c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Agatha: "If you say anything smug or stuck-up or shallow, I'll have Reaper follow you home."Sophie: "But then I can't talk!
— Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil
If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right
It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect — a process which occurs in every dialectical victory — you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one’s own advantage. — Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as “Death before dishonour,” and so on.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right
If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways.
— Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes
She was the most alone person he had ever met - so intent on staying forever breathtaking that she could never let any of life's glories take her own breath away.
— Jenny Wingfield, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
Those who seek enjoyment in life are the ones that think that the world is a playground.
— Michael Bassey Johnson, The Power of Creative Thoughts
All success in life comes to naught if it is laced with vanity.
— Andy Paula
Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
— Samuel Johnson, Life and Conversations of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Founded Chiefly Upon Boswell.
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
The World will give you hopeless vanity, but what will you give the World?
— Jennifer Megan Varnadore
Vanity, right?" Nash reappeared in the living room with an open bag of potato chips. "I nominate my venerable brother. He likes to play hero, and one look at him should establish the vanity angle.""Nash!" I really shouldn't have been surprised by the dig. But I was."What?" He raised one brow at me in challenge. "It's okay to call me jealous, but not to call him vain?""Awareness of one's obvious advantages doesn't imply vanity," Tod insisted calmly.Nash turned on him. "Does it imply narcissism?"Tod huffed. "This coming from the guy who owns more hair products than his girlfriend.
— Rachel Vincent, With All My Soul
The Rose does not preen herself to catch my eye. She blooms because she blooms. A saint is a saint until he knows he is one.
— Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people's vanity.
— Jorge Luis Borges
He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.
— Ben Jonson, The Poetaster
My intellect was my greatest vanity.
— Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion
I cried because I was so beautiful.
— Victoria Kann, Pinkalicious
Mirror Mirror on the Wall,Who's fairest of them all?I'm Mona Lisa and She is plain,But the truth is - we all are Vain.
— Saru Singhal
But I feel vanity is a part of art and the non-vain are really non-artistic.
— Barry  Webster, The Sound of All Flesh
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Hairspray and blusher, eyelash curlers, eye-shadow palettes the size of tea-trays. Even before they left school it was as if they were already rehearsing for some witless kind of womanhood.
— Alison Fell, The Element -inth in Greek
How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.
— David Hewson, Macbeth
But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.
— G.K. Chesterton, Five Types
One altar forever is preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,--ourselves, our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him; we boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is matter that has forever enslaved us.
— Kakuzō Okakura
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
— Mark Twain
Always live your life with your biography in mind.
— Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.
— Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
— Alexander Vassilieff, Odysseya: An Epic Journey from Russia to Australia
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild."“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
— Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
We had a teacher called Fanny Menlove, and I remember once when she was out of the room Nancy went up to the blackboard and wrote it backward - Menlove Fanny - and we all fell around laughing. She got into big trouble, but she didn't seem to mind. She had no fear.
— Peter FitzSimons, Nancy Wake
He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.
— George Plimpton
Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying."Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason,but at the very least you will be living grandly.
— Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Growing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What is said, what is left to the imagination, what is denied, withheld, exaggerated-all these secretive, inverted things informed my childhood. Writing the stories that I found in the box, I remember being particularly fascinated by secrets kept in order to protect someone from who you are. That protection, sharpest knife in the drawer, I absorbed as naturally as a southern accent. At that time, I was curious to hold up to the light glimpses of the family that I had so efficiently fled. We were remote-back behind nowhere-when I was growing up, but even so, enormous social change was about to crumble foundations. Who were we, way far South? "We're south of everywhere," my mother used to lament.
— Frances Mayes, Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir
Broad-Based Education:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.… I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.… Itwas beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practicalapplication in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.—Commencement address, Stanford University,June 12, 2005
— George Beahm, I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words
This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day.
— Robert K. Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
If loving the written word is wrong...I don't want to be right!
— Junnita Jackson
...she herself loved the character of Elizabeth Bennet. "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.
— Carol Shields, Jane Austen: A Life
December 29, 1946: Snowing this morning. The year seems to be dying in a light white blanket. Only three more days of this year, then comes a new one. Then, what? No one knows.  -- Diary of Bertha Kate Gaddis who passed away 6 months later, age 78, West Lafayette, IN.
— Angie Klink, Divided Paths, Common Ground: The Story of Mary Matthews and Lella Gaddis, Pioneering Purdue Women Who Introduced Science into the Home
Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?
— Milan Kundera, Encounter
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism
— Alexander Hamilton
Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.
— Walter Isaacson
After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.
— William L. Stull
In many ways. . .the completeness of biography, the achievement of its professionalization, is an ironic fiction, since no life can ever be known completely, nor would we want to know every fact about an individual. Similarly, no life is ever lived according to aesthetic proportions. The "plot" of a biography is superficially based on the birth, life and death of the subject; "character," in the vision of the author. Both are as much creations of the biographer, as they are of a novelist. We content ourselves with "authorized fictions.
— Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact & Form
He must have courage, not the physical courage required on a battlefield but the moral courage to make and carry out decisions that might directly counter to the wishes of his superiors. He must have great willpower. and, perhaps above all, he must have the gift of leadership.
— Alistair MacLean, Lawrence of Arabia
[Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower] 'No other contemporary officer approached his accumulated experience...' From Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower 1742-1814.
— Ian M Bates
But at the time I thought that if I could just get the world to see me the way I saw myself then my body wouldn't be the thing you walked away thinking about. I wouldn't be that fat girl.
— Gabourey Sidibe
I’m chasing after that Holy Shit effect.If this sounds arrogant, that’s because it is. If you don’t believe in your own greatness, no one else will. You’re limited only by your doubts, your fears, and your desire to fit in rather than stand out.And there’s room in this world for all of us to stand out.
— Kevin Hart
It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. However now Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Workers were again bringing paychecks home and could once more feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler’s power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard to what France and other European countries thought.... After all, what could they, or would they, do about it?
— Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."
Gustavo Arcos, a loyal revolutionary who was with Castro in the second car when they attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, was shot in his back. The shot severely wounded him and disabled his right leg, thereby causing him a lifetime of pain. A few years later, Arcos went to Mexico with the intention of gathering support as well as money and munitions for the movement. After the revolution, for his loyalty, Gustavo Arcos was appointed the Cuban Ambassador to Belgium. However, as ambassador he became disillusioned with the Soviet form of communism and began to see Castro more as a dictator than a revolutionary leader. When he returned from his duties in Belgium, instead of being able to freely leave Cuba, Arcos was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of being a counter-revolutionary. In 1981, after his release from his years of confinement, he attempted to escape from Cuba, for which he was sent back to prison. After his second release, Arcos decided that he could better serve the people of Cuba by staying and accepting the position of the Executive Secretary of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. His committee rapidly grew from occupying a small office in Havana, to being a nationwide organization recognized by the United Nations. Gustavo Arcos died of natural causes on August 8, 2006, at 79 years of age.
— Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba
On Saturday evening, August 5, 2017, FAPA announced and presented awards to the 2017 medalists at the FAPA President’s Book Awards Banquet that was held in the Hilton Hotel at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Captain Hank Backer’s book “Suppressed I Rise” is the true story of Adeline Perry and her daughters’ saga in Nazi Germany. Evading evil forces that almost proved to be overwhelming, it begins when she left South Africa, her native country, and accompanied her German husband to a strange, foreboding and foreign country. Adapted from Adeline Perry’s original notes and manuscripts and her daughters’ reflections, Captain Hank Bracker, originally from Germany, reveals how the young mother survived through bombings and dangerous situations with her two children. “Suppressed I Rise” was recognized with three awards at the FAPA Banquet: a Bronze Medal for “Nonfiction for Young Adults,” a Silver Medal for “Political/Current Events” and the coveted Gold Medal for “Biography.
— Captain Hank Bracker, "Suppresed I Rise"
—a knowledgeable man is a free man, or at least a man who longs for freedom.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life she for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patricia Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother.
— Jeffrey Toobin, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
Conventional wisdom tells us not to dwell in the past. I believe, however, that we should hold hands with it.
— Dana Glossbrenner, Women Behind Stained Glass
It's a terrific book and I can't wait for the movie," says Phillip Adams on Late Night Live, ABC Radio National.
— John  Holliday, Mission to China: How an Englishman Brought the West to the Orient
-My character and the History of me.From an early age, Marouane wants to take advantage and exploit of all that life can bring. I am the reckless who is always invincible through my childhood, i was very active, effective and curious by nature. I always follow my intuition by trusting in my instincts and asking myself alot of questions and listening to the first answer that pops into my head, this makes me always got the stature of rarely being mistaken, and its makes me different in many ways not mean wrong but equal. My mind is lively and businesslike. In the same time, i got an overview for the environment and how i can get a bearings for it. I saw myself loyal by trusting in my ability to be loyal and being supportive, for no other reason than friendship, and let them know that i am frank and direct in everything i undertake and does not give in to flattery. Seeking to avoid all forms of hypocrisy or false pretenses, it sometimes happens to be cold, abrupt, intolerant and devoid of tact. But deep inside me, i had a great sensitive by paying attention to the person’s face. I tried to be gentle and know how to benefit my loved ones, preferring to testify my devotion and affection by the acts. In love, a certain jealousy allows me and makes me remind my half who will hold for her. Child already, impressed by my vitality and clout and bountiful resources. I got the profile of a leader and captain, at street at school at videogames at everything, cause i was stalwart and authoritarian. I dont like to follow the rules and alot of diabolical ideas over my head, i was considered to be the most influential insensate and always be at the head of the herd. Professionally, with all my capacity, i can fully enjoy all opportunities and chances, my need for action makes me a valuable element in life. I am a man of value who has a heart on his hand, but whoever attempts to abuse or hurt me, i will throw myself at his own risk with one action.
— Marouane LAASSAFAR
The very qualities that had led to Johnson's political and legislative success were precisely those that now operated to destroy him: his inward insistence that the world adapt itself to his goals; his faith in the nation's limitless capacity; his tendency to evaluate all human activity in terms of its political significance; his insistence on translating every disruptive situation into one where bargaining was possible; his reliance on personal touch; his ability to speak to each of his constituent groups on its own terms. All these gifts, instead of sustaining him, now conspired to destroy him.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written
The principal error that befalls those who want to depict men is to suppose that they have a fixed character rather than a life that is but a tissue of contradictions: the more deeply one studies them, the less one dares to delineate them.
— Charles Pinot Duclos
As Margaret would later write, Europe had come to seem "my America," an unsettled territory where liberty was at hand, while the New World she had left behind had grown "stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war," the imperialist conflict with Mexico over the annexation of Texas.
— Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
I don't know who first said it, but this proverb is something I believe: A lion leading a lot of sheep can defeat a sheep leading many lions. The important part is that I must decide when I am a lion and when I must be a sheep. I don't believe you are always one or the other.
— Yao Ming, Yao: A Life in Two Worlds
Was he a good father?"To their surprise, I shake my head and smile. "No," I reply candidly. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good man."Where Dad came from, that meant a great deal more.
— Deana Martin, Memories Are Made of This: Dean Martin Through His Daughter's Eyes
When asked if she would accept his affairs to try to keep her marriage, she commented, "I do. I think that speaks for itself.
— Deana Martin, Memories Are Made of This: Dean Martin Through His Daughter's Eyes
To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic.
— James Joyce
Social class. Class remains our national awkward topic, usually mumbled over in academic diversity workshops; indeed, most people don't know how to talk about class without automatically coupling it with race. That's because we Americans are loath to recognize that the sky's-the-limit potential we take as our birthright comes at a price far beyond what many Americans--of any race--can afford to pay.
— Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
I have my first review this is exciting I write a passage to introduce the book and want to share it on SNS . As below words,hope you can give me some a
— Shawn Woods, I Was a Mistake: Another Type of Abuse
Almost nothing is known about Homer, which explains why so much has been written about him.
— Richard Armour, The Classics Reclassified
To me, that's the ultimate isolation - to be separated from my own mind.
— James Patterson
Did you ever think about writing memoirs? You are a writer, and it may be interesting for people to read your story."I hate memoirs. But I am sure I will write a book about the Bowery Mission,” Michael said.
— Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael
Fake boobs are weird ya'll" read by Patrick Stewart.
