c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
He was, she realised, quite graceful. The very idea surprised her. Male grace was a quality she'd never thought of beyond the ballroom; either a man could dance a quadrille with skill and without stepping on her feet or he could not. But here was another kind of grace altogether--and untrained grace, an instinctive animal grace.
— Pamela Clare, Surrender
I do not know her as you do, but I have shared each step of this journey with her, watched her fight for her life, and held her each night while she slept. I cannot help but care for her."And suddenly Connor was glad Joseph had chosen to sleep in the loft.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
He didn't see the look his brothers shared or overhear the vow they made to one another--that if any one of the four of them were to make it back from Ticonderoga, it would be Iain.
— Pamela Clare, Surrender
Making love with you is even more wonderful than making music."He drew her closer. "Och, Sarah, you _are_ my music.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
What is your name, my pet?""Kitty," she replied.DeVere threw back his head with a guffaw. "Kitty? How delightfully apropos!" His erstwhile companions forgotten, he patted a muscular thigh. "Come then, Kitty, my sweet, little puss. Sit on your master's lap, and I'll stroke you 'till you purr."-A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE
— Victoria Vane
[Iain, addressing the Rangers at the end of the French & Indian war]"Never has the world see a war as this one, but you turned the tide of it, spillin' your blood to keep frontier families safe. Years from now, people will remember the Rangers, the sacrifices you made, the battles you fought, the victories you won. I pray that peace will follow you all your days.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
[Connor to Major Wentworth, grandson of King George]"My fathers were lairds in the Highlands when yours were still farmin' kale back in Germany!
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
Before the war, a white man named Jonathan Edwards came to Stockbridge to teach my people about sin, but I doubt very much he could see sin in this. You defended yourself against a man who would otherwise have killed you and your friends. Perhaps you feel no regret because your spirit knows you did what was right.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
It wilna end wi' me, Campbell. Slay me, and you'll face my brothers and after them my Muhheconneok kin. You cannae possibly kill us all.
— Pamela Clare, Surrender
Though his countenance was solemn, there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Major MacKinnon, won't you join us?""But, my lord, he is clad in outlawed rebel attire. The Dress Act expressly forbids--""I am not blind, Colonel, and I am familiar with our laws."Sarah fought back a smile.Colonel Haviland lowered his voice, leaned toward Uncle William. "He was invited to pay respects to your niece, my lord, and he has the gall to--""I _am_ payin' my respects to the lass!" Connor's deep voice filled the room, cutting Colonel Haviland off altogether.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
You think Diana would come to your bed?” Ned threw his head back and laughed. “You’re mad! First of all, she would never break her marriage vows. Secondly, she’s certainly deduced by now what a whoremonger you are. She wouldn’t touch you with gloves, my friend.” from THE DEVIL YOU KNOW (DEVIL DEVERE book #3)
— Victoria Vane
Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. "Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born.
— Pamela Clare, Defiant
A hint of fire in his eyes, he glanced up at her. "If that displeases you, lass, I can leave you here for the next savior who comes along.
— Pamela Clare, Surrender
Nicholas broke the seal and scanned the contents. He looked up at Marcus with a chuckle. “Why, it appears you may get your wish for perpetual bachelorhood after all. She wants to end your engagement.”Marcus started from his chair. “The hell she does! What’s possessed her?”“Perhaps she realizes your extreme reluctance to tie the knot after waiting…what is it? Five years since your betrothal announcement?”“Six,” Marcus snapped. “But who’s counting.”“Perhaps Miss Trent?” Nick needled with a quirk of his lips.- A BREACH OF PROMISE
— Victoria Vane
Hang you, DeVere! She's a close friend, nothing more." He furrowed his brow once again. "Though I do fear of late that she entertains some...expectations.""You think the young widow may aspire to quite another surrogate role? They all do, ol' chap. Expectations and demands—titles, money, time, attention. The female half of the species are little better than vampires, sucking away one's very lifeblood.
