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Quotes by Writer
"We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."
23
"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."
23
"Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it."
23
"The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow."
23
"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains."
23
"Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But the trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all."
23
"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
23
"We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."
23
"No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple ... all I want ... is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen." And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company."So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished. "Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want.""You want the taste of dried leaves in boiled water?""Er, yes. With milk.""Squirted out of a cow?""Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose ..."
23
"If you hold a candle close to you, its flame rises. And if you hold it away from you, its flame shrinks. The same way you hold a candle close to you, keep all your plans, aspirations, projects, and dreams close to you too. Do not share your plans or goals until you complete them, because as you hold your candle away from you, your goals will shrink in the eyes of others. Envy, jealousy, and resentment will put out your flame before it grows."
23
"Christianity is in its nature revolutionary."
23
"Every person just has a unique combination of common problems. If we accept this, we can work together to fix ourselves."
23
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?"
23
"He said that knowledge was of little use without wisdom, and that there was no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always included service to others. As he explained many times, the essence of a good physician consisted of a capacity for compassion and a sense of the ethical, without which qualities the sacred art of healing degenerated into simple charlatanism."
23
"There is nothing lacking in you. You came into this life as an abundant being. You remain as such. Free your heart and mind from anything but this truth."
23
"Write with honesty and don't worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they'll hate you anyway."
23
"Real leaders are people who "help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own."
23
"To say 'I love you' one must first know how to say the 'I.' The meaning of the 'I' is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing."
23
"We have a saying up here. 'Life is wasted on the living."
23
"Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient."
23
"You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself."
23
"Jealousy is like a raging toothache. One cannot do anything when one is jealous, not even sit down. Once can only come and go. Back and forth."
23
"Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two."
Life,
23
"A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind."
23
"He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal."
23
"When people call it that I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state."
23
"I am not good at deception,' said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.Right, my boy, right,' said the President with a ponderous heartiness, 'You aren't good at anything."
23
"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."
23
"I never drew a picture of anything that was before me but always from fancy, a sure sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I illustrated my lack of real feeling for art by a very early speech: 'Mama,' said I, 'I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?"
23
"For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue,' a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar, 'acquiring a reputation as a slick and dangerous man, who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful.''Useful! Have you found the name of the Butcher of Komarr a handy prop, then, sir?' Miles said indignantly.His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. 'I've found it a mixed . . . damnation."
23
"What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not."
23
"Y'know, there's a very interesting state of Anarchy up there. Everything's cracking up. That lot of tycoons; they don't believe in anything. They remind me of the white people in Central Africa. They used to say, 'Well, of course the blacks will drive us into the sea in fifty years time'. They used to say it cheerfully. In other words, 'We know that what we're doing is wrong."
23
"The physical contact with people who struck and trampled and killed one another seemed far worse to him than a solitary death in the purity of the waters."
23
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