Chara Pryer > Chara's Quotes

“Your friends dress like your enemies, and your enemies dress like your friends.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“next”
― Barry Kirwan, Eden's Trial

“What the hell, if you are going to roll the dice with Lucifer, I say go the distance.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“People in Washington love to use the word ‘systemic.’ You know, ‘We’re going to attack the ‘systemic’ causes’ of this or that.’ That’s supposed to convince us they’re thinking many layers more deeply than us. But where it counts, they strike out.”
― John M. Vermillion, Awful Reckoning: A Cade Chase and Simon Pack Novel

“I think this is a good start.” Alpine started collecting his notes and placing them into his briefcase. “I’ll meet with you again tomorrow morning and we’ll start plotting strategy. This is out of your hands, so just try to relax and let me do my job.”
― Behcet Kaya, Murder on the Naval Base

“Satan to Jesus: Well, I see someone has a bad case of the hangries. You might want to consider using your godly powers to turn these desert rocks into loaves of bread. Maybe if you engage in some serious carb-loading, you’ll regain what little sense of humor you had before you started this ridiculous hunger strike.”
― Spencer C Demetros, The Bible: Enter Here: Bringing God's Word to Life for Today's Teens

“There’s two things in this world you can’t frighten. A hungry dog or an angry woman.”
― Chuck Dixon, Levon's Ride

“The smallest pleasure, like a mouthful of canned fruit or the chance to bathe in an ice-cold river, was a luxury, something to be savored.”
― Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Tortolita, let me tell you a story,” Estevan said. “This is a South American, wild Indian story about heaven and hell.” Mrs. Parsons made a prudish face, and Estevan went on. “If you go visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering,” he looked extra hard at Mrs. Parsons, “but they cannot get a bit of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that?”

“Because they’re choking? For all eternity?” Lou Ann asked. Hell, for Lou Ann, would naturally be a place filled with sharp objects and small round foods.

“No,” he said. “Good guess, but no. They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. As long as that.” He pointed to the mop, which I had forgotten to put away. “With these ridiculous, terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they cannot put the food in their mouths. Oh, how hungry they are! Oh, how they swear and curse each other!” he said, looking again at Virgie. He was enjoying this.

“Now,” he went on, “you can go and visit heaven. What? You see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as a sponge mop. But these people are all happy and fat.”

“Real fat, or do you mean just well-fed?” Lou Ann asked.

“Just well-fed,” he said. “Perfectly, magnificently well-fed, and very happy. Why do you think?”

He pinched up a chunk of pineapple in his chopsticks, neat as you please, and reached all the way across the table to offer it to Turtle. She took it like a newborn bird.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

“I cannot say, with truth, that the news of my old master's death softened my feelings towards him. There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury. The man was odious to me while he lived, and his memory is odious now.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Love and honor thy Mother, for she is the fruit that gives thou life.”
― Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"

“The Press and many members of Congress [in America] were sufficiently revolted by the administration's shameless evasions on Rwanda ... Meanwhile, the armored personnel carriers for an all-African intervention force sat on a runway in Germany”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“La mesa se interponía entre ellos. Tatiana pasó al otro lado.
—Shura —dijo en voz baja—, por favor, deja que te toque.
—No. —El capitán se apartó.
Naira volvió a asomar la cabeza.
—¿Está la cena preparada?
—Casi, Naira Mijailovna. —Miró a Alexandr—. Dijiste que no te marcharías hasta arreglarme —señaló—. Arréglame, Shura.
—Tú misma me dijiste que nada de lo que hiciera arreglaría lo que está mal dentro
de ti. Bueno, me has convencido. ¿Dónde están mis cosas?
—Shura...”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify. People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing – joy, anger, boredom, lust – but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been. The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Then he looked by him, and was ware of a damsel that came riding as fast as her horse might gallop upon a fair palfrey. And when she espied that Sir Lanceor was slain, then she made sorrow out of measure, and said, "O Balin ! two bodies hast thou slain and one heart, and two hearts in one body, and two souls thou hast lost.”
― Thomas Malory

“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.”
― Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate

“Realmente apena que tomen medidas de represión para las personas como estas. Dejando de lado el peligro que puede ser o no para la vida sana de una colectividad, "el gusano comunista", que había hecho eclosión en él, no era nada más que un natural anhelo de algo mejor, una protesta contra el hambre inveterada traducida en el amor a esa doctrina extraña cuya esencia no podría nunca comprender, pero cuya traducción: "pan para el pobre" eran palabras que estaba a su alcance, más aún, que llenaban su existencia.”
― Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Even bad books are books, and therefore holy.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“There are many different ways to revise a cookbook. Faced with the task of updating Joy in the mid-1990s, my father, Ethan,”
― Irma S. Rombauer, Joy of Cooking

“We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty. The”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“To merge on the road you are meant to travel, means making a choice and then taking action.”
― C. Toni Graham

“In its essence, language is not the utterance of an organism; nor is it the expression of a living thing. Nor can it ever be thought in an essentially correct way in terms of its symbolic character, perhaps not even in terms of the character of signification. Language is the clearing-concealing advent of Being itself.”
― Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings

“Bigwig, as he had predicted, was getting his head bitten off.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down