— Victoria Vane
Damn, but it was a night, Ned! Now, not to be outdone, it appears our reverend mother Hayes is inspired by Captain Cook's latest voyage to the South Pacific.""I give the woman credit for creativity." Ned laughed. "Have you read John Hawkesworth's account of the voyage?"Ludovic's brows lifted ever so slightly. "Come now, Ned, do I truly look like a man who entertains himself with books?
— Victoria Vane, A Wild Night's Bride
Ned seemed so different from any other man of her acquaintance, and, certainly, the antithesis of the rake she had set her sights on. She had chosen DeVere as her best prospect, yet after only this short time in Ned's company, she couldn't help fervently wishing that he was DeVere. She should feel triumphant that her goal was within easy reach... In truth, it was as if her appetite had been whetted for beefsteak...only to be served liver instead.-A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE
— Victoria Vane
Marcus stood at the mantel mirror, fussing with his lace cuffs, adjusting his cravat and openly admiring his reflection. “I’ll beguile her with the full power of my persuasive charm.”“And should that fail?”Marcus turned to his secretary with a slow, devious grin. “Why, Nick, I’d have thought it obvious. I’ll just have to ruin her.”-A BREACH OF PROMISE
— Victoria Vane
You intend to keep me confined in here with you for three days?" His voice was low and ominous."It doesn't have to take three days," she said, "It just depends how long it takes for you to come to your senses.""My senses?" he shook her so hard she thought her teeth would rattle. "It is you whose mind is disordered if you think you can tame me like some pet! Is that what you think, Vesta? That you can somehow turn a man like me into your little lap dog?""No," she said, as earnest as she had ever been in her life. "I could never imagine you as a lap dog. Ever. You are a Mastiff. Big, powerful, dignified, brave, and yet gentle." She nodded with a look of self satisfaction. "Yes. Most definitely a Mastiff." from THE VIRGIN HUNTRESS
— Victoria Vane
I stop to brace myself against the walls, which are painted with the fingerprints of family.
— Nancy B. Brewer
Rebel Number Four" is waiting patiently by the door. I named him "Rebel Number Four," for he is the fourth of his kind I have given the name "Rebel." To many he may be just a hound dog, but to me he is a champion and a friend to the end.
— Nancy B. Brewer, Lizzie After the War
As she reached back for the buckle, her fingers met Mr. Meisner’s. She jumped. “I can do this... Sir.”“Ah.” He brushed aside her fingers. “I see you’ve at least remembered the sir.”“One always calls gentlemen that, just as you--”With only a rustle of cloth to warn her, his teeth met in the lobe of her ear, sending a spark into her middle. Like the melt of winter snow, she felt heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers curled against her collarbone where her hands still rested either side of her neck.“I’m not a gentleman, Faith.
— Cari Silverwood, Rough Surrender
She squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”“Excuse me?”She sniffed, opened her eyes then looked up. “No. I don’t wish you to leave.”His eyes changed from lukewarm to hot.The iron of the seat met her back. Oh yes, definitely she was the keeper at the zoo and she’d just offered her own leg, medium-rare, to the lion.
— Cari Silverwood
Who does not tremble when he considers how to deal with his wife For not only is he bound to love her but so to live with her that he may return her to God pure and without stain when God who gave shall demand His own again.
— Henry VIII of England
Before I disappear behind the door, I stop and turn around to look at him.
— Nancy B. Brewer
According to Robert, his friend Moses was a soldier in the first war, as he described it. He fought Indians and soldiers in red coats.
— Nancy B. Brewer
The sun had just slipped behind the trees and evening cast its dark, smoky shadow.
— Nancy B. Brewer
I can hear my steps echo as I follow him to the end of the hall. The door to the small closet under the steps is standing ajar. He closes the door and latches it.
— Nancy B. Brewer, Lizzie After the War
It was a warm and natural feeling to be there. We were not black or white people. We were just people bound together by love and understanding. As I walked out of that church, I felt like I had rediscovered my inner peace.
— Nancy B. Brewer
The pages that follow will be our journey of the life we built together here in Concord, North Carolina. These pages will reveal fragments from the past and events that occurred along the way.
— Nancy B. Brewer, Lizzie After the War
‎"He smiled at me and I felt the tenderness only a daughter could feel.
— Nancy B. Brewer
It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton warehouse
— Nancy B. Brewer
He is dressed in a long, white robe and in his hand is a white cap. I draw up as he passes down the hall; he does not see me. Shortly I hear a horse leaving. There is much I do not know about him, but tonight I know one of his secrets. He is a midnight rider.
— Nancy B. Brewer
People, her people at least, were always chasing shattered hopes. A father gazing down on dead soil, with a brood of hollow-cheeked children sitting around a barren table. A lonely maid cleaning grates and waiting for a lover who by now wouldn't even recall her name. A weary labourer trudging miles between the hiring fairs, carrying his spade, clothes soiled from sleeping in damp fields. They held candles to storms, her people. They saw their lights extinguished as cruel winds of fate blew.
— Paul  Reid
Master Graves was incensed and said, as punishment for my disruption, I would have to write my letters an extra ten times that day."Ten times the better I'll know them, then." I said. "How strange that you should punish me by ensuring I come out more educated than Roden, who has tried to obey you.
— Jennifer A. Nielsen, The False Prince
Mr. Sand, do you think it's possible to fall in love in the space of a single day?"He smiled. "I wouldn't know. I only fall in love at night. Never lasts beyond breakfast, though.
— Tessa Dare, A Week to Be Wicked
There is something infinitely better than happily-ever-after. There is happiness. Happiness is a living, dynamic thing, Eve, and has to be worked on every moment for the rest of our lives. It is a far more exciting prospect than that silly static idea of a happily-ever-after. Would you not agree?" - Aidan Bedwyn
— Mary Balogh, Slightly Married
If you can avoid a fight, do it. But if you can't, then find your opponent's most vulnerable spot and hit them here hard, fast, and often. The worst thing you can do is let a fight escalate. Shut it down as soon as you can. And remember, there is no such thing as fighting dirty. You either kick their ass, or have yours handed to you.
— Kirker Butler, Pretty Ugly
Sometimes silence is not an indicator of not caring, but a way to give time and space to the one who is hurting. Only judge when time passes and the void widens such that the chasm cannot be bridged.
— irene fantopoulos
something about feet and ground and keeping cool.
— Baba Krissypoo
Allow others to call you guru but do not let yourself become one.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
CAUTION: What we see may not always be what we thought.
— Jana Fayne Kolpen, The Secrets of Pistoulet
Those who treat with Norilendra Queen must be accomplished serpent handlers.
— J.R. Hardesty, The Last Giant: Transgression, Part 1
That makes about as much sense as lopping off your foot to avoid twisting an ankle.
— Eileen Wilks, All I Want for Christmas
I... a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
— Richard Feynman
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.
— Albert Camus
The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.
— Voltaire
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
— Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics
Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.
— Roald Dahl
Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.
— Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
It is better to burn than to disappear.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
Where men can't live gods fare no better.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.
— Madeleine L'Engle
For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier - and that's a fact.
— Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.
— Jeffrey Archer, Only Time Will Tell
Love is like death, it must come to us all, but to each his own unique way and time, sometimes it will be avoided, but never can it be cheated, and never will it be forgotten.
— Jacob Grimm
They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on
— Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People
there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right
A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches
— Jeff Lindsay, Dearly Devoted Dexter
Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously
— Confucius, The Analects
Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not
— Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
— Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices...
— Woody Allen, Crimini e misfatti
But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?
— David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.
— Euripides
Intelligence is being intelligent enough to know you're not so intelligent as you intelligently once thought.
— Carroll Bryant
She was starting to think that it might be fun to be in control of the universe.
— Nicki Elson, Three Daves
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
— Søren Kierkegaard
...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
— Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.There are always more.
— David Mitchell
Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully
— Isobelle Carmody, The Farseekers
We spend so much time creating a façade of what we want to project to the world, we almost forget what we ourselves are truly about in the process.
