Ruthann Mcelmurry > Ruthann's Quotes

“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.”
― Newton Lee, Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness

“Quote of the day.
"The unthinkable is happening, Arthur has chosen to start the battle.

However, the unthinkable is only unthinkable to those that haven’t already thought about it, yet."

Le Morte D'Arthur, The Island of Serenity Book 7.”
― Gary Edward Gedall

“Faith is faith, no matter what form it takes.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“like Ned was killed. We made her go and we hired”
― Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

“Little Engine That Could - "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can.”
― Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could

“She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.”
― Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45

“A pesar de su incalculable riqueza y poder marchaba hacia la muerte con el convencimiento de que moriría sin ser amado ni respetado, y que nadie lloraría por él; que su muerte ya estaba siendo precedida por una reunión de buitres, que finalmente su vida había sido más absurda y menos satisfactoria que la de un retrasado mental congénito sin extremidades ni órganos de reproducción.”
― Louis de Bernières, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

“In the beginning we feared everything—animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky—everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. No-one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate. And now you have it.’ He”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“At times, he even admitted that he'd been more an observer of the world than a participant in it...”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“Everyone gathered around this drink in order to devote themselves to their favorite activity: discussion. This discussion had its own purpose: To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Embroideries

“Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. It was as if he had been born a second time; no, not a second time, the first time, for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. but after today, he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius... He had found the compass for his future life. And like all gifted abominations, for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls, Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him... He must become a creator of scents... the greatest perfumer of all time.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Every writer I know has trouble writing. ”
― Joseph Heller

“Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world - and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem erfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“A deep belief that your moment in time is the pinnacle, the only standard of judgment extending from the creation of light until the black apocalypse, that what you believe right now is eternal truth because you believe it so fervently—those deep beliefs so crucial at the moment but none of them more permanent than a puff of air across a palmful of dry talcum.”
― Charles Frazier, Varina

“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.”
― Founding Fathers, The United States Constitution

“Oh oh!” said the
mother bird. “My baby
will be here! He will
want to eat.”
― P.D. Eastman, Are You My Mother?

“And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.”
― Goethe/J.W.

“As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn't intend to keep.”
― Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys

“المحزن، أننا نتعود، ونحن نكبر على أشياء كثيرة غير جاذبية الأرض، ونخلص لأن نرى كل شيء طبيعياً”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

“You might as well tell God what you think. He already knows it anyway.”
― Todd Burpo, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

“It seemed to work well. The seal looked strong and the resin was rock-hard. I did, however, glue my hand to the helmet.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“We could watch the madmen, on clement days, sauntering and skipping among the trim gravel walks and pleasantly planted lawns; happy collaborationists who had given up the unequal struggle, all doubts resolved, all duty done, the undisputed heirs-at-law of a century of progress, enjoying the heritage at their ease.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“I did my best to fight and claw my way back to the life I once knew, but panic had taken over and colors were swirling and fading all around me. It was all turning into a great cloud of blackness, just like the one I had seen in my dream. The looming cloud of nothingness I had feared for so long was finally grabbing me, wiping my world dark and blank. The darkness was thick and intense, an inky void that stretched to eternity in every direction. Eventually my panic burnt itself out and I simply stayed there in the dark, feeling as if someone had drained my adrenal glands. I was no longer responding to the dark with fear, but acceptance. In fact, curiosity was beginning to take over.
The longer I let myself stare into it, the less dark it appeared. After some time, I realized that it was all different shades of murky black and foggy gray overlapping and undulating, just out of focus. I blinked mentally and suddenly she was there, standing above me with concern etched in sooty-colored lines on her monochromatic face.”
― Misty Mount, The Shadow Girl

“We will preserve the capacity for independent thought through a society so heterogeneous that it will make our own look trite. We will intentionally craft new ethnicities, religions, and ways of existing. The genome will be our canvas and flesh our clay. Man is a young species. We still occupy the same bodies with which our ancestors hunted and picked berries. We are so trapped by the limitations of our biology that we lack the capacity to conceive our ultimate potential. ”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion: A playbook for sculpting cultures that overcome demographic collapse & facilitate long-term human flourishing

“There are four steps to gaining ownership and intentionality over your personal identity and beliefs: Determining your objective function What is the purpose of my life? Determining your ideological tree How do I best fulfill that purpose? Determining your personal identity Who do I want to be? Determining your public identity How do I want others to think of me?”
― Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life: A Guide to Creating Your Own Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions

“Falconers,” she continued, sternly. “Pull yourselves together. People are dying. The police don’t have the family history to solve murders forty years apart.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“crying, and go in the toilet bowl”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help