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Quotes by English Authors
"You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers."
"The Homeland Security department doesn't have tasking authority in the intelligence community. They can ask for stuff, but they can't direct anything except inside their bureau."
"Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody's business to interfere when they see it."
"The weather was cheerful, the breath of spring animating. She watched the swelling of the buds-the peeping heads of the crocuses-the opening of the anemones and wild wind-flowers, and at last, the sweet odour of the new-born violets, with all the interest created by novelty; not that she had not observed and watched these things before, with transitory pleasure, but now the operations of nature filled all her world; the earth was no longer merely the dwelling place of her acquaintance, the stage on which the business of society was carried on, but the mother of life-the temple of God-the beautiful and varied store-house of bounteous nature."
"We never search for scandal, but we use it if it cries out to excess."
"Nature is powerless to put asunder."
"Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing One; Christianity seeks after God with the most elementary passion it can find-the craving for a father, the hunger that is as old as the hills. It turns the whole cry of a lost universe into the cry of a lost child."
"In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry."
"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings."
"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings."
"The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think."
"But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea, there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment."
"Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution."
"For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire."
"Time is the mercy of Eternity without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment."
"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"
"Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out."
"Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines."
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."
"In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis."
"I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine."
"After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?"
"On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space."
"Everybody gets to a stage when it's time to move on. I was bored, and the band wasn't going anywhere, so I left. I did a couple of shows on Broadway and some other things. I was busy. I just wasn't making records."
"Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions."
"I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to."
"The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote."
"The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine."
"Like all tools, modern technology has produced some wonderful moments in music and also some horrors."
"I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires."
"He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration."
"I want a chance to do it all again. To do it right."
"I would be very happy to see 3.5 billion humans wiped out from the face of the earth within the next 150 or 200 years and I am quite prepared to go myself with this majority... let us all look forward to the day when the catastrophe strikes us down!"
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