— Jason R. Thrift, The Civilization Loop: The End Is the Beginning
Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.
— André Gide, The Immoralist
I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.
— C.G. Jung
Apprentices Needed, Not DisciplesFor many, the knowledge of a Jesus, a Lao-tzu, a Buddha, or a Gandhi is complete and unassailable. But we do them and their vision a disservice when we follow them rather than using what they have taught to build upon as we strive toward our goal of a better society.
— William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.
— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries. 
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever
—  I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.
The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind . . . From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.
— Georges Bataille
This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.
— Plato
There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby. 
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
It saddens me beyond my tears that love is lost within the fears.
— Lynn C. Tolson, Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story
They can send death at once, but life is slower...
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Rocannon's World
You have to set somebody free for them to return
— Candice Night
In the molten fire where he lay he could watch the slow machinations of eternity, the cosmic miracle of each second being born, eggshaped, silverplated, phallic, time thrusting itself gleaming through the worn and worthless husk of the microsecond previous, halting, beginning to show the slow and infinitesimal accreations of decay in the clocking away of life in a mechanism encoded at the moment of conception, withering, shunted aside by time's next orgasmic thrust, and all to the beating of some galactic heart, to voices, a madman's mutterings from a snare in the web of the world.
— William Gay, The Long Home
Don´t count the days. Make the days count.
— Ali ibn Abi Talib
He who is concerned only with the purity of his own life ruins the great human relations.
— Confucius
Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.
— R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree
When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.
— George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us.
— Chetan Bhagat
Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?
— Zhuangzi
As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind- of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which cloud forever and shadows form, dreams persisted; and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if you questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumph, happiness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extra ordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand which would render the possessor secure. Moreover softened and acquiescent, the spring with their bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloud about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and fights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.
— Virginia Woolf
What did you do with the time and talents i gave you? God's question...
— Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History
By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.
— Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms
The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.
— Russell Hoban
Reality is such an elusive concept.
— Laura Gilfillan
Perhaps one has to have placed life in the center of one’s worldview and valued it as much as I have in order to know that one may not keep it, but must yield it up.
— Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms
Everything you know gained from experience
— Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Whatever life throws at me, I'll take with a smile upon my face and Nirvana's 'Bleach' on the stereo.
— Mark R. Faulkner
Without a whole lot of pressure, a diamond is just a piece of coal.
— Miriam Darnell
Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behaviour. - Broken Verses
— Kamila Shamsie
Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.'She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.
— Eva Ibbotson, The Morning Gift
Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.
— Don DeLillo
Wisdom too often never comes, so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
— Felix Frankfurter
Devil-boy Jack: "A higher power than ours directs us against the wych-kin. There is no turning back."Thaniel Fox: "There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of."Devil-boy Jack: "I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way.
— Chris Wooding, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were talking about that poem by - that one guy. David Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood-' You know this poem, right? 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth-""I loved that poem. But I remember thinking to myself: Why? How come you can't travel both? That seemed really unfair to me.
— Dan Chaon
Alan Grant: "There are... far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought." The Midget (his nurse): "You sound constipated.
— Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said. "Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Dualism::In Ralph Ellison's Invisible ManI am outside of history. i wish i had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in the cage.i am outside of history. its hungrier than i thot.
— Ishmael Reed, New and Collected Poems, 1964-2006
Hunger is a wayOf standing outside windowsThe entering takes away.
— Emily Dickinson
I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I write.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
The truth was always out there, you just had to find it.
— Heather Graham, Phantom Evil
Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must—if we are really to live at all, if we are to enjoy the life more abundant promised by the Sages of Wisdom—we must put our convictions into action. My remuneration has been that I have been privileged to act out my faith.
