Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 27

This belief, that science eradicates (the need for) God, is a myth many people believe today. The truth is that science, the study of the world and collection of our findings, has not and cannot disprove God. There is no scientific journal that has disproven God’s existence. This is because God cannot be put in a test tube and either verified or falsified. God is a spiritual being and is outside the reach of empirical scientific research. Christians cannot prove God the existence of God with absolute certainty, nor can atheists disprove his existence with any certainty. That does not mean that we cannot look at the evidence as to whether or not God exists.
Jon Morrison
It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth.
Jon Morrison
The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.
Yann Martel
They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
Margaret Atwood
Fate didn't stand in the way. Rather, they themselves were their own worst enemies.
Michael R. Fletcher
No," said Blackwell, "she won't, because that would be a violation of the very personal terms I will have established in our conversation. That's the key word here, Laney, 'personal.' 'Up close, and.' We will not meet, we will not carve out this deep and meaningful and bloody unforgettable episode of mutual face-time as representatives of our respective faceless corporations. Not at all. It's one-on-one time for your Kathy and I, and it may well prove to be as intimate, and I may hope enlightening, as any she ever had. Because I will bring a new certainty into her life, and we all need certainties. They help build character. And I will leave your Kathy with the deepest possible conviction that if she crosses me, she will die-but only after she's been made to desire that, absolutely." And Black-well's smile, then, giving Laney the full benefit of his dental prosthesis, was hideous. "Now how was it exactly you were supposed to contact her, to give her your decision?
William Gibson
The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960’s of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother’s hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father’s denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her.
Rebecca McNutt
I was told very sternly at the hospital to avoid boys at all costs. Mess up your levels.""Oh, they do that!" Amy laughs. "Probably best to leave them alone for a while. The secret, though, is to start with one you're not that bothered about."What is the point in that?
Teri Terry
Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost...The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love.
Gordon Neufeld
No matter whether you’re a gay or a mixed race couple; when you’re drawn together, ultimately it doesn’t matter what everybody thinks because it’s so honest, true, and sincere. How can that be wrong?
Tegan Quin
If you can't share what's important to you with the people around you, then you have no relationships. It's all just proximity, and turkey, and sports, and weather, and bullshit.
Stefan Molyneux
The claim that science can disprove God’s existence is an honest ambition but it is a statement that is actually impossible to back up. This is because the task of proving something like science is unprovable by scientific methods. How do you prove an idea like “science”? What container do you use to measure it? What laws of science do you use to prove science? That’s the first reason why the worldview of scientism, the belief that science proves everything, fails to work out in real life. Science cannot prove everything because it cannot even prove itself.
Jon Morrison
The HillI have come this far on my own legs,missing the bus, missing taxis,climbing always. One foot in front of the other,that is the way I do it.It does not bother me, the way the hill goes on.Grass beside the road, a tree rattlingits black leaves. So what?The longer I walk, the farther I am from everything.One foot in front of the other. The hours pass.One foot in front of the other. The years pass.The colors of arrival fade.That is the way I do it.
Mark Strand
Me being in love with a girl and wanting her to be with me, doing what I need to do to make her stay with me; it affects no one, yet it’s terrifying to people and they think you’re a monster.
Sara Quin
In all modern depressions recessions or growth-correction as variously they are called we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided.
J. K. Galbraith
She hates her heart, that misguided organ in her chest. Why didn't it warn her?
Courtney Summers
The person who has a highly evolved will they think, they build an image and they focus on that image.”― Bob Proctor
Bob Proctor
I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because ....fill in the blank with whatever/whoever helped you survive... had left me so unceremoniously.
Yann Martel
Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?
R. Scott Bakker
The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.
Malcolm Gladwell
Maybe she’d remember him as a pain in the ass. Or maybe, he hoped most of all, that she’d remember what she told him: “You can be a real jerk sometimes, but you’re decent.” As epitaphs went, it wasn’t bad.
Dani Harper
Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying "no" to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane.
Stefan Molyneux
...in January, everything seems desolate. The Moon ascends to cold heights - and I, a ragged sky filled with dark kisses...lie abandoned by you...
John Geddes
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
Saul Bellow
I peeled the shorts off my sweating skin and stepped into the skirt. It slid up my body, resting on my waist, and I pulled the zipper up towards the lord. It didn't just fit. No, it did more than that. It melded to my body, beautifully, as if it had been cut specifically for me, to mask and smooth and elevate. I would be better in this skirt. The dream was happening! I had the all-knowing smile, my hair was suddenly more luxurious, I felt thinner, more acceptable. Girls who had been mean to me in high school would see me in this skirt and think, "Is that Scaachi?" and I'd say, "YOU BET IT IS, YOU DUMB BITCH" and then punch all their boyfriends in the teeth. (I have not thought this fantasy through; just let me have this.)
