dark colors - convince him that we are lesbian Buddhists
— Helen Smith, Alison Wonderland
though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
It’s okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective
Any time you see signs or labels added to a device, it is an indication of bad design: a simple lock should not require instructions.
— Donald A. Norman
Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective
No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness—by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.15
— Jane McGonigal
Bethyl Ann has vomited words like she ate the dictionary.
— Jennifer Archer, Through Her Eyes
Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated and intimidating as a Moroccan bazaar. But we knew our way around.
— Jay-Z, Decoded
I want you out in the hallway, against the far wall in single file, ready to move, in fifteen. Drop your fartsack, Ratliff.
— Craig DiLouie
I felt the presence of the night all about me: a living, breathing entity, whispering soft words against my flesh.  I had never before felt the silken touch of the night caress me as I did now.  It was a frightening, yet exhilarating experience.  It was as if the night itself were attempting to seduce me.
— Rhiannon Frater, The Tale Of The Vampire Bride
I could feel the urgency in the driver’s voice as he prodded the horses to greater momentum. The rumble of thunder could be heard rolling through the mountains as foreboding dark clouds rolled overhead obscuring the starry sky.  The sun vanished with one last glimmer through the pine trees, then night took possession of the earth. 
— Rhiannon Frater, The Tale Of The Vampire Bride
It was not a safe thing to lead Joe into temptation
—  he had no resistance to it at all.
The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
You keep out of my bed,” said Danny, for he knew that Joe Portagee had come to stay. The way he sat in a chair and crossed his knees had an appearance of permanence.
— John Steinbeck, The Short Novels: Tortilla Flat / The Moon is Down / The Red Pony / Of Mice and Men / Cannery Row / The Pearl
We take creative license with the fictional narratives that become our memories. Anthologized, these are the tales that become the story of your life.
— Danielle Ganek, The Summer We Read Gatsby
the only one who wanted to be free. Surprise, surprise. CHAPTER
— J.R. Ward, Crave
This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
I have missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost three hundred games. On twenty-six occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot . . . and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. —MICHAEL JORDAN
— Frank Luntz, Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary
I strain to hear, but my old ears, for all their obscene hugeness, pick up nothing but snippets:
— Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
How did I become this monster…this creature that feasts on the blood of innocents?  I stare at my bloodstained dress and feel nothing but hatred for what I have done.  To know how callously I killed before and felt no regret, now pains me.  I killed before with no remorse.  But tonight…tonight, what I have done is unbearable. 
— Rhiannon Frater, The Tale Of The Vampire Bride
I threw back my head, my hair falling about me like a great red curtain, and cried out.  My eyes felt hot and burned with tears as my body trembled with the passion for blood. 
— Rhiannon Frater, The Tale Of The Vampire Bride
One of these people was a girl who exemplified everything I could ever come up with to want. We grew very close very quickly and revealed dreams and compared fears and mocked gently and occasionally told lies, but nothing bad. The sex, I’m sorry, Dad, but the sex was unlike anything I believed might someplace exist. I remember lying with her in bed and touching her thigh and thinking, My God. This is the reason I grew hands in the first place.
— Kyle Beachy, The Slide
Sin and the effects of sin are similar to the laws of inertia: a person (or object) in motion will continue on that trajectory until acted upon by an outside force.
— Lindsey A. Holcomb
I had never been so extravagantly proud of having blood that clotted.
— Rob Sheffield, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut
That’s right,” I said. “Grand and complex. You say love because people believe in the word, it has a shared meaning and demands respect. It makes the strength stronger. But the strength can be unpredictable, it can gain a life of its own and turn on itself enough to make love into something too strong, this massive force. Something horrifying, brief flashes, this same strength.
— Kyle Beachy, The Slide
When I first learned to drive and I bought petrol I went to great lengths to trickle the final drops into the petrol tank so it cost a round amount of money like £10. Now I try and spend £19.87 or £20.04 or some other amount that I hope will disturb the cashier’s sense of neatness and uniformity.
— Helen Smith, Alison Wonderland
enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget
It will not suffer if it doesn’t get what it wants.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget
that you will become entrapped in someone else’s recent careless thoughts.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget
about: Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget
I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no...
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.
— Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
And behold! Allah will say: "O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah.?" He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, Thou I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden.
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans.
— Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.
— Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored
Behold! Allah said: "O Jesus! I will take thee and raise thee to Myself and clear thee (of the falsehoods) of those who blaspheme; I will make those who follow thee superior to those who reject faith, to the Day of Resurrection: Then shall ye all return unto me, and I will judge between you of the matters wherein ye dispute.
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
We all knew there was a good deal of pointlessness to nearly all the meetings and in fact one meeting out of every three or four was nearly perfectly without gain or purpose but many meetings revealed the one thing that was necessary and so we attended them and afterward we thanked each other.
— Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
Gross Domestic Product—the substitution, in effect, of ideas for physical value.
— Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
Well, if you’re a real alcoholic, then where are you stashing it? That's what real alcoholics do, right? Hide bottles?
— Christa Allan, Walking on Broken Glass
We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas.
— Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
So many people, if the truth were known, live their lives on two levels. The principles they fight about are often at odds with the complicated and often frustrated lives they live. This is why there is so much intensity.
— Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches
One common mistake we see new entrepreneurs especially tech entrepreneurs making is focusing too much on product
— Abdul Jaleel Kavungal Kunnumpurath, iFounders - A Fascinating look into the minds of Indian StartUp Founders