— Amy Poehler, Yes Please
Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away. The voyeurism and busybodyism that impel writers and readers of biography alike are obscured by an apparatus of scholarship designed to give the enterprise an appearance of banklike blandness and solidity. The biographer is portrayed almost as a kind of benefactor. He is seen as sacrificing years of his life to his task, tirelessly sitting in archives and libraries and patiently conducting interviews with witnesses. There is no length he will not go to, and the more his book reflects his industry the more the reader believes that he is having an elevating literary experience, rather than simply listening to backstairs gossip and reading other people’s mail. The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography’s status as a popular genre. The reader’s amazing tolerance (which he would extend to no novel written half as badly as most biographies) makes sense only when seen as a kind of collusion between him and the biographer in an excitingly forbidden undertaking: tiptoeing down the corridor together, to stand in front of the bedroom door and try to peep through the keyhole.
— Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can’t confront it.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
How strange it is, to be walking away. Is it possible that I am really going to leave Ray—here? Is it possible that he won’t be coming home with me in another day or two, as we’d planned? Such a thought is too profound for me to grasp. It’s like fitting a large unwieldy object in a small space. My brain hurts, trying to contain it.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
She will speculate that she didn’t fully know her husband—this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband “alive” in her memory—elusive, teasing.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Still, I am angry with him. I am very angry with him. With my poor dead defenseless husband, I am furious as I was rarely—perhaps never—furious with him, in life. How can I forgive you, you’ve ruined both our lives.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Nor do I like being told upsetting news—unless there is a good reason. I can’t help but feel that there is an element of cruelty, if not sadism, in friends telling one another upsetting things for no reason except to observe their reactions.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
How exhausted I am suddenly!—though this has been Ray’s best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling—almost—exhilarated.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Virtually every literary piece written about Adolf Hitler in more than half a century since 1945 has been based on anti
— Russel H.S. Stolfi
I hope this book helps people to heal & their not the only one because no one is a mistake God put you on earth for one reason. I am not a mistake.
— Shawn Woods
Lastly, Spurgeon reminds us that piety and devotion to Christ are not preferable alternatives to controversy, but rather that they should - when circumstances demand it - lead to the latter. He was careful to maintain that order. The minister who makes controversy his starting point will soon have a blighted ministry and spirituality will wither away. But controversy which is entered into out of love for God and reverence for His Name, will wrap a man's spirit in peace and joy even when he is fighting in the thickest of battle. The piety which Spurgeon admired was not that of a cloistered pacifism but the spirit of men like William Tyndale and Samuel Rutherford who, while contending for Christ, could rise heavenwards, jeopardizing 'their lives unto the death in the high places of the field'. At the height of his controversies Spurgeon preached some of the most fragrant of all his sermons.
— Iain H. Murray
I do not think my life would make a very interesting book,' I say. 'I feel I can speak with a certain amount of authority here.
— Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void
But I was eventually okay. And you will be okay too. Here's why. I had already made a decision early on that I would be a plain girl with tons of personality, and accepting it made everything a lot easier. If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be. I decided early on it was not going to be my looks.
— Amy Poehler, Yes Please
It is the most horrific thought—my husband died among strangers.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Emotions are like passing storms, and you have to remind yourself that it won't rain forever.
— Amy Poehler
The great biographers take excessive liberties in denigrating his person, and, in doing so, they make it difficult to comprehend
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
As concerns the question of the psychological engine that drove Hitler, the conventional interpretation of lusting after power is, in final analysis, the refuge of lack of comprehen
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
The intellectually-inclined biographers stray from the point that the message is directed through the spoken word at the broad masses and not writing to an inbred, self-adoring intellectual e
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
Although characterized as uncultured and unread, Hitler comes off in his demands to create a monumental signature for a Greater Germany as historically and artistically gi
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
To comprehend the Hitler of 1919 is to comprehend the Hitler of the entire period from 1919 through 
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
(...)it seems more probable that his anti-Semitism was less emotional and more objective than has been assumed to the pre
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
Hitler took the action of pitiless massacre as a last resort in the face of a perceived irreconcilable e
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
Politics for Hitler must be seen as a distant, prophetic vision to be fulfilled and not as an exercise in personal power. There was no political theory for Hitler and no necessity for adherence to any political programs. There was only tactical political flexibility in the service of seizure of power and the establishment of a Greater Germany in Eu
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
And in contrast to the Communist revolution in Russia and the Communist attempts at revolution in Germany from 1918 through 1923, Hitler's were virtually blood
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
Hitler derived several things from his experience and achievements in World War I, without which his rise to power in 1933 would have been at the least problematical, and at the most inconceivable. Hitler survived the war as a combat soldier—a rifle carrier—in a frontline infantry regiment. The achievement was an extraordinary one based on some combination of near-miraculous luck and combat skill. The interpretive fussing over whether or not Hitler was a combat soldier because he spent most of the war in the part of the regiment described as regimental headquarters can be laid to rest as follows: Any soldier in an infantry regiment on an active front in the west in World War I must be considered to have been a combat soldier. Hitler’s authorized regimental weapon was the Mauser boltaction, magazine-fed rifle. This gives a basic idea of what Hitler could be called upon to do in his assignment at the front. As a regimental runner, he carried messages to the battalions and line companies of the regiment, and the more important ones had to be delivered under outrageously dangerous circumstances involving movement through artillery fire and, particularly later in the war, poison gas and the omnipresent rifle fire of the skilled British sniper detach
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
In the well reported Kubizek period from late 1904 through mid-1908, with its additiona data from the circumstances of failure at school, lung ailment, and tragic episode of his mother’s death, the picture remains the same. Hitler’s character is one of bold license for a youngster, but not directed toward dissolute behavior or activity that gives a hint of evil. Hitler devoured grand opera and classical music, painted, sketched, planned a great new Linz; he wrote sonnets, communed with nature, and exuded politeness and reserve. These are activities and qualities that suggest potential, although overblown, aspirations to artistic genius. What we see, like it or not, is morally laudable behavior and aspiration on the part of a young man in his teens. But is there a dark side somewhere in this picture?If there were a dark side, it probably would have been the light gray of the contempt that he had for many of his school teachers and his resistance to formal education. Hitler’s comments in Mein Kampf support such contempt and are buoyed by his indelible comment, about his tour of the customs office where his father worked, that the clerks and officials squatted about as monkeys in 
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
In his thoughtful and complex style of analysis, Hitler continued on to note the following: “Since the newspapers in question did not enjoy an outstanding reputation ... I regarded them more as the products of anger and envy than the [representation] of a principled, though perhaps mistaken, point of view.” In the lines above, we see Hitler begin to wrestle with anti- Semitism, flatly reject religious anti-Semitism as unworthy of Austrian cultural tradition, and suspect that the arguments of the anti-Semitic press and gutter pamphlets were exaggerated beyond credibility by too much subjective and too little objective and principled argument. The view of virtually every Hitler biographer that he based his anti-Semitism on arguments derived from the gutter press and pamphlets of Vienna does not hold up in the face of the words above. To the contrary, we see Hitler take the measure of that liter
— Russel H.S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny
I dreamed of going to the top of Mount Elum like Alexander the Great to touch Jupiter and even beyond the valley. But, as I watched my brother running across the roof, flying their kites and skillfully flicking the strings back and forth to cut each other's down, I wondered hoe free a daughter could ever be.
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to “outlive” them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
The minutiae of our lives! Telephone calls, errands, appointments. None of these is of the slightest significance to others and but fleetingly to us yet they constitute such a portion of our lives, it might be argued that our lives are a concatenation of minutiae interrupted at unpredictable times by significant events.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
The coolly calibrated manipulation of the credulous American public, by an administration bent upon stoking paranoid patriotism!
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed—to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Writing a biography is a delicate—not a reckless—process, where the end result, if done properly, is simply the truth revealed. This delicate and intricate research process has never before been done for Bob Crane, a man with a story worth telling.
— Carol M. Ford, Bob Crane The Definitive Biography
He laughed a lot, but as a boy he had been so self-conscious about being dark-skinned that he went to the fields to get buffalo milk to spread on his face, thinking it would make him lighter. It was only when he met my mother that he became comfortable in his own skin. Being loved by such a beautiful girl gave him confidence.
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the very odor of memory.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers—their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges—But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight—
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story
I wish you believe, not for myprofit, but for yours. I daily pray the true God give you light, that you may believe. Whether you will ever believe in tis world I do not know, but when you die I know you will believe what I now say. You will then appear before God you now deny. - Adorinam Judson to his Burman teacher.
— Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson
In America, they make a lot of fuss over little things.
— Khushwant Singh, Truth, Love and a Little Malice
The Book Highlights and Attacks areas of Inefficiency and Hypocrisy in Government Offices. It injects the much-need Enema into its Highly Constipated System.
— Mahesh Ubhayakar, And So I Lived
A Book for the Service Minded as well as the Government Bashers, on How to Be and How Not to Be.
— Mahesh Ubhayakar, And So I Lived
I was born in the house my father built.
— Richard M. Nixon
As the wildly favorable word of mouth spread, however, the box office receipts began to soar. First, fans of musicals came. Then the ever-growing cadre of Julie Andrews devotees. Finally, those longing for a happy ending—anywhere—began to turn out in droves. At which point the oddest thing of all happened: all these fans of the movie returned to see it again. And then once more. And then once again—until the phenomenon eventually resulted in a record-setting first release run of over four and a half years.
— Tom Santopietro, The Sound of Music Story: How A Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time
She was an autocrat, didn't really believe in democracy. The benefit of her approach was that, if you work with twenty people and ask everybody's opinion, you would never achieve what she did.
— Theresa Sjoquist
It's very hard to reach people in Greymouth with pottery or any form of art because they're allergic to it. Allergic to it ever since they began really because they've taken from the ground in the mining spirit without making or creating, and therefore anything that is creative they do not understand.
— Theresa Sjoquist
Give me a fucking pre-med you fuckers, I'm a personal friend of Sir Lancelot Spratt.
— Vivian Mackerrell
You can’t hang out with negative people and live a positive life. Run from them!
— Jettie Woodruff
Start to focus on things that unite the races of people instead of things that divide us, and you will have already won the battle, and are a building block to the solution.
— Ted Harts, Harts Remember When: 100 True Stories of Courage
If you put forth a small amount of effort, you just might find your next best friend for life is of a different race than your own.
— Ted Harts, Harts Remember When: 100 True Stories of Courage
Honey, I work for money not love.
— Denele Pitts Campbell, Rex Perkins: A Biography
I only read books I know I will like
— Vicky Unwin, Love and War in the WRNS
Flint, Michigan. Detroit as seen backwards through a telescope. The callus on the palm of the state shaped like a welder's mitt. A town where 66.5 percent of the working citizenship are in some way, shape or form linked to the shit-encrusted underbelly of a French buggy racer named Chevrolet and a floppy-eared Scotchman named Buick. A town where 23.5 percent of the population pimp everything from Elvis on velvet to horse tranquilizers to Halo Burgers to NRA bumper stickers. A town where the remaining 10 percent sit back and watch it all go by—sellin’ their blood, rollin’ convenience stores, puffin’ no-brand cigarettes while cursin’ their wives and kids and neighbors and the flies sneakin’ through the screens and the piss-warm quarts of Red White & Blue and the Skylark parked out back with the busted tranny.
— Ben Hamper, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line
Courage, kindness and a great determination to succeed in life with a smile were hallmarks of my wonderful wife. And why her story deserves to be told.
— Paul  Roberts, Make It Happen
Mechanically I carried on across the Irish Sea, noticing with a jaundiced eye that it had suddenly lost the sinister threat of no-man's-land and was transformed into a placid highway where ferry-steamers would soon chug peacefully over the unmarked graves of gallant seamen.
— Jackie Moggridge
He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.
— Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Wherever he went he left footprints so firm that nobody could later efface or blur them, not even he himself, when on rare occasions he was tempted to do so.
— Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921
A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don't stay still, so life-writing can't be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going 'ahead of the rest of us, like the miner's canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions'. So, 'There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation'. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story. (Virginia Woolf, p. 11)
— Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf
Maybe he'd never come across anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.
— Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom
The Ritz Hotel was grand, sophisticated, and established, unlike me. The only thing we had in common was façade. Mine may not have been as ornate but it was equally phony. I was presenting myself as an escort; I advertised as one, negotiated like one on the phone, and I identified as one to whoever was interested. I even simulated sex for escort rates.
— Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom
...no matter how frequently we came, when we arrived, they acted as if we had been away one hundred years. [His grandparents' greeting.]
— James Vescovi, Eat Now; Talk Later: 52 True Tales of Family, Feasting, and the American Dream
Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with.
— Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom
Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.
— Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom
She had privacy, and the privilege of walking up and down the same battlements as the sentries.
— John Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg
Desolina and Tony had attended one-room schoolhouses until the third grade. ... According to Tony, there were hardly enough pencils and sober teachers to go around. [Author's grandparents educational background.]
— James Vescovi, Eat Now; Talk Later: 52 True Tales of Family, Feasting, and the American Dream