Jim > Jim's Quotes

“Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

“[Y]outh is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die...especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.”
― Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
― Barry Goldwater

“I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable....It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?”
― Peter Krämer, German multi-millionaire

“I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
Gene Roddenberry”
― Gene Roddenberry

“It only put me in Griffindor. said Harry in a defeated voice, because I asked not to go in Slytherin...

EXACTLY, said Dumbledore, beaming once more. Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“That brings her total of real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay rise…”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Like my grandmother always said, “Your opinions are valid and important. Unless it’s some stupid bullshit you’re being shitty about, in which case you can just go fuck yourself.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
― Jane Austen

“Out of the way! We are in the throes of an exceptional emergency! This is no occassion for sport- there is lace at stake!" (Ms. Pole)”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford