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Quotes by Canadian Authors
"The avoidance of pain is the avoidance of life."
"It is a fact that all women contribute more to marriage than men; for the most part they have to change their place of living, their method of work, a great many women today changing their occupation entirely on marriage; and they must even change their name."
"Most of the most important experiences that truly educate cannot be arranged ahead of time with any precision."
"Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts."
"Take your beliefs into your everyday life. Practice what you preach. Self-observe. Correct. Try. Keep trying. Never give up."
"To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only."
"It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible."
"A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus."
"There are those who are legitimately corrupt, who cannot admit that legitimacy allows them to corrupt legitimacy, and to legitimately corrupt others."
"I only care about the helped less, and the helpless, not the helpfest or the hellfest."
"If a person cannot protect you, it is because you were meant to perfect them.If they cannot perfect you, you are meant to protect them."
"In many Asian households, to not go on to higher education, that's like a big no-no. I know my parents' discouragement was for my own protection, and I'm really close to them now, but they didn't understand that there is value in this. That's because they didn't know."
"There are feet that are swift to mete out defeat to anything different, but in doing so the assailant is already defeated. I say to them that the lack of awareness concerning their premature end is due to their immaturity and ignorance. The awareness defeatists lack, is found in those they hunger to defeat. To them, difference is hostility."
"The most important thing about skating is that it teaches you to do the things you should do before you do the things you want to do."
"An odd thing souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now."
"To want is to have a weakness."
"People strive hardest to save face, when the beauty they value is solely extrinsic."
"Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets."
"But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge."
"Actually, after the release of the Bond film, the producers came back to me to offer me another one, but I didn't have any juice left for an immediate encore."
"If people ever question your loyalty, you never had theirs."
"I have three degrees in history and only one in law, but since I came back to specialize in constitutional law where history is so essentially a part and an explanation of much that exists, the two disciplines blended very well."
"For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death."
"Life is choice. All day, every day. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. So when I'm observing, that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make."
"When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here."
"No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems."
"Don't settle for pap - our thoughts wander through eternity - experience the wonder of being alive..."
"Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn't even know themselves."
"Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building."
"He was a nice guy, middle-aged, a little tired, like most doctors usually seemed to be, but he just nodded and said, "Let me take a look at him. Shane?""I'm not dropping my pants," Shane said. "I just thought I'd say that up front."
"The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally."
"Ithink we all experience the same thing. We resent thethought that anything can please us when someone we loveis no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almostfeel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when wefind our interest in life returning to us."
"What we do not confront, we inhabit.What we do not reject, we accept.What we do not fight, we become."
"Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily improbable arrangements of matter, with many ways for things to go wrong and only a few ways for things to go right. We are certain to die, and smart enough to know it. Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can ascertain."
"I'm a great admirer of cartoons, because I can't do cartoons."
"What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started."
"Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive."
"He's not doing anything he shouldn't be doing, right?" "Like what?""Like hitting on you.""Ew. No, of course not. He doesn't see me that way." Michael shook his head and went back to his coffee."What? You think he does?""Sometimes he looks at you a little... oddly, that's all. Maybe you're right. Maybe he just wants you for your blood.""Again, Ew! What's with you this morning?""Not enough coffee."
"A dream isn't a wish - it's an altered state of consciousness ..."
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