Nicolas Bolitho > Nicolas's Quotes

“The girl flinched, even lying down. Mary continued through gritted teeth. “Murder can’t be walked away from. Just like you can’t walk away from Viktor. He’ll find you if you run. Richard can’t protect you if Viktor believes you have his babies.”
― Susan Rowland, Murder on Family Grounds

“I heard another disembodied voice: you're going to release a daemon”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“The past is one part of the movie, and the future reveals how the film will continue... You can't change fate. Life and surroundings you can't change. You just have the impression that you can do something about it.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“When Jesus said ast and you’ll get it, He meant things of the spirit, not the flesh. Grandpa said Jesus meant us to ast for hope, forgiveness, and all like that. Ast ‘Hep us not be scared, hep us not be greedy, give us courage to try…Ast any such and God will give it to you. But don’t ast Him not to let fire burn, or say spare me from death.”
― Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree

“Shakespeare will not make us better and will not make us worse, but he may allow us to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves.”
― Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

“The large drawing-room was an immense, long room, with a sort of gallery that ran from one pavilion to the other, taking up the whole of the façade on the garden side. A large French window opened on to the steps. This gallery glittered with gold. The ceiling, gently arched, had fanciful scrolls winding round great gilt medallions, that shone like bucklers. Bosses and dazzling garlands encircled the arch; fillets of gold, resembling threads of molten metal, ran round the walls, framing the panels, which were hung with red silk; festoons of roses, topped with tufts of full-blown blossoms, hung down along the sides of the mirrors. An Aubusson carpet spread its purple flowers over the polished flooring. The furniture of red silk damask, the door-hangings and window-curtains of the same material, the huge ormolu clock on the mantel-piece, the porcelain vases standing on the consoles, the legs of the two long tables”
― Émile Zola, Delphi Complete Works of Emile Zola

“The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering—listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave—beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash—bitten and torn by dogs—dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin—it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life.”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years A Slave

“There is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good family,
pleasing presence, average education, to be "not stupid," kindhearted,
and yet to have no talent at all, no originality, not a single idea
of one's own—to be, in fact, "just like everyone else."
Of such people there are countless numbers in this world—far more
even than appear. They can be divided into two classes as all men
can—that is, those of limited intellect, and those who are much cleverer.
The former of these classes is the happier.
To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is
simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that
belief without the slightest misgiving.
Many of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short, put
on blue spectacles, and call themselves Nihilists. By doing this they have
been able to persuade themselves, without further trouble, that they
have acquired new convictions of their own. Some men have but felt
some little qualm of kindness towards their fellow-men, and the fact has
been quite enough to persuade them that they stand alone in the van of
enlightenment and that no one has such humanitarian feelings as they.
Others have but to read an idea of somebody else's, and they can immediately
assimilate it and believe that it was a child of their own brain.
The "impudence of ignorance," if I may use the expression, is developed
to a wonderful extent in such cases;—unlikely as it appears, it is met
with at every turn.
... those belonged to the other class—to the "much cleverer"
persons, though from head to foot permeated and saturated with
the longing to be original. This class, as I have said above, is far less
happy. For the "clever commonplace" person, though he may possibly
imagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has within
his heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this doubt
sometimes brings a clever man to despair. (As a rule, however, nothing
tragic happens;—his liver becomes a little damaged in the course of time,
nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their aspirations after
originality without a severe struggle,—and there have been men who,
though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors to humanity,
have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of originality)”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“The power of one man’s imagination is infinite. The disinterest of the human race in facing the obvious, is exponentially far greater.”
― A.R. Merrydew

“When the heart chooses, the mind will start the fight harder than ever before because it feels like its end when feelings are before its existence.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“Let’s get to know each other. My name’s William, William More, but you can call me Willy. I’m an engineer-chemist who graduated from MIT. So . . . but you’re all alike to me . . . of course, you would be . . . you’re robots. And all your names are that sort of, um . . . codes, technical numbers . . . I need some marker where I can pick you out. Well, well, to you I’ll call . . .,” and Willy pondered for a moment, “Gumball, yes, Gumball! Do you mind?” “No, sir, actually no,” CSE-TR-03 said, agreeing with its new given name. “Ah, that’s wonderful. And then you’re Darwin,” Willy said, accosting the second robot. “Look what a nice name—Darwin! What do you say, eh?” “What can I say, sir? I like it,” CSE-TR-02 agreed too. “Yes, a human name with a past . . . You and Gumball . . . are from the same family, the Methanesons!” “It turns out thus, sir,” Darwin confirmed its family belonging. “And you’re like Larry. You’re Larry. Do you know that?” More addressed the next robot in line. “Yes, sir, just now I learned that,” the third robot said, accepted its name as well.”
― Todor Bombov, Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel

“Birdie slid out the chair to his left, crawled up onto it, shifted to sit, and crossed her arms on the table. “I heard my daddy tell Mommy somebody painted your picture on a barn. He said the police are going to imbestigate you.”

“He did?”

She bobbed her head. “He said you looked like the devil. Are you the devil?”
― Steve Rush, Lethal Impulse

“It is weird that the same two parents can come together and make two such different people.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“A look of absolute terror locked onto her features.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“Harriet never minded admitting when she didn't know something. 'So what,' she thought, 'I can always learn.”
― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“It is well and good to opine or theorize about a subject, as humankind is wont to do, but when moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

“Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?”
“Why, no,” she said. “Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them—and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

“Existence nullified by men; reaffirmed by nature.”
― John Howard Griffin

“Nature pulls one way and human nature another.”
― E. M. Forster