Quotes by Writers - Page 55

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Cyril Connolly
From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew amount them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would.
George Saunders
One day, while life is being incredible and interesting, I’m going to die.
Agnostic Zetetic
All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
Herman Melville
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then, cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watchers. On the red stream of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came handy to their relief, pistols, gas or the beneficent muriate. - A Fog in Santone (1898-1901)
o.henry
What’s it gonna be like, dying? To go to sleep and never, never, never wake up.Well, a lot of things it’s not gonna be like. It’s not going to be like being buried alive. It’s not going to be like being in the darkness forever.I tell you what — it’s going to be as if you never had existed at all. Not only you, but everything else as well. That just there was never anything, there’s no one to regret it — and there’s no problem. Well, think about that for a while — it’s kind of a weird feeling when you really think about it, when you really imagine.[The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are ]
Alan W. Watts
Naruto: I bet you're dying to know my name!Gaara: I couldn't care less.
Masashi Kishimoto
If you don’t have a goal and don’t know where you want to be and when you want be there. You are just drifting around. (You’ll never get anywhere)
Ahmed Ali Anjum
Keep moving. Have a goal, One day you will arrive at a place that is better than the place where you were, even if it is only in your head.
Linda Bloodworth Thomason
He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector
Eva Ibbotson
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed
Frederick Buechner
If you can love cats, you can love human beings, because you have to be able to love them without getting them at all.
Chris Kelly
A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his master. Leave him alone and he does not know what to do except bark and howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep. A cat, however, is never without the potentialities of contentment. Like a superior man, he knows how to be alone and happy. Once he looks about and finds no one to amuse him, he settles down to the task of amusing himself; and no one really knows cats without having occasionally peeked stealthily at some lively and well-balanced kitten which believes itself to be alone.
H.P. Lovecraft
The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.
H.P. Lovecraft
The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe.
H.P. Lovecraft
The cool, lithe, cynical, and unconquered lord of the housetops.
H.P. Lovecraft
A fish tank is just interactive television for cats.
Oliver Gaspirtz
He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.
H.G.Wells
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with his elegant quickness...For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against adversary.For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin & glaring eyes.
Christopher Smart
I'd found my niche: cat-owning, stalker-y secretary. And I played the same part again and again and again.
Felicia Day
I wrote a book on cats. In retrospect, I should have used paper, cause chapter six got hit by a car.
Wynne McLaughlin
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
Christopher Smart
It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.
H.P. Lovecraft
At evening when the lamp is lit,The tired Human People sitAnd doze, or turn with solemn looksThe speckled pages of their books.Then I, the Dangerous Kitten, prowlAnd in the Shadows softly growl,And roam about the farthest floorWhere Kitten never trod before.And, crouching in the jungle damp,I watch the Human Hunter’s camp,Ready to spring with fearful roarAs soon as I shall hear them snore.And then with stealthy tread I crawlInto the dark and trackless hall,Where 'neath the Hat-tree's shadows deepUmbrellas fold their wings and sleep.A cuckoo calls — and to their densThe People climb like frightened hens,And I'm alone — and no one caresIn Darkest Africa — downstairs.
Oliver Herford
When I grow up I mean to beA Lion large and fierce to see.I'll mew so loud that Cook in fright Will give me all the cream in sight.And anyone who dares to say'Poor Puss' to me will rue the day.Then having swallowed him I'll creepInto the Guest Room Bed to sleep.
Oliver Herford
I sometimes think the Pussy-Willows greyAre Angel Kittens who have lost their way,And every Bulrush on the river bankA Cat-Tail from some lovely Cat astray.
Oliver Herford
The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin.
H.P. Lovecraft
Cats have gnosis to a degree that is granted to few bishops.
Carl Van Vechten
Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings.
Oliver Herford
Some of them stole off to those cryptical realms which are known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon's dark side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops; but one small black kitten crept upstairs and sprang in Carter's lap to purr and play, and curled up near his feet when he lay down at last on the little couch whose pillows were stuffed with fragrant drowsy herbs.
H.P. Lovecraft
Sakaki: "...Why can't we just talk it over...?"Tomo: "You can't talk to cats.
Kiyohiko Azuma
Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.
H.P. Lovecraft
Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant who relishes a stimulus to his self importance. The cat, on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours -- and the superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and aesthetic sense.
