Augustus Couto > Augustus's Quotes

“Now I’m not blaming anything on her—I take full responsibility for my own actions— but it was Annette’s betrayal that began my slow spin downward to insanity.  ”
― Steven Decker, Addicted to Time

“The hunters’ crossbow bolts are capable of bringing down most of the animals they hunt, but not the auroch. To kill an auroch the hunters would fire three bolts into the animal, each of them coated with what they call ‘the juice of the yew’.”
Robert Reid – The Son”
― Robert Reid, The Son

“Wallace travelled independently and was challenged every step. He had no government or military support system. He had little cash — he earned enough to survive by sending natural history specimens to his agent in London for sale to collectors and museums. He had visceral moments of excitement when he discovered a beautiful new butterfly or adopted a baby orangutan he had just orphaned by shooting its mother. He lived simply, often in the rainforest on isolated islands, in a manner completely different to the expected behavior of other Western explorers and colonials.”
― Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, "Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird": Searching for Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace's Faithful Companion

“When we came and rented the North Perth home, my father had a little ice chest, and on top of the ice chest was a radio. And we were sitting at our lunch time on Sunday eating dinner after church, and my Mum says, ‘Look where we’ve ended up. We’ve got a table cloth on our table, we’ve got food on our plate, and we’re listening to music.’ That was a big thing for my mother. - Mrs Helen Doropoulos, Greece”
― Peter Brune, Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

“People hate thinking systematically about how to optimize their relationships. It is normal to hear someone say: “I will just wait for something to happen naturally” when talking about one of the most important aspects of their life while genuinely believing that this approach has reasonable odds of success. Imagine if people said the same thing about their careers. It would sound truly bizarre for someone to expect a successful career to “just happen naturally” and yet it is entirely normalized to expect that good relationships will.

People pay tens of thousands of dollars to receive degrees in computer science, marketing, and neuroscience. They make tough sacrifices with the understanding that the skills and knowledge they build in these domains will dramatically affect their quality of life. Ironically, people spend very little time systematically examining mating strategies—despite the fact that a robust understanding of the subject can dramatically affect quality of life.

We will happily argue that your sexual and relationship skills matter more than your career skills. If you want to be wealthy, the fastest way to become so is to marry rich. Nothing makes happiness easier than a loving, supportive relationship, while one of the best ways to ensure you are never happy is to enter or fail to recognize and escape toxic relationships. If you want to change the world, a great partner can serve as a force multiplier. A draft horse can pull 8000 pounds, while two working together can pull 24,000 pounds. When you have a partner with whom you can synergize, you gain reach and speed that neither you nor your partner could muster individually.

Heck, even if you are the type of person to judge your self-worth by the number of people with whom you have slept, a solid grasp of mating strategies will help you more than a lifetime of hitting the gym (and we say this with full acknowledgment that hitting the gym absolutely helps). A great romantic relationship will even positively impact your health (a 2018 paper in Psychophysiology found that the presence of a partner in a room lowered participants’ blood pressure) and increase your lifespan (a 2019 paper in the journal Health Psychology showed individuals in happy marriages died young at a 20% lower rate). ”
― Malcolm Collins

“Before you pray these prayers, you must first be in right standing with Jesus Christ. In other words, you must truly be a born-again believer, sanctified and washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.”
― John Ramirez, Fire Prayers: Building Arsenals That Destroy Satanic Kingdoms

“Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“It was the shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame that the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defense.”
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man • The Truce

“Vicky became more serious and her tone more reflective as she remarked, "Life has so much pain that one needs a catharsis. I don't mean escape. You don't escape in books. On the contrary, they help you to realize yourself more fully. Mon Dieu, I'm glad I have them. When I find myself in a situation in which I'd rather not be - because of the perculiar circumstances of my life - I have this outlet. You may think me tres superieure but I'm not really, I am just what I am and live the way I like.”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“I feel like a pink worm in the core of this green room, as though I have eaten my way in and should be working on becoming a butterfly, or something. I’m not real awake, here, at the moment. I hear somebody coughing. I hear my heart beating and the high-pitched sound which is my nervous system doing its thing. Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let me be normally befuddled, normally nervous; get me to the church on time, in time. Let me not startle anyone, especially myself. Let me get through our wedding day as best I can, with no special effects. Deliver Clare from unpleasant scenes. Amen.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“It was then, that the most ridiculous idea in the entire history of the universe entered his cranium. He had absolutely no idea where it came from. He blinked several times, at the magnitude of its absurdity.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Inara

“Some people say
Rhyming is but a sin.
Little sins are fun
So try, before you bin.”
― Max Nowaz, Timbi's Dream

“They can make all the plans they want but it doesn't mean I have to cooperate with them”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“I have no affinity for animals. I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.”
― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

“Remember, America... not Wind like a watch, but Wind... like the air...”
― Frank Miller, Elektra: Assassin

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone one who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
― Anonymous, The New Testament

“Power is not a means; it is an end.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Our experiences are all a result of our personal energy signature, which develops from our focus of attention. Once we realize this, we can create a world of light and love in our personal consciousness, which also flows into the consciousness of humanity and the entire cosmos.”
― Kenneth Schmitt, Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness

“Oscar looked up from his plate, and if a cat could laugh, he would have. ‘Boy, that’s ugly, even for a jinn. Looks like a cross between a rat, a frog and a bottlebrush.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“Isa rolled her eyes. “Are you serious? You’re the only person I know who’d get upset that the FBI’s not watching him.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“The Earl of Lancaster loudly spoke, “Piers Gaveston, this court finds you guilty of treason, of sodomy and sedition as well as many other crimes against God! You shall be taken to Blacklow Hill, which shall by your place of execution, and you shall be put to death by two of my Welsh soldiers! May God have mercy upon your soul!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“She was a complicated woman living a complex life. Art theft and forgery, an estranged uncle, and a murdered, homosexual husband. Alec was used to war, politics, natural disasters – tangible stories without too much mystery. He wondered if he was capable of writing a story with so much passion going on.”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap

“You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

“I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.
(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)
Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.”
― Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape & Embers

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“She yawns for men and not with her mouth. She weeps for men and not with her eyes. She drinks men down, she is a cave for men.”
― Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

“The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket”
― Raymond Chandler, Playback