Quotes by Authors - Page 496

It may be possible to forget our past but our past is not going to forget us.

The things that I regret in my life are not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex.""Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet.""We're not criticizing you for this," she says.Oshima tilts his head slightly."The problem, though, is that in all categories male authors are listed before female authors," she says. "To our way of thinking this violates the principle of sexual equality and is totally unfair."Oshima picks up her business card again, runs his eyes over it, then lays it back down on the counter. "Ms. Soga," he begins, "when they called the role in school your name would have come before Ms. Tanaka, and after Ms. Sekine. Did you file a complaint about that? Did you object, asking them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution just because it follows 67?""That's not the point," she says angrily. "You're intentionally trying to confuse the issue."Hearing this, the shorter woman, who'd been standing in front of a stack taking notes, races over."Intentionally trying to confuse the issue," Oshima repeats, like he's underlining the woman's words."Are you denying it?""That's a red herring," Oshima replies.The woman named Soga stands there, mouth slightly ajar, not saying a word."In English there's this expression red herring. Something that's very interesting but leads you astray from the main topic. I'm afraid I haven't looked into why they use that kind of expression, though.""Herrings or mackerel or whatever, you're dodging the issue.""Actually what I'm doing is shifting the analogy," Oshima says. "One of the most effective methods of argument, according to Aristotle. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed using this kind of intellectual trick very much. It's a shame, though, that at the time women weren't included in the definition of 'citizen.'""Are you making fun of us?"Oshima shakes his head. "Look, what I'm trying to get across is this: I'm sure there are many more effective ways of making sure that Japanese women's rights are guaranteed than sniffing around a small library in a little town and complaining about the restrooms and the card catalog. We're doing our level best to see that this modest library of ours helps the community. We've assembled an outstanding collection for people who love books. And we do our utmost to put a human face on all our dealings with the public. You might not be aware of it, but this library's collection of poetry-related material from the 1910s to the mid-Showa period is nationally recognized. Of course there are things we could do better, and limits to what we can accomplish. But rest assured we're doing our very best. I think it'd be a whole lot better if you focus on what we do well than what we're unable to do. Isn't that what you call fair?

Don’t waste your life on small dreams. Give yourself permission to dream big.

Expressing our feelings out loud, especially to someone else, can bring a sense of relief. There is power in proclamation.

Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.

It’s my opinion that only in times of utter depression or lofty peace is it appropriate to be creative.

The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.

I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relationship with their significant other, just because they do not want to go through the trouble of breaking up, because it's safe, because other people expect it of them, because there is a fear of being alone... and in the process of doing this, they miss out on the life that is meant for them. Our lives must not be lived to be safe, to be out of trouble, to meet the expectations of others, and to avoid fear. On the contrary, our lives must be lived with courage, which can only be present if there is fear; our lives must be lived for what we know in our hearts is for us, not for what other people believe is for us; our lives must be lived even when it is not safe and even when things are troublesome. To die in full knowledge that you have pleased everyone safely, or to die in full knowledge that you seized what you knew was meant for you -- which way do you choose to die? Because that is the way you must choose to live!

There's always a but. It's a magical word. You can say anything you want, go on for as long as you want, and then all you have to do is add the magic word and instantly everything you said is erased, turned meaningless, just like that.

Last century’s magic is this year’s science.

A jewelled garden the envy of Aladdin's cave spilled across the courtyard.

The best investments are in things you cannot buy.

Surely it is the one who fears he is wrong who avoids criticism. The one who is sure he is right invites it. It only illuminates the strength of beliefs and makes them more available to others.

If anything I urge you to live bravely and beyond your own comfort zone.

If someone says, "the Gnani Purush is happy in the 'Real' but happy or unhappy in the 'relative’", then I would say, "No, the Gnani Purush Knows the 'relative' as being the 'relative', and therefore He is happy in the relative as well.

When you conquer fear, you unleash a greater power from within you.

I'm dead, but I can't stop living.

I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far.

Egotorial: An editorial in broadcasting or print media where the subject matter is secondary to the superficial, pretentious, antagonistic, or materialistic ego of the author.

Woman with known intentintending to exploreWoman with her senses on the edgeedging for some more..."From my poem, "Known Intent" - The Poetic Art of Seduction - Volume 1©Clarissa O. Clemens

Fear leads to worry. Worry leads to depression. But faith overcomes fear and worry.

People say love is weak, but they're wrong: love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things - patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And every kind of love - the epic and the small, the noble and the base - the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. That was the lesson I learned that day, and I'll be forever grateful I did. Some years later, deep in the ruins called Theatre of Death, it salvaged everything.

The language of sword is less powerful than the language of word, but most ofthe people understand the language of sword with greater power than thelanguage of word.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.

The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third but the question Where shall we have lunch?

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining...

Those who mistrust their own abilities are being too wicked to themselves, discouraging themselves from doing what they should have been excelling in. If you are good at discouraging yourself, you can't be a good leader because leadership is built on inspiring others to face challenges.

Learn more. Love more. Laugh more. Live more.

Her spirit is all spit and fire

Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.

When you’re a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you’re left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you’re just the same as everybody else.

Officially, it is no more possible to be a little bit OCD than it is to be a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.

The argument could be made that the word hero is overused. I do not think, however, that this is the case when referring to teachers.

Just make as much money as you can, but try your best not to rob or get robbed, it will sweep all that you have and leave your hands empty.

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.

Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

Most of the truly kind people of this world show some measure of discomfort when offered kindness. Their gratitude stems not only from their understanding of the depth of the force of kindness, but also from their conviction that kindness should not be taken for granted.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are.

Simplicity is complex. It's never simple to keep things simple. Simple solutions require the most advanced thinking.

It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition

I have learned that I am a better everything because I wanted and loved those babies so much. I am also a better everything because I lost them. Sure, the losses left my heart and soul shattered at first, but now with daily work in recovery I have a scarred but healing heart and soul

Life is beautiful but it’s also brief. It doesn’t matter how long you live. What matters is how well you live.

The significance of [the fine-structure constant] goes far beyond atomic physics, however. It is the smallness of 1/137 compared to unity that enables us to treat the coupling between the electromagnetic field and a charged particle such as an electron as a small perturbation, a fact of great computational importance. [Forces of Nature]

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

... perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead...

The kind of legacy you leave will only reflect the kind of life you lived.

If God wanted us in the ocean, he wouldn’t have made the land.

Faith is active and action word.

Matthew shook his head. “Whoever said anything of women in the Victorian era being prim and proper apparently hadn’t met Maxine Fleming.”Tahatan chuckled. “I’m sure a publisher somewhere would make a nice fortune with putting this into print. The fact is, people tend to look back on bygone times through rose-colored glasses. All eras have encouraged values that are pushed on the surface, but in the end, people are still people.

Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

Love is that which gives of itself.

Daily walk in nature brings tranquility to one’s life.

Those who serve deserve.