Blake Montney > Blake's Quotes

“We're selling vacuum cleaners.”
― Kyle Keyes, Under the Bus

“Lice breeds lice, and sin breeds sin.”
― Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice

“The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT kind of love.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.

When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I imbue this place with my essence, every stone and every drop. My visit will do wonders for the flowers."

Aly propped her chin on her hand. "So does manure," she observed.”
― Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Queen

“There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“     Illicit flight Alfa Bravo Charlie quickly reached a predetermined altitude and stopped dead. The passengers on board screamed the way people do on fairground rides. The shuttle hesitated momentarily and then shot forward accelerating rapidly to reach a blistering 145,222 miles per hour. They were in a Mach 22 situation. The cries from on-board could not be heard from the ground. Neither did anyone in the great metropolis of Llar witness the bright blue vapour trail the craft left behind in its wake. It was after all overcast and raining heavily.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“When I'm hung-over I try to imagine being old and look- ing back fondly on now, on this bit I'm currently living, and how in retrospect it might seem adventurous. In the future when I only ever sit in a chair because I'm too gnarled for pleasure or movement I'll remember when I stayed out all night and had life-changing conversations and walked all the way home because I lost my phone.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could it not? Flaminius was utterly gorgeous. But once she fell in love with him, she became happily enslaved.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“When Divine is awakened, so too are the forces of evil. And these two forces will clash as it has been since the beginning…”
― Cade Mengler, The Companions

“It was hidden in a column in the middle pages of The Courier in June 2019. The headline did not stand out as anything special. It was headed ‘Ancient staff discovered near Kinfauns Castle mystifies archaeologists’.”
― Robert Reid, The Thief

“As I reached the door, the constable said, “Good luck in Canada, son.” For a second I expected his voice to morph into Uncle Sid’s as he urged me to give his love to Rose Marie and the Mounties.”
― Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Erkeley Shadows

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot , All Creatures Great and Small

“The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land.”
― Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology

“She didn't know if she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

“Truth could never be wholly contained in words.”
― Catherine Marshall, Christy

“I was brought up to believe that everyone brave is forgiven, but in wartime courage is cheap and clemency out of season.”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven