Favorite Quotations

Stuff on Paper: A to K

Stuff on Paper: L to Z

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good.

If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

"That little boys and girls should be tormented," said Henry, "is what no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilised state can deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must observe, that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim; and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature time of life."

A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.

It is the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.

In such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.

"Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my will."

I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.

Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself!

Moment upon moment, pattering down, like the millet grains of...
...that old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life.

From these Christians who came to [Avalon] to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of the Nazarene, the carpenter's son who had attained Godhead in his own life and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.

John Milton's publishers didn't sell Satan underwear as part of the book promotion.

Le vice, c'est le mal qu'on fait sans plaisir.
Vice is evil committed without pleasure.

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one's fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.

Der Nationalismus ist die Religion des modernen Staates.

Es rettet uns kein höheres Wesen, kein Gott, kein Kaiser, Kein Tribun, uns von den zu erlösen, können nur wir selber tun.

Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure.

Turning men into pigs is no particular feat. The real exercise is getting pigs to write checks.

What is difficult about learning - any kind of learning - is that you have to give up what you know already to make room for the new ideas. Children are much better at it than grownups.

"He died alone," said Pious Dundas, old as Methuselah, unblinking. "It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone."

What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept.

You must never imagine that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous.

"I may still be hung over," sighed Richard. "That almost made sense."

Not knowing everything is all that makes it okay, sometimes.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of sugggested options.

"What a wonderful place!"
"Yeah.  It was a friend of mine."

The price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted.

Entropy and optimism: the twin forces that make the world go around.

One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies -- but not before they have been hanged.

Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.

Girls do what their mothers tell them to do. Ladies do what society tells them to do. Women decide for themselves.

Stuff on Paper: L to Z

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