c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?"Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?"Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?"I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn’t been in the city...very long. I didn’t know.
— Scott Westerfeld, Peeps
For Alwyn's grandfather, who was known as "the greatest talker in the country," used words which no one else understood, words which he did not understand, and words which do not exist, to swell a passionate theme, to confound his neighbors in an argument, and for their own sake. He would say, for example, "My farm was the very apocalypse of fertility, but the renter has rested on his oars till it is good for nothing," or "Manifest the bounty to pass the salt shaker in my direction." Something of the Bible, something of an Irish inheritance, something of a liar's anxiety, made of his most ordinary remark a strange and wearisome oratory.
— Glenway Wescott, The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait
When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall. After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing.
— Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
You can’t let the apocalypse rule your life.
— Michelle Tea, Black Wave
I never understood why people from the 1980s thought there would be flying cars. It just seemed really dangerous and impractical to me, but they all talked about it, so it must have been a thing. Meanwhile, my dream for the future was that it wouldn't involve mass extinction and large-scale water shortages and cannibalism.
— Dan Chaon, Ill Will
Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.
— Nevil Shute, On the Beach
Country’s friggin’ dying, man, you have to triage the motherfucker.
— Jess Row, The Empties
Will the last person on the planet please turn off the lights?
— John Joseph Adams, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
In the first couple of weeks there were big piles of trash outside every house. All the stuff you couldn’t find another use for and couldn’t compost. Yogurt cups, torn trash bags, dirty diapers, hair-spray cans, paper towels. Sometimes you’d see a pile that was as high as your waist. Nathan said it was a purge, a cleanse. But you could just as well say that who we were went out with the empties. We will never get our selves back.
— Jess Row, The Empties
He went to make coffee. Because when you have just heard about the possible transformation of the human race into feral monsters you need to be doing something with your hands and creating something hot and comforting for another person.
— Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky
The Sacral has disappeared from daily reality of the modern world, and it is completely obvious that we live in the ”End of Times”, but the Sacral has not vanished (since it could not vanish theoretically, as it is eternal), but was transferred to a nightly, invisible projection, and is now ready to come down on human physical cosmos in a terrible apocalyptic moment of apogee of history, at a point, when the world that forgot about its spiritual nature and disowned it, will be forced to meet with it in a brutal flash of Revelation.
— Parvulesco
Before the Apocalypse, the closest I'd gotten to death was buying steaks at the supermarket.
— Manel Loureiro, Apocalipsis Z: La ira de los justos
There are ruins all over the world, testaments of the atrocities, and burial chambers of the lost souls. But the facts are always misinterpreted. History is inaccurate.
— Jeyn Roberts, Dark Inside
He looked at the sky once more. Men had gone out there, he thought in wonder, and couldn't think why. Singly and in small groups they had gone into strange lands, across wide seas, had climbed mountains where no human foot had ever trod. And he couldn't think why they had done these things. What impulse had driven them from their own kind to perish alone, or among strangers.
— Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
The seal of Reason, made impregnable:_ The seal of Truth, immeasurably splendid:The seal of Brotherhood, man's miracle:_ The seal of Peace, and Wisdom heaven-descended:The seal of Bitterness, cast down to Hell:_ The seal of Love, secure, not-to-be-rended:The seventh seal, Equality: that, broken,God sets His thunder and earthquake for a token.
— Aleister Crowley, Collected Works of Aleister Crowley
We've been around for a long time, Mr. Dowell. Longer than you or any of your stupid little friends could ever conceive. Sleeping in the shadows and waiting for the right moment. A disease you might call us. A plague. Evil. From beneath the ground, it rises as it has done many times in the past.
— Jeyn Roberts, Dark Inside
What lies beneath has pushed its way to the surface once again. Time to get away while there is still air left in our lungs.
— Jeyn Roberts, Dark Inside
To conceive of a god in one’s image is already quite a feat for inflated egos. To imagine, however, that this likeness has chosen your generation amongst the thousands for ending the party is to bring the egocentrism to new heights.
— Anthony Marais
Ten thousand years to build civilization, ten months to tear it down, and each day lasted ten times longer than the one before, and the nights lasted ten times as long as the days. The only thing more excruciating than the boredom of those hours was the terror of knowing that any minute they could end.
— Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
You’re a tough guy, but I’m a nightmare wrapped in the apocalypse.
— James S.A. Corey, Gods of Risk
In the early days, it was nearly omnipresent, a constant background noise, like the hum of traffic on a busy highway: the sound of a human being in pain.
— Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
Just in case the world ends tomorrow, we might as well enjoy today.
— Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life As We Knew It
Three of them, dressed in silvery gray, on three horses—one black, one white, and the third red.
— Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest
My love for Neo-Tokyo is a bulbous massof post-human organic circuitry.Cyperpunk is my mother tongue.My love is a man-machine interface gun.
— Yann Rousselot, Dawn of the Algorithm
It was like the beginning of the end of the world.
— Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel
I have seen enough. I am ready to see the world die.
— Robin Sacredfire
Just two naked guys enjoying a manly hug in the middle of the apocalypse. - Cody Forester, Werewolf Apocalypse
— Roxanne Smolen, Werewolf Apocalypse
What’s the goal?” asked Carlos. “I’m glad you asked,” said Harry. You – all of you – and I – we’re going to save the world.
— Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel
The Agora had fallen, too.	Vince turned the radio off, dismissing what they'd just heard, and merged onto I-87. A little shriek of madness sounded in the back of his brain, but he said, with admirable calm considering, "Seriously, love, I think we've got this.
— Erin Kellison, Scrape
You know, Alexia started, “I will be deeply disappointed if the apocalypse starts in Portsmouth.
— Gavin G. Smith, The Age of Scorpio
The more we know about the former world, the better we’ll understand what happened when it fell.
— Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
No amount of expertly choreographed PR could prevail, in the end, against Armageddon. It strolled over the barricades and took its pleasure.
— M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts
The way we live our lives is not sustainable. I don’t just mean recycling and turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth. I mean the way we treat each other. The way we pick and choose whose lives are important – who we actually treat as human. There is nobody on this earth whose life is not of value. And that includes those of us who have been left behind. Maybe they did go to some Christian heaven. But what I’m saying is, we’re good people too. We’re worthwhile people. I’d vouch for every last one of you.
— Katie Coyle, Vivian Apple at the End of the World
It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
What is about to happen is not the reclaiming of Earth by a triumphant Mother Nature, a karmic repudiation of humanity's arrogant ill stewardship. Nothing we ever did mattered one way or another. This event has always been in the cards for man's planet, for the whole scope of our history, coming regardless of what we did or didn't do.
— Ben H. Winters, World of Trouble
I'll remember your apocalypse if you'll remember mineIt will be a holiday of the senses
— Eric Gamalinda, Amigo Warfare
Is that the end... of all the races and civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here?
— C.J. Cherryh, The Faded Sun Trilogy
The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.
— Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
Should have taken warning it's justPeople mourningRunning, hiding, lostYou can't find, find a place to go, so it'sRed skies at nightRed skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh... red skies at night, red skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh...Someone's taking over, and it look like they're aiming right at you...Someone said we'll be dead by morning...Someone cries, leaving... red skies at night, whoa oh-h-h
— Cy Curnin The Fixx
Thoughts have power, influencing humanity's collective path. The difference between Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler lies, ultimately, in how they thought. A thought can change the world for the better—or damn it forever.
— Diane Shauer, Battle of the Blood Moons
Abandon all nations, the planet drifts to random insect doom.
— William S. Burroughs
It is also the irrational instinct of religionism, the vague yearning for something to worship—a reflection or shadow of the true devotional principle—which prompts men to project a subjective image of the lower, personal mind, and to endow it with human attributes, and then to claim to receive "revelations" from it; and this—the image of the Beast, or unspiritual mind,—is their anthropomorphic God, a fabulous monster the worship of which has ever prompted men to fanaticism and persecution, and has inflicted untold misery and dread upon the masses of mankind, as well as physical torture and death in hideous forms upon the many martyrs who have refused to bend the knee to this Gorgonean phantom of the beast-mind of man. Truly, where the worshipers of this image of the Beast predominate, the man whose brow and hand are unbranded by this superstition, who neither thinks nor acts in accordance with it, suffers ostracism if not virulent persecution.
— James Morgan Pryse, The Apocalypse Unsealed
Wasn’t allowed to have pets. I killed my pet cockroach when it crawled into my ear.
— Katherine McIntyre, Snatched
A sullied green “S” stood out on a graying backdrop that made for a road marker up there. We called it the wasteland.
— Katherine McIntyre, Snatched
How would you rather die?" she snapped. "Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
Complacency kills. Paranoia is the reason I’m still alive.
— D.J. Molles, The Remaining
Then she was there in the doorway of the ambulance at his feet. She jumped up like a lion, then stood up on two feet like a human. Her hair was thick and full. She had a mouthful of giant teeth. He could see four pronounced canines in the front and strong claws where her fingernails had been. Her strong body was shriveled and emaciated with her ribs and hip bones sticking out prominently like a concentration camp victim. Her stench was overpowering, like a deer carcass left to rot on the side of the road.
— Joseph M. Chiron, Tagged: The Apocalypse
St John from the book of The Revelation “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark.
— Joseph M. Chiron, Tagged: The Apocalypse
In the front was a man he knew only as “Samson,” a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street.
— Joseph M. Chiron, Tagged: The Apocalypse
Biblical eschatology fundamentally challenges the "official" scientific idea that the universe will end in a violent heat death, and instead that the cosmos will be set free from its decadence. It calls us to consider the sobering similarities between ancient pagan cosmologies (creation began with war & violence between the gods) and modern naturalism as a nihilistic, philosophical worldview (all will end in astronomical war & violence). Instead, the revelation (apocalypse) of the Lamb is that God created out of love and love will win in the end.
— David D. Flowers
One could speculate that lichens would be among the last inhabitants to succumb on a dying earth at some distant point in the future.
— Steven L. Stephenson, The Kingdom Fungi: The Biology of Mushrooms, Molds, and Lichens
Thanks, for saving me.”“I didn’t have a choice,” he said softly.“Everyone has a choice.”“Then mine was easy.”“Easy?”He chuckled. “Olivia, my choice will always be simple when it comes to you...
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
Everyone is dangerous in here, can’t you see that?” he warned.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
He whispered for her ears only as he listed off the facts: “Military are allowed a larger portion. Being second in command restricts me from no room and giving orders is what I’ve been hired to do. As far as ignoring you, that is not the case. I’ve checked up on you, and you are doing well. My intentions have never been to harm you or insult you. You actually are quite breathtaking in that dress and that is the problem, you need not draw attention to yourself. You are my responsibility and the answer to ‘why’ will always be because I have to.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
No, we’ll live. I promise you that.” He’d said it in a way that she couldn’t doubt, the same way he’d snapped his soldiers back into their rank on the helicopter. His words had been soft yet firm, and she wanted to believe in him as his men had, with confidence.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
If only he’d taken one look at her and seen that they were soul mates, swept her off her feet and taken her to Las Vegas to be married in the same little chapel where Britney Spears had been. She laughed to herself. It would probably have lasted just as long, once her mother found out.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
We’re in an underground vault, and here’s my first order: You’re going to do everything I tell you to do.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
She’d been caught up in that image, that flash, man’s nuclear stamp, and had not really understood what happened after.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
You think you’re prepared. You think you’ve done everything you’re supposed to, study hard, work hard, keep yourself out of trouble, and then—whoosh! Something arrives out of the blue that you never saw coming. Something you never even imagined. Something that’ll knock your little world off its axis. Something that’ll either change your life for the better, or end it forever. Chaos.
— James Michael Rice, For Those Who Worship The Sun
Olivia responded with confidence, “You’re the military. You’re in charge. Why would I be scared?
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
A giant grin, accompanied by a slight chuckle, had been the grand finale to any of his most successful jokes, while the less impressive resulted in a raise of both his brows, which he followed with a semi-satisfied smirk. The least entertaining attempt at humor would get a shrug and a short grimace that reflected he too understood he’d just bombed. Olivia was acquainted with them all now, considering all the time they’d spent together, the most she’d spent with any other individual inside the vault. Olivia had become accustomed to his infectious humor, though it hadn’t always been so. Especially, when they’d first met.
— Jettie Necole
Things are different here. There will be rules and regulations that you are not used to. You will have to follow them. All of them.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
It’s not a war. It’s an annihilation,” he’d mumbled low for her ears only. She’d been unable to respond, only focusing on her own breath and marveling that she in fact was still breathing.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
It must be one of life’s little jokes... how we take everything, even life itself, for granted. We waste our childhoods wishing for what we don’t have, longing for the future, dreaming of ways to speed the time so we can hurry up and see the world. And in our later years, we’d give anything just to slow things down and go back to what we once had.
— James Michael Rice, For Those Who Worship The Sun
Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to spanWhen it gathers to egg once more
— J. Aleksandr Wootton, Forgetting: impressions from the millennial borderland
She’d found that holding on to him was the easiest and simplest thing to do, not thinking about the bomb, not thinking about the people it killed, not thinking about her family, and not thinking about whether or not she would die. Instead, she’d held tightly around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. She’d thought the entire world was coming to an end and holding on to him seemed to be the only thing she wanted to acknowledge as real.
— Jettie Necole, The Vault
Most kids grow up leaving something out for Santa at Christmas time when he comes down the chimney. I used to make presents for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
But this was not quite the right kraken apocalypse.
— China Miéville, Kraken
Everyone should be comfy during the apocalypse.
— J. Cornell Michel, Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution
She knew better than to challenge a man who spent his life preparing for the apocalypse.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
We grab handfuls of bottles and climb up onto the roof of the house. She stumbles and her foot slips into the gutter sopped with dead leaves. I grab her wrists and pull her clear – sure, she's not the person I'd choose to do this with, but she's my only option so I might as well be nice. Plus I don't want her to drop the vodka.
— Kirsty Logan, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales
The world may be about to end, but if it's going to end, we'll goddamn well give it our best shot first. And this is the place to do it.
— Alex Irvine, Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization
It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war
—  it was our fellow humans.
Time for the world to end.
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
The hugest changes were the ones that could not be seen – that’s where the real apocalypse lay: in people’s hearts, their souls, their beings.
— Dianna Hardy, The Last Dragon
It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.
— Hugh Howey, Shift
He's named you heir apparent to the Apocalypse. Congratulations.
— Rachel Caine, Lord of Misrule
If anything, global response to the Rising only confirmed something that many Australians had quietly believed for quite some time: If forced to live in Australia for a year, most of the world’s population would simply curl up in a fetal ball and die of terror.
— Mira Grant, How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
Lovely sight, the Apocalypse! But absurdity, without limits? No Sir! there have to be certain limits...
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Normance
The world had seen so many Ages: the Age of Enlightenment; of Reformation; of Reason. Now, at last, the Age of Desire. And after this, an end to Ages; an end, perhaps, to everything.
— Clive Barker, The Inhuman Condition
If I have to face the end of human existence, I want to look totally smoking when it happens. Now shut the hell up.
— Angeline Trevena, Fifty Shades of Decay
Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.Sure, the world seems crazy now. But wouldn't it seem just as crazy if you were alive when they sacrificed peasants, when people were born into slavery, when they killed first-born sons, crucified priests, fed people to lions, burned them on stakes, when they intentionally gave people smallpox or syphilis, when they gassed them, burned them, dropped atomic bombs on them, when entire races tried to wipe other races off the planet? Yes, we've ruined the planet and melted the ice caps and depleted the ozone, and we're always finding new ways to kill one another. Yeah, we're getting cancer at an alarming rate and suicides are at an all-time high, and, sure, we've got people so depressed they take a drug that could turn them into pasty-skinned animals who go around all night dancing and having sex and eating stray cats and small dogs and squirrels and mice and very, very rarely- the statistics say you're more likely to be killed by lightning- a person.But this is the Apocalypse? Fuck you! It's always the Apocalypse. The world hasn't gone to shit. The world is shit.All I'd asked was that it be better managed.
— Jess Walter, We Live in Water: Stories
I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying, but by your living.
— Daniel H. Wilson, Robopocalypse
Kittridge closed his eyes. So, the end. It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought. he felt the presence of his body one last time: the taste of air in his lungs, the blood surging in his veins, the drumlike beating of his heart. The bomb was dropping toward them."I've got you," he said, hugging Tim fiercely; and again, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words. "I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you.
— Justin Cronin, The Twelve
It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.
— Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky
He’s going to kill everyone on this planet, reduce the human race to dust. There will be no one to stop him. You are the only one who can. - Aiden Deverill
— Alexandra May, Elemental: The First
To stop. To cease, just for a moment. To turn your back on the world, to close your eyes - to see the nothing that is not rather than the nothing that is everywhere around you. To just be quiet in your mind for a little minute. There are paradises even yet on the abandoned plains of the earth -- and they are not filled with fecund flowering Edens but rather just with sweet unerring silences.
— Alden Bell, Exit Kingdom
During the persecutions under the Emperor Domitian, John was summoned to Rome, where he was tortured by immersion in a pot of boiling oil and subsequently banished to the island of Patmos in the Aegean sea. It was there he wrote his Apocalypse. It was only after the death of Domitian, in A.D. 96, that he returned to Ephesus, where he was still living during the reign of the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117). He became so old and frail that he could no longer walk and had to be carried to meetings and services. All he could manage to say was, "My little children, love one another." He repeated this over and over.
— Gilles Quispel, The Secret Book of Revelation: The Apocalypse of St John the Divine
Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the local megamall’s discount- appliance emporium.
— Colson Whitehead, Zone One
It's one of the happy things about a world gone so wrong: your personal freakishness don't stand out so much.
— Alden Bell, Exit Kingdom
You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. The Rising didn't manage to wipe out the human race, it just made us turn into even bigger assholes than we were before. Hear that, mad science? You failed. You were supposed to kill us all, and instead you turned us into monsters.
— Mira Grant, Deadline
There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route.
— Zadie Smith, NW
Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path. I shall be a litterateur, at least, all my life; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California.”EDGAR ALLAN POE TO FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMASFEBRUARY 14, 1849
— Andrew Barger, Coffee With Poe
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but I pretended I didn't. What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense.
— Roberto Bolaño
It is interesting to ponder the fact that there is no real difference between what the Western Fascists wanted of literature and what the Bolsheviks want. Let me quote: "The personality of the artist should develop freely and without restraint. One thing, however, we demand: acknowledgement of our creed.” Thus spoke one of the big Nazis, Dr. Rosenberg, Minister of Culture in Hitler's Germany. Another quote: “Every artist has the right to create freely; but we, Communists, must guide him according to plan.” Thus spoke Lenin. Both of these are textual quotations, and their similitude would have been highly diverting had not the whole thing been so very sad.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Here rests his head upon the lap of earthA youth to fortune and to fame unknown.Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,And Melancholy marked him for her own.
— Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard
Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room-the pool table, snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost's, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Great literary works are not measured by the number of words, but by the impact they create.
— Luffina Lourduraj
so heavy with sorrow , so full of pain
— AvaViolet, She's With Me
I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology.
— Italo Calvino, Six Memos For The Next Millennium
Time went on grey, uncloured, like a long journey where she sat unconscious as the landscape unrolled beside her.
— D.H. Lawrence
this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings....the merry dance of death and trade goes on
— Joseph Conrad
People recover differently. Some change cities, some fall in love and some begin writing.
— Kanza Javed, Ashes, Wine and Dust
Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
There it was, happiness in a backward glance: happiness and the certainty of hope.
— Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, The Westhampton Leisure Hour and Supper Club
Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.
— Mary Karr
Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself - poor me!
— Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Far from the Madding Crowd
Thoughts are meant to be words and words are meant to be written and what is written becomes a figment of the literature
— Shilpa Sandesh
Let the mind contemplate, let the pen scribble, the oeuvre would be eccentric, peculiar to a reader's eye.
— Shilpa Sandesh
it is not the first language that is all-important, but which language captures the adolescent's imagination when he or she first discovers literature.
— Ned Thomas
Language is no barrier for a lover of words.
— Steven Chopade
Only when the flower vase will be itself in bloom, only then we got the real wonder of poetry
— George G. Asztalos
Sneakiness was a form of privacy and privacy here was the first loss.
— Joan London
The world of literature is a sacred mirror that shows not the reality around us but the dreams and fears that reality stimulates: It’s not where we live, but life itself.
— Dennis Vickers, Only Breath
I love rain because tears can not be seen in rain.
— Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography
To be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a new whereby to catch something else.
— C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
Geography and mileage mean nothing. Separate is a single word that covers all distances that aren't together.
— Rivera Sun, Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -
Like Solzhenitsyn, I shall return, one bright dusk.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
The way contemporary literature is emerging, soon we can expect "Item poetry" in novels.
— Himmilicious
My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.-
— Fernando Pessoa Ferreira
Literature is what's left standing after the storm.
— Mark Rude
Literature is like a subtle concoction of laboriously collected peripherals called words, intellect,thoughts,imagination,creativity and aestheticism brewed together to form a resplendent work of art.
— Shilpa Sandesh
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
— George Elliot.
That was the Old Man’s favorite song. “Blow Ye Trumpet.” Them Negroes was far away from the doings on the plaza where the Old Man was to hang, way out from it. But they sang it loud and clear….Blow ye trumpet blowBlow ye trumpet blow….You could hear their voices for a long way, seemed like they lifted up and carried all the way into the sky, lingering in the air long afterward. And up above the church, high above it, a strange black-and-white bird circled ‘round, looking for a tree to roost on, a bad tree, I expect, so he could alight upon it and get busy, so that it would someday fall and feed the others.
— James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
The road to heaven isn’t much of a road,” he was saying. “It’s more like a dusty trail, roughly cut out through the underbrush. Most people don’t even notice it. It doesn’t look like a path at all, so they walk right by. Others see it, but don’t go down it because it’s ugly. Dirty. Difficult. Overgrown. If they took the road to heaven, their progress would be slow, maybe immeasurable. They’d have to give up a lot because the path is narrow.
— Bonnie Grove, Talking to the Dead
But you raised a ruckus about and threatened to perform a Julius Caesarian on anybody on anybody who calls April the cruelest month- I was Damn born out of the loins of my father in the spring of April, you claimed. Surgeon, you stood up for the month of buds and bitches like a true Kuon Kunos
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
Words have the power to make things true if they're said right.
— Alden Bell
A woman may develop wrinkles and cellulite, lose her waistline, her bustline, her ability to bear a child, even her sense of humor, but none of that implies a loss of her sexuality, her femininity
— Barbara Gordon
Most of life is routine-dull and grubby, but routine is the mountain that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
— Ben Nicholas
The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope.
— Louis L'Amour
Men trip not on mountains, they stumble on stones.
— Anon
Man's attitude toward great qualities in others is often the same as toward high mountains - he admires them but he prefers to walk around them.
— Moritz Saphir.
Courage is the lovely virtue-the rib of Himself that God sent down to His children.
— J.M. Barrie
Change is the watchword of progression. When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
— Ella Wheeler
Give us men to match our mountains, Give us men to match our plains: Men with empires in their purpose And new eras in their brains.
— Miller H.T.
Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
— Abigail Van Buren
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.
— Steve Jobs
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
— Peter Drucker
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
— Andy Warhol
A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
— Michael LeBoeuf
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
— Mark Twain
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
— Theodore Isaac Rubin
If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.
— Zig Ziglar
Before you can become a millionaire, you must learn to think like one. You must learn how to motivate yourself to counter fear with courage. Making critical decisions about your career, business, investments and other resources conjures up fear, fear that is part of the process of becoming a financial success.
— Thomas J. Stanley
An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
— Jack Welch
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
— Henry Ford
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
— Bill Gates
A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren't proud of what you're doing, why should anybody else be?
— Richard Branson
My philosophy is it's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.
— Anthony Hopkins
We're all working together that's the secret.
— Sam Walton
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
— Sam Walton
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
— Bill Gates
Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with.
— Paula Abdul
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
— Warren Buffett
The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.
— John Hancock
There is always space for improvement, no matter how long you've been in the business.
— Oscar De La Hoya
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
— Thomas A. Edison
America isn't Congress. America isn't Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.
— Barack Obama
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect.
— W. Clement Stone
If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
— Elon Musk
Details create the big picture.
— Sanford I. Weill
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Their needs and wants impact every aspect of your business, from product development to content marketing to sales to customer service.
— John Rampton
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
— Tom Peters
Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.
— Milan Kundera
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
— Thomas Paine
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
— Adam Smith
Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.
— Richard Branson
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
— Arnold H. Glasow
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
— Al Lopez
Personal relationships are always the key to good business. You can buy networking you can't buy friendships.
— Lindsay Fox
The superior man understands what is right the inferior man understands what will sell.
— Confucius
Don't ever let your business get ahead of the financial side of your business. Accounting, accounting, accounting. Know your numbers.
— Tilman J. Fertitta
We need business to understand its social responsibility, that the main task and objective for a business is not to generate extra income and to become rich and transfer the money abroad, but to look and evaluate what a businessman has done for the country, for the people, on whose account he or she has become so rich.
— Vladimir Putin
A man should never neglect his family for business.
— Walt Disney
Just really, really believe in what you're trying to do. Don't let people alter that. Let people advise you and lead you down paths to make smart business decisions. But trust your instinct and trust that overwhelming drive that made you put all your dreams and everything on the line.
— Luke Bryan
I want to put a ding in the universe.
— Steve Jobs
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
— Steve Jobs
Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.
— Herbert Hoover
Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.
— Grenville Kleiser
Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards.
— Kerry Stokes
Your mindset matters. It affects everything - from the business and investment decisions you make, to the way you raise your children, to your stress levels and overall well-being.
— Peter Diamandis
The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'
— Jeff Bezos
The golden rule for every business man is this: 'Put yourself in your customer's place.'
— Orison Swett Marden
A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy.
— Rod Blagojevich
From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better.
— Richard Branson
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
— Helen Keller
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In almost every profession - whether it's law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business - people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it.
— Hillary Clinton
Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
— Paul Tournier
All you have in business is your reputation - so it's very important that you keep your word.
— Richard Branson
A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business, live concerts.
— Elvis Presley
It doesn't matter whether you are pursuing success in business, sports, the arts, or life in general: The bridge between wishing and accomplishing is discipline.
— Harvey Mackay
When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.
— Elon Musk
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
— Max de Pree
Business is all about the customer: what the customer wants and what they get. Generally, every customer wants a product or service that solves their problem, worth their money, and is delivered with amazing customer service.
— Fabrizio Moreira
Great companies are built on great products.
— Elon Musk
If Satan wasn't around, churches would go out of business.
— Marilyn Manson
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
— Peter Drucker
There is no health without mental health; mental health is too important to be left to the professionals alone, and mental health is everyone's business.
— Vikram Patel
I try not to think about anyone's expectations but rather focus on always doing my personal best. Modeling was never a thought in my mind growing up, but my mom felt it was important for me to be open to business opportunities and expand my horizons.
— Anwar Hadid
Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.
— Jack Carroll
Information technology is at the core of how you do your business and how your business model itself evolves.
— Satya Nadella
Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
— Bill Gates
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
— Thomas A. Edison
Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.
— Gary Vaynerchuk
Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.
— Robert H. Schuller
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
— Henry Ford
There's nobody in the business strong enough to scare me.
— Tupac Shakur
Starting your own business isn't just a job - it's a way of life.
— Richard Branson
Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere.
— Paul Ryan
You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics.
— will.i.am
Small business is the backbone of our economy. I'm for big business, too. But small business is where the jobs are generated.
— Michele Bachmann
Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business.
— Kevin Mitnick
I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
— Jeff Bezos
Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.
— David Lynch
The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
— Henry Ford
It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.
— Elon Musk
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. Large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly. The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him.
— P. T. Barnum