Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 17

In our human imagination, we so often perceive our Heroes to be something larger than life. We exalt them in ways that do them a disservice....we convince ourselves that they are or were something essentially different than the rest of us.
Ravi Zacharias
Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasn't a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and that's why he let me be taken away. I've thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.
Joseph Boyden
It was so much more comfortable to be able to divide people into heroes and villains and expect them to play their allotted part.
Mary Balogh
It is almost as if we are all playing a big game of hide-and-go-seek. We all hide expecting to be found, but no one has been labelled the seeker. We stand behind the wall, at first excited, then worried, then bored, then anxious, then angry. We hide and hide. After a while, the game is not fun anymore. Where is my seeker? Where is the person who is supposed to come find me here in my protected shell and cut me open? Where is that one who will make me trust him, make me comfortable, make me feel whole? Some people rot on the spot, waiting for the seeker that never comes. The most important truth that I can relate to you, if you are hiding and waiting, is that the seeker is you and the world, behind so many walls, awaits.
Vironika Tugaleva
Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.
Eckhart Tolle
Present injustices exist not so much because simple individuals are acting in bad faith or lacking in charity, but because huge, impersonal systems (that seem beyond the control of the individuals acting within them) disprivilege some even as they unduly privilege others.
Ronald Rolheiser
We always want to love the recipients of our charity," the doctor said, negotiating a sharp bend in the road with a surprising demonstration of steering skill, "but it is not necessary. Indeed, it is sometimes not possible.
Alan Bradley
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is not so simple as it sounds. What it means, in fact, is being charitable--which, as the vicar is fond of pointing out, is the most difficult of the graces to master. Faith and hope are a piece of cake but charity is a Pandora's box: the monster in the cistern which, when the lid is opened, comes swarming out to seize you by the throat.
Alan Bradley
True charity, I had had discovered, consists of swallowing an invisible flaming sword.
Alan Bradley
People will give away almost anything in charity, but their unadulterated attention must be earned
Faisal Khosa
He’s a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he’s fifty, and even then there’s still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say.
Margaret Atwood
We are terrible for each other, and, yes, we are a disaster. But tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever.
Joey Comeau
...the strands that connect us are frail, so don't hang great weights on slender wires...
John Geddes
Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother.
Richard Wagamese
To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.
Stefan Molyneux
In any case, the goal is the same: to connect.
Nicolas Billon
I do what I want, when I feel like it ; now I'm not the same...
Avril Lavigne
how cruel i was to myself. giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it. thinking it was you who gave me strength. wit. beauty. simply because you recognized it. as if i was already not those things before i met you. as if i did not remain all these once you left.
Rupi Kaur
What happened yesterday was obviously a mistake, and it will never be spoken of again. Goodbye forever.
Faith Erin Hicks
This lesser world is all about reproduction, as you might well know. Those who cease to duplicate simply die.
Rawi Hage
I'll never buy a cell phone, I'd rather die than have a cell phones. Cell phones are the 21st century's ball and chain.
Rebecca McNutt
If the results of the present study on the chemical nature of the transforming principle are confirmed, then nucleic acids must be regarded as possessing biological specificity the chemical basis of which is as yet undetermined.
Oswald Theodore Avery
Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.
Paul Watson
The stuff of life turned out to be not a quivering, glowing, wondrous gel but a contraption of tiny jigs, springs, hinges, rods, sheets, magnets, zippers, and trapdoors, assembled by a data tape whose information is copied, downloaded and scanned.
Steven Pinker
The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else.
Steven Pinker
Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too--a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey--a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing--streets and hot dogs and brusqueness--and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated.
Adam Gopnik
I remember looking out the window of the little maid's room where we had been installed, seeing the lights of the Palisades across the way, and thinking, There! There it is! There's New York, this wonderful city, I'll go live there someday. Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it--a distant constellation of lights I had not yet been allowed to visit. I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don't LIVE in Oz, do you?
Adam Gopnik
I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert.
Bruce Crown
New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.
Saul Bellow
Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
But in summer, welcoming summer, the rocks are soft-fledged with moss. The forest floor is bouncy with fresh shoots and enthusiastic blooms; the twisted angles of the branches are laced by bud and leaf.
Tara O'Brady
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
L.M. Montgomery
summer is in me—clouds and lakes of shadows, rippling under the trees
John J. Geddes
Today has been a day dropped out of June into April.
L.M. Montgomery
Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.
L.M. Montgomery
God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration.
W.P. Kinsella
All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.
L.M. Montgomery
Girl Without HandsWalking through the ruinson your way to workthat do not look like ruinswith the sunlight pouring overthe seen worldlike hail or meltedsilver, that brightand magnificent, each leafand stone quickened and specific in it,and you can't hold it,you can't hold any of it. Distance surrounds you,marked out by the ends of your armswhen they are stretched to their fullest.You can go no farther than this,you think, walking forward,pushing the distance in front of youlike a metal cart on wheelswith its barriers and horizontals.Appearance melts away from you,the offices and pyramidson the horizon shimmer and cease.No one can enter that circleyou have made, that clean circleof dead space you have madeand stay inside,mourning because it is clean.Then there's the girl, in the white dress,meaning purity, or the failureto be any colour. She has no hands, it's true.The scream that happened to the airwhen they were taken offsurrounds her now like an aureoleof hot sand, of no sound.Everything has bled out of her.Only a girl like thiscan know what's happened to you.If she were here she wouldreach out her arms towardsyou now, and touch youwith her absent handsand you would feel nothing, but you would betouched all the same.