— Margaret Sanger
I would like to believe and give in to my naiveté, I would like to embrace the fact that I am back in the place where the long fingers of civilization cannot reach me and rip my heart out. At this moment, I would like to embrace myself. I would like to be unconcerned with the rest of the world and take pleasure in knowing that I have found my home. All of my life, all of my adult life, which began with the first notion of understanding, I have been searching for this sensation. You, cruel world, have tried to bring me down, tried to crush me with your code of conduct, your ethics, and your preconceived limits on liberty. You have raped me and robbed me of happiness; you have stolen my dreams and my dignity, leaving me to rot with the rest of you. Today, I know I have escaped your poisoned web; I know your rules do not apply to me, for after all you have done to crush me, I am still standing proudly above the set of your sick play. I am in love—a feeling you no longer thought I was capable of. I am in love—living, breathing, dreaming again—triumphant over your sick schemes.
— Henry Martin, Eluding Reality
What kind of God do you believe in? my answer is easy: I believe in a magnificent God
— Elizabeth Gilbert
All these mirrorscarnival distortionsof selves we never were.
— Basith, Autopsy of the seasons
We all have our safe places, where none are invited. They are lonely rooms full of the musk of memory. Sanctuary rather than adventure.
— Basith
You're an unusual person," she said."Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's so—so prosaic. Don't you think that when a person gets older he should become—broadened in his outlook?
— Philip K. Dick, The Skull
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. 
— Edward de Bono
It was a train full of strangers, and they were all the same.
— Cherie Priest, Dreadnought
God is like a search engine — He is willing to answer your requests, but you must ask Him the right questions.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that the character peaks a little later;between twenty and thirty, say. And after that we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also if this isn't too grand a word--our tragedy.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in.
— Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms
Honesty scares quite a lot of people.
— Beth Myrle Rice, Clips & Consequences: a memoir
If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them-just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.
— Ayn Rand
I got interested in the idea that love is often used as a kind of blanket explanation for things. I mean, battered wives, for instance: "Why did you go back to him?" "Oh, I loved him." "Why did you embezzle fifteen million pounds and run away to the other side of the world?" "Oh, well, because I was in love." All that and then you don't ask anything else. I thought if I just say, these people needed love and they found it, then it kind of explained it away. I wanted to look at their behaviour and how love can inspire the best and the very worst in human behaviour but love itself is not behaviour. So I avoided the word 'love' until the very end and it's the last word in the novel. I wanted to explore what people will do when they're in such terrible need of love. If there was a big idea then that was it. Then, of course, I hope that if it's a story worth reading it's the characters themselves who make you want to read it, not the big idea. I don't think a big idea drives a novel usually. Something else has to engage you on a much more kind of personal level. 
— Morag Joss
The only working model of socialism I have ever seen is in an elementary school classroom.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Luck is often just skill expressing itself without the brain’s consent.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Must this with farce and folly rack myhead unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,Whine me dead?
— Juvenal
At the moment you think all is lost, the future remains.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Sometimes changing the world is as simple as changing the way you look at it.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
We go to school so that when we grow up we can make lots of money, and we make lots of money so we can provide for our children, and we have children to provide for our retirement (because we don’t have any money left).
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.
— Lactantius, The Works of Lactantius V1
I suppose belief is there to prevent people from thinking.
— Gasmaskman
Dreams are doorways into other dimensions that you forget how to open once you’re awake.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define. Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be. And by the way of the rural what may we say? A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say. Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp. (Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)
— Richard McSweeney, Hearing in the Write
Without the quest, there can be no epiphany.
— Constantine E. Scaros, Reflections on a Simple Twist of Fate: Literature, Art and Parkinson's Disease
There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness
— Sophocles
Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.
— Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
— Thomas Mann
But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.
— Jo Nesbø, Phantom
I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the upbringing and education we have given them was all something that happened to them only in a dream. In reality they were fashioned and reared, and their arms and equipment manufactured, in the depths of the earth, and Earth herself, their mother, brought them up, when they were complete, into the light of day; so now they must think of the land in which they live as their mother and protect her if she is attacked, while their fellow citizens they must regard as brothers born of the same mother earth…. That is the story. Do you know of any way of making them believe it?”	“Not in the first generation,” he said, “but you might succeed with the second, and later generations.
— Plato, The Republic
I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.
— Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest
Are you dying?"Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry.