Scaachi Koul
If you listen to the wind very carefully, you'll be able to hear me whisper my love for you.
Andrew Davidson
Some conversations are not about what they're about.
Anne Carson
I think most are too afraid to see the truth.
Morgan Rhodes
That economics has a considerable conceptual apparatus with an appropriate terminology can not be a serious ground for complaint. Economic phenomena, ideas, instruments of analysis exist. They require names. Education in economics is, in considerable measure, an introduction to this terminology and to the ideas that it denotes. Anyone who has difficulties with the ideas should complete his education or, following an exceedingly well-beaten path, leave the subject alone. It is sometimes said that the economist has a special obligation to make himself understood because his subject is of such great and popular importance. By this rule the nuclear physicist would have to speak in monosyllables.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I don't want you to think about anyone in your past. No now, not ever again. You deserved a hell of a lot more than any of those bastards gave you."t"If it helps," she said with a faint smile, "I killed most of them.
Elle Kennedy
Is it the smoke?' the boy said, shivering slightly. 'I've never touched the stuff, myself, but how it claws at one...like a thorn in every one of your fingers, and a string around your heart...and one fees it always. Nagging. Nagging.
Eleanor Catton
A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else. First it’s Jews, already abandoning France. Then it’s homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, ‘the most tolerant city in Europe’. Then it’s uncovered women, targetted for rape in Oslo. And if you don’t any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Nigeria to Egypt to Pakistan. More space for Islam means less space for everything else, and in the end for you.
Mark Steyn
Hope had finally learned to live in the present. Often, when she found herself in a space of tremendous comfort, usually out in nature, or when her children were safe all around her and on the verge of going to bed, she forced herself to take stock. Here you are, Hope, she told herself. What a beautiful moment. You may never again be here at this spot, enjoying the calm. This habit of hers, to acknowledge the immediate and elusive joy of the present, kept her sane.
David Bergen
In Jesus Christ, there is no distance or separation between the medium and the message: it is the one case where we can say that the medium and the message are fully one and the same.
Marshall McLuhan
As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today`s shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift.
Gabor Maté
He believed a man should never be sober but never be drunk. And he believed in watching out for family, even if you had to stay sober for a few hours; it was that important.
Allan Dare Pearce
Las Vegas, the most expensive toilet in the world that still can’t flush.
Brin-Jonathan Butler
No one is too poor to give a smile - a gift, often, of greater consequence than any sum of money.
Vironika Tugaleva
She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.
Michael Ondaatje
What I'm trying to do is make impressions. I think of myself as a colourist, adding different colours and shades by using different techniques and touching the guitar in different ways. I'd like to play sounds you can see if you've got your eyes closed.
Lenny Breau
He liked confidence in a woman. And intelligence. And apparently he liked sass, all wrapped up in a straight-laced, tight-lipped bodyguard.
J.K. Coi
Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days or years, but of moments. Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments.
Alex Haditaghi
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.
Eckhart Tolle
Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously. Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, "offended", or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements. When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered.
Stefan Molyneux
I can't believe he stabbed the guy. Eight years old. I'm the most irresponsible kidnapper ever.
Joey Comeau
What would your shoes say about the things you do everyday?
Sherley Mondesir-Prescott
Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.
J.I. Packer
And yet... you wouldn't want it to stop hurting... you wouldn't want to forget your little mother even if you could.
L.M. Montgomery
It [economics] facilitates our understanding of the well-being of societies and the challenges they face; it explains many of the daily interactions between individuals, companies and governments, and it offers a guide to understanding political and social trends that are shaping our world.
Greg Ip
Magic will find those with pure heats, even when all seems lost. And love is the greatest magic of all. I know this to be true.
Morgan Rhodes
Rather than being guided by images of how to be, people need to attend to how they actually are and to respect this.
Leslie S. Greenberg
The vicar's organized a snow-shoveling party.""But why?" I asked.It didn't make sense. If all the roads were closed, what use was it clearing a way to the front door?"Because," said Aunt Felicity's voice behind me, "it is a well-known fact that more than two men shut up together in an enclosed space for more than an hour constitute a hazard to society. If unpleasantness is to be avoided, they must be made to go outdoors and work off their animal spirits.
Alan Bradley
As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.
Charles de Lint
Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability.
Mary Balogh
God has written us a book, and now we have the opportunity to respond with our words and actions.
Jared Brock
be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and Good Government of Canada
The British North America Act
Families are wonderful institution," he said. "I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that.
Mary Balogh
Both porn and religion distort a person’s perspectives on women.
Jesse Dangerously
I’ve always felt sorry for Mike Collins, driving all the way to the moon but not allowed out of the car to look around.
Janet Turpin Myers
A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.
Northrop Frye