Margaret Atwood
… MOM!” Martha finally screamed. “Mom, you’ve got to see these!”“Is it about Hermione?” She exclaimed, rushing into the middle of the room. Her mouth dropped open in horror when she noticed Hermione’s walls.“I can’t find any… polite… photos of her, mom.”“Why are there ones of her eating out of dumpsters and giving seniors the finger?”“No idea,” Martha replied.“Oh god… I’ll get one out of my wallet,” Her mom decided, hurrying out of the room frantically. ...It’s funny how when one thing happens, it can make you forget about something else.
Rebecca McNutt
Fucking Hallmark never wrote anything for how I felt then. When Metallica and the rest of the metal community pitched in to pay for Acrassicauda, the Iraqi heavy metal band, to move to the US is the only thing that comes close. And maybe the late-breaking success of Anvil. I had a toasty heart, especially after I got called back to pick up first prize for Miss Frizz. Ah, never mind. You know what I'm saying.
Susan Juby
Alecto… what do you think would happen if people found out about you? Your abilities, your life, Mearth’s super 8 films, those powers of yours… how would they react?”“I don’t know,” said Alecto, “but ordinary people like a show, especially when it’s a disturbing one. They enjoy seeing misery… probably because it allows them to pretend that they themselves are not so miserable, too. Also, they would probably find out about you, how you know about Personifications, how you saw the films… they would put us in cages and throw peanuts at us, I guess.”“All joking aside, Alecto.…”“Who is joking, Mandy Valems?
Rebecca McNutt
Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?
Mary Balogh
God can accomplish more through one message in the fulness of the Spirit than through hundreds given in the energy of the flesh.
Oswald J. Smith
The three representative men of the Bible, the natural, the carnal, and the spiritual - Which are you? Are you living in Egypt, the world and home of the natural man, or in the wilderness, the abode of the carnal? ... Are you already through the wilderness, and dwelling in Canaan, the land of the spiritual?
Oswald J. Smith
The fulness of the Spirit is not a question of our getting more of the Holy Spirit, but rather of the Holy Spirit getting more of us.
Oswald J. Smith
And they continued steadfastly (Acts 2:42) - That is to say, they did not backslide. The real reason there are so many backsliders is because there are so many who have never had a forward slide to Jesus Christ.
Oswald J. Smith
And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women (Acts 5:14)- So not only was there Holy Ghost boldness and Holy Ghost power and Holy Ghost conviction, but also Holy Ghost conversions.
Oswald J. Smith
Power in Service - The carnal man can never be used in spiritual service. There is so much of the self life about him that God cannot gain control. The Spirit-filled life is necessary for fruitful Christian service.
Oswald J. Smith
Flowing from this union, source of a plenitude of joy, the love of the couple reveals itself through the daily acceptance of the limits and faults of each other and in mutual openness. It is this acceptance in and through gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, confidence and the desire to see shining in the other the warm light of the Spirit of God that becomes the great sign of the merciful love of God for man and His incessant forgiveness.
Jean Vanier
I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him which can be awakened in order to enable him to discover and live this reality of love and fidelity. In order to really penetrate into this mystery of the union of the couple, it is essential that each one acquire an interior maturity, a maturity that is perhaps rare. I would add that in order to be truly united and to remain truly faithful to one another, the couple must listen and be open to the Spirit of God who has reserved for Himself the science of the heart. The heart of man is satisfied only by the Infinite and to discover this Infinite in union he must open himself to the Spirit of God, a spirit of giving, of receiving. The union between the two spouses can thus deepen to such an extent that they enter in a mystical manner into the very life of God Himself.
Jean Vanier
There was a feeling in him like waiting for a punishment.
Richard Wagamese
f you want something," Tomas had always said "you have to take it. Because nobody's ever going to give it to you. Remember that, little brother.
Morgan Rhodes
I listen to the sound of India's voices for the last time . Laughter ripples like water . A prayer is a single note held long . There is so much life here . And too much death.I feel a soft brezze caress my face and I look up. An orange ribbon is floating through the air . In India , it's easy to see the wind .
Cathy Ostlere
She leans over Roop the way Sardarji leaned over Satya the years she cried for children, brushing tears from Roop's heavy lashes with her lips. She strokes her head as a mother would, says. "Slpee little one, we are together now."And Roop sleeps, overcome by the afternoon heat.While Satya watches her.So trusting, so very stupid.
Shauna Singh Baldwin
That's the secret - to distract the senses. Have I told you my theory about them? I think that our sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing are all calibrated for the enjoyment of a perfect world. But since the world is imperfect, we must put blinders on the senses.
Rohinton Mistry
Was this how the characters in Harry Potter felt when the spoke the name of You-Know-Who?
Lisi Harrison
...it was not considered right for a man not to drink, although drink was a dangerous thing. On the contrary, not to drink would have been thought a mark of cowardice and of incapacity for self-control. A man was expected even to get drunk if necessary, and to keep his tongue and his temper no matter how much he drank. The strong character would only become more cautious and more silent under the influence of drink; the weak man would immediately show his weakness. I am told the curious fact that in the English army at the present day officers are expected to act very much after the teaching of the old Norse poet; a man is expected to be able on occasion to drink a considerable amount of wine or spirits without showing the effects of it, either in his conduct or in his speech. "Drink thy share of mead; speak fair or not at all" - that was the old text, and a very sensible one in its way.
Eoghan Odinsson
If now in some ways I drink too much, it’s not that I lack a reverence for the world.
Sheila Heti
Does drinking make you wittier? One might as well ask if witting makes you drinkier, which it may.
Benjamin Errett
Rick feels almost the way he used to halfway through his third drink, his favorite moment, the way he wishes all moments in life could feel: heightened with the sense that anything could happen at any moment--that being alive is important, because just when you least expect it, you might receive exactly what you least expect.
Douglas Coupland