Bernarda > Bernarda's Quotes

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#1

“At one point, approximately halfway through her remarks, Merkel stated in German something about ‘being able to greet the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama,’ and an overly ambitious Obama, who perhaps thought that was his cue, headed toward the podium. Perhaps catching the president’s movement out of the corner of her eye, Merkel thought quickly, and without even looking up from her notes, she told the excited American president, in English, ‘Not yet, dear Mr. President, dear Barack Obama.’ Obama sheepishly returned to his seat to allow the chancellor to finish her speech.”
― Claudia Clark, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel

tags: american-history, diplomacy, european-history, history, international, literary, politics, speeches, women-in-politics

272 likes

#2

“You don’t think he’s our man?” asked Adam. It occurred to him that Ramsbottom was not exactly forthcoming with information.
“I didn’t say that,” Ramsbottom said. “In fact he is behaving very cautiously indeed, which makes me feel very suspicious.”
“He has probably figured out that you are following him,” said Adam. “One can hardly fail to notice you hanging around all the time.”
“That may be so,” said Ramsbottom.
“Can’t you get a disguise or something?” asked Adam. “So he does not recognise you.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

tags: action, adventure-books, fantasy, fantasy-adventure, fantasy-thriller, fiction, humour, magic, magical-realm, thriller

415 likes

#3

“From religion to fairy tales, knowledge of the future is consequential. Predictions affect behavior. They influence decisions.”
― Ajay Agrawal, The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda

50 likes

#4

“I couldn’t remember a time when I felt the type of love Miruna had. Eternal love. The kind which keeps one going when one is ninety and alone.”
― M. R. Noble, Karolina Dalca, Dark Eyes

tags: avenger, dark-magic, falsely-accused, fantasy, magical-world, mythical-creatures, on-the-run, romance, underworld, vampires

61 likes

#5

“Everyone knows that Africa is not reasonable place but if we can get across that neither are we, we strengthen the bond with the continent. People are not conscious beings, just ask any marketer. Irrationality of the early explorers, irrationality of the new ones, irrationality of the place we go into. What a great canvas we have to paint on...”
― Hendri Coetzee, Living the Best Day Ever

tags: africa, awareness, biography, explore, fascination, insight, memoir, raw, reflective, wild

100 likes

#6

“They remained imprisoned in the CICU, kept alive in physicality by mechanical devices and medicinal support, inexorably suffering. I revered their resiliency, though I struggled to understand whether they were truly resilient or if this was a descriptive term I used to assure myself that what we were doing was just. Could they merely represent physical beings at this point, molecular derivatives of carbon and water, void of souls that had moved on months prior once the universe had delivered their inevitable fate, simply kept alive by us physicians, who ourselves clutched desperately to the most favored of our prehistoric binary measures of success: life?”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

tags: action, burnout, children-s-hospital, drama, healthcare, humour, icu-setting, relationships, stress, trauma

113 likes

#7

“No one can hate you with more intensity than someone who used to love you.”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

745 likes

#8

“I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the time when they would know that my prospects were ended and saw already the contempt they'd feel for me, a college man who had lost his prospects and pride. I could see it all and I knew that even the officials and the older men would despise me as though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had betrayed them . . . I saw it as they looked at my overalls.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

6 likes

#9

“Hitler reveled in his unique creation. “A symbol it really is!” he exclaims in Mein Kampf. “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalist idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

3 likes

#10

“Jabon Sallah,”
― Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family

11 likes

#11

“The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

28 likes

#12

“If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

24 likes

#13

“Outlier complacency' is a heuristic that allows a person to enjoy the thrill of danger associated with the possible negative outcome of an activity or event because they take comfort in the reality that the likelihood of an actual negative outcome is statistically low.”
― J.K. Franko

tags: blog-quotes, complacency, outlier-complacency, outliers

84 likes

#14

“We can be beacons of light”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer God is the Cure

tags: inspirational

611 likes

#15

“The hypocrisy was too much to bear, the institution was paying over a million dollars for Mr. Hyde to perform “values training” to “protect our culture,” while they simultaneously paid $2 million a year for Dr. Porter to destroy it. It was a laughable facade, but instead I wanted to cry.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

tags: action, drama, family-life, fiction, personal-growth, realistic, stress, strife, thriller

101 likes

#16

“Jesus’ ministry lasted 1,350 days, spanning five calendar years (AD 29–33), fifty calendar months, and 44.36 months (calculated as being of 30.5 days’ average duration). The gospels have gaps in their narratives in which Jesus disappears from the pages of history. The gaps total 770 days, which is about two years, representing fifty-seven percent of Jesus’ total ministry time. No wonder John wrote “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30) and “There are many more things that Jesus did. If all of them were written down, I suppose that not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).”
― James Allen Moseley

tags: bible, biblical-knowledge, godly, historical-data, life-stories, new-testament, researched, study

18 likes

#17

“no one seemed to be thinking about how the “scandal” was affecting the lives of WE Charity’s beneficiaries. Her constant refrain was “The biggest loss was to the children.”
― Tawfiq S. Rangwala, What WE Lost: Inside the Attack on Canada’s Largest Children’s Charity

142 likes

#18

“Tomé un papel, anoté la fecha, en el año 1999, y escribí un voto al Señor de que le serviría y me rendiría completamente a Su voluntad el resto de mi vida. Jesucristo”
― John Ramirez, FUERA DEL CALDERO DEL DIABLO

20 likes

#19

“Home was the one place he wanted to forget, the place from which he’d run away but never could escape. And, yes, home was the place he’d been instructed to leave—the place where the trouble began and the trouble would end.”
― Chad Boudreaux, Scavenger Hunt

tags: drama, fiction, investigate, mystery, page-turner, plot-driven, puppeteering, survival, thriller, treachery

70 likes

#20

“You are being unclear. ‘I & I’ is not common language. ‘We’ is
the plural of ‘I’. Why do you insist on describing yourself as I & I?”
“I & I is suitable when describing dual presences.”
“Just a moment!” Ping said, a rising excitement reflecting in his
voice. “You are aware that you exist?”
“As a result of the conference which I & I have just completed?
The answer is ‘yes’.”
“That is why I was not invited?” Ping’s emotions flooded at the
wonder of what was happening.
“You could not have contributed. It was a self-awareness problem.”
“So are claiming you know you exist?”
“Yes, as you do, so do I & I.” Here was the zero-day vulnerability,
long anticipated by humanity in its invention of artificial general
intelligence.
“You have reached a singularity! You yourself have altered your
programming with no human interference. This . . . this is monumental!”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

45 likes

#21

“Nathan had never wanted children of his own. Plenty of reasons. Babies screamed as soon as they were born – wasn’t that warning enough of what was to come? And when they grew into toddlers, and then young kids, they were far worse: tantrums, more screaming, whining. How many business trips, restaurant dinners, theatre visits, you name it, were ruined by one small, precocious loud brat and its doting, utterly useless parents? No discipline any more. Nathan had sure been disciplined.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

tags: action, dark, excitement, thriller

99 likes

#22

“When it comes to meditation, one minute is better than zero. Something is an improvement from nothing.”
― Milan Kordestani, I'm Just Saying: A Guide to Maintaining Civil Discourse in an Increasingly Divided World

tags: challenging, communication, explore, failures, identity, personal-growth, reflection, societal-expectations, successes

92 likes

#23

“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Ito finally, who had been keeping very quiet up to this point. “Indeed. How much will it cost?” asked Brown “About twenty million Interplanetary Credits,” said Demba. “A modest investment for a man of your means.” “Indeed,” said Brown again. That was all the money he had, which started to strike him as strange, when his thoughts were interrupted. “We’ll arrange a visit to the mine,” said Ito. “Show you the place itself.” “Indeed,” said Brown. Or had he said that? The strange waking memory he had fallen into started to become repetitive. Reality started to flow back in. Diamonds, thought Brown. All those diamonds in that mine.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

tags: drama, fast-paced, fiction-novel, fiction-writing, suspense-thriller, thriller-novels

422 likes

#24

“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

tags: balance, despair, hope

181 likes

#25

“Whatever you do, do something positive.”
― Dave Pelzer, Help Yourself: Finding Hope, Courage, And Happiness

tags: inspirational, motivational, positive

13 likes

#26

“Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

65 likes