Augustine Birden > Augustine's Quotes

“He switched off the car and spun.
The woman disappeared.
He flipped forward and saw the reflection. The woman stuck out her tongue.
“What the hell?” Cole said. “I want answers and I want them now.”
“Answers about what?”
“I’ve been watching you watching her, all day long,” he said. “Don’t deny it.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Karlee jerked her head forward, and her mouth fell open.
He felt like a crazy fool. “You know what I’m talking about. The... uh...thing that is sitting in the back seat of this car?”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Crossover

“God knows far more about living a life of joy and blessings than we do.”
― Randy Loubier, Slow Brewing Tea

“Phil, we're the laughing stock of the nation,"
    said Hobbs Creek mayor to police chief, "We
    have a cop who faints at the sight of blood!”
― Kyle Keyes, Under the Bus

“I hope these words will be of some help and comfort to those who read them.
Nobody knows when they will be tested and there are no right or wrong answers, we are all of us lost when tragedy comes to call. All we can ever do is to be there, give love and do the best we can, often that is all it needs.”
― Peter B. Forster, More Than Love, A Husband's Tale

“Your parents are just trying to do what's best for you," said Carla. "A lot of people think counselors don't belong in schools." She shrugged. "I guess they're afraid I might full your head with all kinds of crazy ideas.”
― Louis Sachar

“We Are brothers, tied by blood, in our veins, what we spill. But it is a deadly secret that will forever bind us.”
― Tina Traverse, Destiny of the Vampire

“... so many nominal Christians throughout history, took no notice whatsoever of the key parable of Jesus Christ himself, which taught that you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself, and even those that you have despised and hated are your neighbours. This never made any difference to Christians, since the primary epiphenomena of any religion’s foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion’s establishment are the intensions of its founders. One can imagine Jesus and Mohammed glumly comparing notes in paradise, scratching their heads and bemoaning their vain expense of effort and suffering, which resulted only in the construction of two monumental whited sepulchres. ...”
― Louis de Bernieres, Birds Without Wings

“I would rather clean than beg.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“Or maybe when they do the operation- when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everybody else- maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore. -Shay, Uglies”
― Scott Westerfeld, Uglies

“Like tired dogs they stand there,
because they use up all their strength
in remaining upright in one's memory.”
― Franz Kafka

“I'm sorry Finn. I'm a wooden-headed dummy.'
Don't be so hard on yourself,' said Finn. 'You're just a straw-brained scarecrow.”
― Shannon Hale, River Secrets

“The value of a sentence is the personality that utters't, for nothing new can be said by any man or woman.”
― Joseph Conrad

“The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius: from the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius

“I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isn’t the least understandable thing you can do.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“There are as many good things about civilization as bad. Perhaps more. And we would miss them. From toothbrushes to electric lights. From clean water to democracy. From bookstores to the kind of gentle, tolerant argumentation that never resorts to violence and allows for the slow changing of opinions,…and the gradual and diverse evolving of everybody’s minds. The core of what we now know that it means”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

“It wasn’t going to be hard…it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I'd done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.”
― Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book

“Around the opposite sex, especially back then, my tongue twisted into knots even a Boy Scout would walk away from”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Simple things are almost always the hardest to explain, Julie. Showing someone how to tie a shoelace is easy. Explaining it is almost impossible.”
― Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

“I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief”
― Euripides

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
― Mark Twain

“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
― Thomas Paine

“You ask, ‘Why am I really fighting this?’ If the answer is ‘Because I’m scared of what things will be like,’ then, most times, you’re fighting for the wrong reason...”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass: By Frederick Douglass & Illustrated

“Sure,” I said. “But some people would ask, ‘How can you expect others to replicate what you’re doing here?’ What would be your answer to that?” He turned back and, smiling sweetly, said, “Fuck you.” Then, in a stentorian voice, he corrected himself: “No. I would say, ‘The objective is to inculcate in the doctors and nurses the spirit to dedicate themselves to the patients, and especially to having an outcome-oriented view of TB.’ ” He was grinning, his face alight. He looked very young just then. “In other words, ‘Fuck you.”
― Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

“Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The point is to be compassionately, not cruelly, honest. Tell the person what you have heard that worries you. Allow him to respond. You may be surprised at how much sense his answers make.”
― Nancy O'Meara, The Cult around the Corner: A Handbook on Dealing with Other People's Religions

“Staring at the wraith’s left hand, Zam saw a stump where its index finger should have been and knew then that the severed finger moving around in his pocket belonged to the wraith.”
― Frank Lambert, Xyz