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"I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown."
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"You cannot sensibly expect a starving 'God-fearing' man to honor the 8th commandment."

"Roman Catholicism is a broken and utterly desperate thing, capable only of malignant mischief in our awakening world."

"Higher income either indicates higher intelligence or lesser morals!"

"The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling."

"Profanity is the name given to the defilement of the sanctity of human life."

"Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help."

"I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that."

"There are enough in the novelty business without us; and we have something better to do. We have to give an account unto our God of what we do and say, and if we have been murderers of souls, it will be no excuse that we flourished the dagger well, or that when we gave them poison we mixed the draught cleverly, and presented it with poetical phrases."

"But you can't just leave it at that!" said Anathema, pushing forward. "Think of all things you could do! Good things."Like what?" said Adam suspiciously."Well... you could bring all the whales back, to start with."He put his head on one side. "An' that'd stop people killing them?"She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes."An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you ask me to do about 'em?" said Adam. "No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale."
Explore more quotes by Alice Hoffman

"I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?"

"I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told."

"I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It's always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay."

"Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected."

"She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless."

"Never to rush something I was creating, but instead let it come into being as if it had a soul of it's own."

"And so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie."

"He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say."

"But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven."
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