H.P. Lovecraft
The fertilising conflict of individualities is the ultimate meaning of the personal life.
H.G.Wells
Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.
Otto Weininger
When I was a girl . . . I imagined that life was individual, one's own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enough in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant. Now, like the rest of my generation, I have had to learn again and again the terrible truth . . . that no life is really private, or isolated, or self-sufficient. People's lives were entirely their own, perhaps--and more justifiably--when the world seemed enormous, and all its comings and goings were slow and deliberate. But this is so no longer, and never will be again, since man's inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; for better, for worse, we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else.
Vera Brittain
He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.
Aidan Chambers
Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.
Varg Vikernes
Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.
Janeane Garofalo
I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.
Libba Bray
We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
if a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too?a sheep eats whatever it findseven a flower with thorn?even a flower with thorns.then what's the good of thorns?
Antoine De Saint Exupery
We judge one another by our outward actions, but in the motive underlying those actions our judgment may be widely at fault. Preoccupied by our own private interpretation of the matter, we can see only the one possible motive behind the action, so that our solution may be quite plausible, quite coherent, and quite wrong. - Dorothy L. Sayers, Introduction, Pg. 4
The Detection Club
Raise the bar and set yourself some new challenges. You can accomplish more than you think.
Rebecca Gordon
First the mania for confession,then the mania for clarity,issued from you, dark, hypocriticalsentiment! Let them nowcondemn my every passion, let themdrag me through the mud, call me twisted,foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer;you keep me apart, give me life’s assurance:I burn at the stake, play the card of fireand win: I win this small,vast possession, my infinite,miserable pitywhich makes even righteous anger my friend.And I can do this because I’ve endured you too long!
Pier Paolo Pasolini
The very first thing I saw was his eyes, bluer and brighter than the sea itself. They gazed at me, so dazzling, and for an instant I couldn't even feel the pain. I was too overcome by the handsomeness of this sandy haired boy
Rebecah McManus
Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.
Mervyn Peake
Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.
Herta Müller
There was a shepherd the other day up at Findon Fair who had come from the east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different from the eyes of other men.
Hilaire Belloc
I hold my plush monkey over the bannister and let it drop. Its eyes light up when you squeeze its kidneys as whose eyes, I suppose, would not.
Frederick Buechner
The horse respects and obeys man because its large eyes magnify everything, so man appears much larger than the horse itself.
Stanisław Lem
Someday you'll find the placeIt's the place where love takes over hateThen you'll see all the things you doAffect everyone around youThen you'll see there's no fear at allYou held my hand, we took down that wallAs I looked at you with nothing to sayNow I understand why you pushed me awayI looked far and now I seeThat the only one I needed was me
Hilary Duff
Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad.
François de La Rochefoucauld
-the apartment had been directly in the sight line of a Serb sniper across the river. Teta-Jozefina was a devout Catholic, but she somehow managed to believe in essential human goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary surrounding her. She felt that the sniper was essentially a good man because during the siege, she said, he had often shot over her and her husband's heads to warn them that he was watching and that they shouldn't move so carelessly in their own apartment.
Aleksandar Hemon
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.
John Adams
Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power
François de La Rochefoucauld
Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That's a rather subversive idea, isn't it? "Do you think so? I don't. If it is subversive, then everything else is too, even breathing. I feel and think as naturally and necessarily as I breathe. If men hate each other, then there is not hope. We will all be the victims of that hate. We will slaughter each other in wars we don't want and for which we're not responsible. They'll put a flag in front of us and fill ours ears with words. And why? To plant the seeds for a new war, to create more hatred, to create new flags and new words. Is that why we're here? To have children and hurl them into the fiery furnace? To build cities and then raze them to the ground? To long for peace and have war instead? "And would love solve everything," asked Able with a sad, slightly ironic smile. "I don't know. It's the only thing we haven't tried so far..." "And will we be in time?" "Possibly. If those who suffer can be convinced that it's true, then yes, we might be in time..." He paused, as if assailed by a sudden thought, "But don't forget, Abel, you must love with a love that is lucid and active! And make sure that the active side never forgets abut the lucid side and that the active side never commits the same kind of villainous deeds as those who want men to hate each other. Active, but lucid. And above all, lucid!
José Saramago