— Jo Nesbø, Phantom
Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.
— Jo Nesbø, Phantom
You have the ability to find all the answers--if you let yourself do so.
— Heather Graham, Phantom Evil
Evil is done by the living.
— Heather Graham, Phantom Evil
Evil doesn't just go away.
— Heather Graham, Phantom Evil
It meant leading my meta-life. Meta-life is the opposite of living in the moment. It's the syndrome of simultaneously having an experience and being an observer commenting on and questioning the experience. By observing something, you change it, sometimes for the better, but in my experience, usually for the worse. You know youre in the meta-life when you're critiquing an experience while you're having it (This is fun but it would be more fun if . . .), trying to talk yourself into happiness because you should feel it (It's a beautiful day, and all I really need to be happy are fresh air and sunshine), or worrying that youre not getting any closer to the "Big Important Things" (Sure, this is a great date, but what are the odds this guy would ever marry someone like me?).
— Holly Shumas, Five Things I Can't Live Without
A book without conversation, is like a life without friends, you know it's going to end, but you want it to be soon.
— Ken Balneaves
If he ever changes his stance on something, it's because he's received new information.
— Heather Graham, Phantom Evil
Flame is the lamp
—  rest is borrowed.
Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were "really there".
— Tom Hays, Twisted by the Wind: A Journal of Inspirations, Conversations and Imaginations
That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.''No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid.
— Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
— Quentin Crisp
If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the seperate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence bewteen the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.
— Vitruvius
Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.
— John Keats
Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity.
— Armando Valladares
What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
— Virginia Woolf
Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Irony is the kid who steals music and is stolen by the music.
— MEDVGNO, THE AWFUL RIFFMAKER
Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.
— Amin Maalouf, Orígenes
Heated is what you get when you rub faith and instinct together.
— Cornelia "Connie" DeDona
Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space.
— Arthur Koestler
Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further.
— William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
One species on the planet, and one species only, has reached the point of being able to have an impact on the evolutionary fortunes of all other species and upon the functioning of all ecosystems. We also have, in a way that is not true for any other species, a relationship to the planet as a whole and to the future. We live with all life.
— Walter Truett Anderson
It's fine to have a dream girl, but you should ask yourself…would you be her dream boy?
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Only people are worth dying for.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
Life is like a box of cookies: it's good while it lasts, but before you know it, it's gone.
— R.M. ArceJaeger
It's best to locate the mind first before launching the 'missiles of contention'.
— Gasmaskman
Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life.(as said by Mrs. Pearson)
— Adam Gopnik, The King in the Window
When we merely follow another, we take a potentially creative mind out of service-our own. 
— William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Only by knowing yourself can you live honestly and find your own path.
— Gregory Bassham, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles
.....we find ourselves inhabitants of the last few living cells of a dying god
— Billy Kazee, Mr. Iman
So many things become beautiful when you really look
— Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
we live our lives from the "inside", from the vantage point of our own personal mini-cam on life. This gives us privileged access to what's going on inside our own heads. But sometimes we can be too close to ourselves to see us as we truly are. We lack perspective, objectivity. That's where friends can help. Friends can tell you when you're selfish or rude or making a total fool of yourself. Conversely, they can let you know when you're being kind or generous or need to lighten up on yourself.
— Gregory Bassham, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles
It's in out-of-the-ordinary situations - especially situations of challenge or adversity - that the most important differences between people shine through.
— Gregory Bassham, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles
If we forget the past, individually or as a culture, we lose knowledge that has already been gained, and we lose valuable tools by which our knowledge may grow.
— S. Joel Garver
we live best when we live for a cause greater than ourselves
— Michael W. Austin
Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence?
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Terror of Blue John Gap
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think...and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head...if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
At the heart of all of mankind’s achievements is imagination.
— R. L. Matthies
I know that I know nothing
— Plato
Yet if all reality is subjective, all certitude is impossible.
— Robin Paul Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan . . . and Beyond
I can’t seem to shake this perpetual awareness of being Molly.
— Becky Albertalli, The Upside of Unrequited
Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas