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#1

“We were all serious readers, sitting on wooden chairs at rows of lecterns, turning the pages, united in mutual love of isolation.”
― Michael Moorcock, The Whispering Swarm

tags: libraries, library, readers, reading

5 likes

#2

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”
― Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

48 likes

#3

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.”
― Philip Pullman

tags: books, inspirational

2483 likes

#4

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: attributed-no-source, books, simile, soul

135823 likes

#5

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire

tags: double-standards, ethics, governments, humor, irony, killing, law, mankind, morality, murder, nationalism, nations, war

4111 likes

#6

“The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
― G.K. Chesterton

tags: ethics, firearms

742 likes

#7

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

tags: alone, birth, death, growing-up, growth, life, lonely, love, self-respect

4427 likes

#8

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

tags: dance, heaven, hurt, inspirational, life, love, sing

129183 likes

#9

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

tags: attributed-no-source, best, life, love, misattributed-marilyn-monroe, mistakes, out-of-control, truth, worst

165510 likes

#10

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: attributed-no-source, human-nature, humor, infinity, philosophy, science, stupidity, universe

148731 likes

#11

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
― Howard Zinn

tags: autonomy, complacency, ethics, independence, politics, proactivity, self-determination, society

641 likes

#12

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
― Aristotle

tags: ethics, philosphy, self-discovery

1014 likes

#13

“It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.”
― Erich Fromm

248 likes

#14

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

tags: activism

8932 likes

#15

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

tags: heartache, loss, love

3088 likes

#16

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

tags: addiction, alchohol, drinking, drugs, loneliness, melancholy, pain

3761 likes

#17

“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

1602 likes

#18

“I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'

[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]”
― Philip Pullman

tags: atheism, atheist, difficulty, possibility, sarcasm, spiritual, spirituality, understanding, writing

451 likes

#19

“It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches — and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban. Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It’s still going on.”
― Philip Pullman

tags: catholics, heretics, history, inquisition, jews, monotheism, persecution, protestants, puritans, religious-persecution, taliban, torture, witches

286 likes

#20

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

tags: paraphrased, zombies

340 likes

#21

“Elizabeth sheathed her sword, knelt behind him, and strangled him to death with his own large bowel.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

28 likes

#22

“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

tags: sherlock-holmes, silence

1123 likes

#23

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

tags: baker-street, chains-of-events, commonplaces-of-existence, cross-purposes, fiction, on-fiction, outre-results, plannings, sherlock-holmes, stale, strange-coincidences, unprofitable

764 likes

#24

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'

'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'

'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'

'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze

tags: blaze, curious, dog, humor, incident, mystery, sherlock-holmes, silver

376 likes

#25

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
― Stephen Fry

tags: books, e-readers, kindle, reading

2709 likes

#26

“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”
― Stephen Fry

tags: a-bit-of-fry-and-laurie, humour, language, linguistics

522 likes

#27

“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

tags: foolish, foolish-people, ignorant, incuriosity, uninformed, uninformed-opinion

505 likes

#28

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

tags: english, french, humour, language, london, paris

349 likes

#29

“It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.”
― Stephen Fry

tags: cliches

160 likes

#30

“I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.
But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.”
― Stephen Fry

tags: goodness, humour, language, life, wodehouse, writing

184 likes

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