Bertram Leonti > Bertram's Quotes

“…. ‘George said he needed a break. And there was something about Jonathan taking over …’   ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Maxwell, ‘It seems like there’s all kinds of goings on there now.’ ‘What did the agents say then?’ ‘Your brother … he must still have a key. I told them to check, I told them. I expect they overlooked it. Hugo’s been going in and there are some women there apparently, I mean at the Manor House, Jonathan’s up to his usual tricks taking in every Tom, Dick and Harry and giving all kinds of undesirables a home, and there’s something about them chasing Hugo and taunting him, yesterday the buyers were viewing again and measuring up for curtains and things, I said they could, and they saw something going on outside, some shouting and laughing …’   ‘Women! What women? Jonathan’s not like that …’   ‘Not like that huh! He’s flesh and blood like the rest of us.’  ‘That’s not what I meant. Please don’t be angry Max, it’s not my fault.’ ‘Jonathan this and Jonathan that. Why do people think he’s so bloody marvellous eh! What the hell does he think he’s doing. People spilling over into my garden and wrecking the peace and quiet. George was completely mad to do this …”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness

“Every night I dream a lot. Every day I live a little.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“So how did he imagine we would have known anything about them?’ Her husband asked.
Gloria smiled awkwardly. ‘They woke up this morning and have been chanting you name ever since.”
― A.R. Merrydew, The Girl with the Porcelain Lips

“The fire on the mountain.” That was Anna. “Alchemy,” she said. “I feel it singing in my bones.”
“Singing?” Mary would never understand Anna. The young woman turned away.
Wiseman’s reply was tinged with respect.
“That great pair of alchemists, Francis Ransome and Roberta Le More, believed the work they did affected the world’s spirit, the anima mundi. The Native Americans they met believed they too could and should interact with the Great Spirit. They lived with reverence for the land and all its peoples, the ancestors, the animals, the rocks, the trees, mountains.” 
Mary’s jaw dropped; Caroline glowed; Anna pretended not to listen. Wiseman nodded, then continued.
“You mean…?” began Mary.
“Yes, it could have been so different, a meeting of like-minded earth-based spiritualities. Just imagine, what could have been?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“A lie is still a lie
even if it’s disguised
as the truth.”
― Sherman Kennon, Chase The Wind: A Book Of Poetry

“Visitors are not permitted to see me twice. You will have to join the cult in order to do so. If the visitor sees me for the second time, he does not recognize me.”
― Rebecca Harlem, The Pink Cadillac

“When love is burning in our hearts like a fire within, the only option that helps your soul handle happy sorrow is to spread the love around our existence.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“This world would be a pleasant place if people didn’t inhabit it.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost. We kill to eat, we cut down trees to build our homes, we exploit other people and the earth. Sacrifice - of nature, of the interests of others, even of our earlier selves - appears to be an inescapable part of our condition, the unavoidable price of all our achievements. A successful ritual is one that addresses both aspects of our predicament, recalling us to the shamefulness of our deeds at the same time it celebrates what the poet Frederick Turner calls "the beauty we have paid for with our shame." Without the double awareness pricked by such rituals, people are liable to find themselves either plundering the earth without restraint or descending into self-loathing and misanthropy. Perhaps it's not surprising that most of us today bring one of those attitudes or the other to our conduct in nature.”
― Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

“The Kwajalein invasion, the first of these,”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Yes! It must be done by showing contrasts: one word for misery, ten for egotism, cowardice, closing ranks, crime. Won’t it be wonderful! But it’s true that it’s this very atmosphere I’m breathing. It is easy to imagine it: the obsession with food.”
― Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française

“There is a reason God limits our days.'
'Why?'
'To make each one precious.”
― Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

“(1998)”
― Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons

“For Cixi, what the Viceroy as done was best left unsaid.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China