Vesta Drilling > Vesta's Quotes

“TF-16 returned to Pearl Harbor on May 26 in good order, with one huge exception: Admiral Halsey, the sixty-year-old commander, arrived back completely exhausted and ill. After six months of intense underway operations, culminating in the fruitless 7000-mile mission across the Pacific to the Coral Sea and back, Halsey had lost twenty pounds and had contracted a serious case of dermatitis. Nimitz took one look at him and sent him straight to the Pearl Harbor hospital. The Navy’s most experienced and highly regarded carrier force commander would sit out the Battle of Midway. The ultimate sea warrior, Halsey would watch from his hospital window as the two task forces departed Pearl Harbor for Midway.”
― Dale A. Jenkins, Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway

“He was sure people detested accountants; they were boring. In fact, he had put down his profession as an airline pilot on the form he had filled in for a dating agency. As an airline pilot you could be away just the right amount of time, when you needed a break from your love life, without facing awkward questions from her when you got back.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“Had our concepts of sexuality been developed in a female-dominated society, our data shows it is not wild to think that sexuality would be viewed from the perspective of a preference for dominant versus submissive partners and not gender preference in partners (in such a world, there is a chance that gender preference would be as much of an afterthought as preferences for dominance or certain hair colors are today).”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality

“When the light reached its zenith, the group of 1,000 Travelers down below could no longer be seen. Suddenly, the intense light ceased to be, returning the lighting of the stadium to a normal level. Dani felt a moment of disorientation, but she soon recovered and looked down at an empty stadium.”
― Steven Decker, Time Chain

“Legends were mostly bullshit, even his own, but they sometimes could be useful.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“Judaea was not a forgotten backwater in the Roman world. Jews represented about ten percent of the population of the western empire and about twenty percent of the population of the eastern empire. By comparison, Jews represent only about two per cent of the population of the United States today. Never, since the fall of Judah to Babylon in the sixth century BC until the twentieth century had Jews comprised so large a part of any body politic.”
― James Allen Moseley, Biographies of Jesus' Apostles: Ambassadors in Chains

“- იქნებ სინამდვილეში ეს ყველაფერი წიგნებში წერია, - თქვა კალემ.
- შენ რა, შეიშალე? - გაიოცა ანდერსმა.
- იქნებ ჩვენ სულაც არ ვარსებობთ, - ოცნებით განაგრძო კალემ, - არამედ მხოლოდ და მხოლოდ ბავშვები ვართ წიგნიდან, რომელიც ვიღაცამ შექმნა.
- ჰო, შენ შეიძლება მართლაც წიგნიდან ხარ, - გაგულისდა ანდერსი, - და სულაც არ გამიკვირდება, თუ შეცდომითა ხარ დაბეჭდილი, მაგრამ მე კი - არა, დაიმახსოვრე.
- შენ არ გესმის... - თავისას არ იშლიდა კალე, - იქნებ შენ იმ წიგნის გმირი ხარ, მე რომ შევთხზე...
- მოუსვი აქედან, - გაბრაზდა ანდერსი, - თუ ასეა, შენ ხარ ჩემი შეთხზული წიგნის გმირი და უკვე ვნანობ, რომ ოდესღაც გამოგიგონე.
- საერთოდ კი, მომშივდა, - აღიარა კალემ.”
― Astrid Lindgren, Kalle Blomquist, Eva Lotte und Rasmus

“Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense. The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, the He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children. Such comparatively trivial matters as the remaining details of the credo, the techniques of worship, and devices of episcopal organization (which have so absorbed the interest of Occidental theologians that they are today seriously discussed as the principal questions of religion), are merely pedantic snares, unless kept ancillary to the major teaching. Indeed, where not so kept, they have the regressive effect: they reduce the father image back again to the dimensions of the totem. And this, of course, is what has happened throughout the Christian world. One would think that we had been called upon to decide or to know whom, of all of us, the Father prefers. Whereas, the teaching is much less flattering: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The World Savior's cross, in spite of the behavior of its professed priests, is a vastly more democratic symbol than the local flag.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“Dost thou love picking meat? Or wouldst thou see
A man in the clouds, and have him speak to thee?”
― John Bunyan

“The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books--great, big, fat ones--French and German as well as English--history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Deciding to wait, Scott sat down with a pint away from the bar at a corner table and lit a cigarette. The clientele in there on Sunday afternoon were the same as most other afternoons. From middle-aged to old men, drinking and cursing at the world like it was the last bus which had just left the stop without them.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“No one survives this journey intact. Parts of your character will be cut away forever, as the lessons you receive on your path, remould you.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Dumb Dumb's Handbook: To Twin Flame Relationships

“The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki

“Fiddling Tom stood up. He reached down his fiddle case and said solemnly: “There’s a time when a boy can lay his belly on the ground and feel the heartbeats of the earth coming up to him through the grass roots. That’s his time to prowl. That’s his time to smell the par-fume of the wild flowers, to hear the wind singing wild in his ears, to hurt with the want of knowing what’s on the yonder side of the next ridge. The Almighty, he never meant for a boy to miss them things when that time comes!”
― Fred Gipson, Hound Dog Man

“the way to heaven was the same from all places, and he that had no grave had the heavens still over him. ”
― Thomas More, Utopia

“Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.”
― Neil Gaiman

“the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. All”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath