Davis Smith > Davis's Quotes

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Puns are the highest form of literature.”
― Alfred Hitchcock

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“A boy who gets a C- in 'Appreciation of Television' can't be all bad.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.”
― Markus Herz

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”
― Anthony G. Oettinger

“Ronny’s religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned as ‘weakening’ any attempt to understand them.”
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.”
― Albert Einstein

“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken

“I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it?”
― Plato, Gorgias

“And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Go on philosophers--teach, enlighten, kindle, think aloud, speak up, run joyfully toward broad daylight, fraternize in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, lavish your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear off green branches from the oak trees. Make thought a whirlwind. This multitude can be sublimated. Let us learn to avail ourselves of this vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which occasionally sparkles, bursts, and shudders. These bare feet, these naked arms, these rags, these shades of ignorance, depths of despair, the gloom can be used for the conquest of the ideal. Look through the medium of the people, and you will discern the truth. This lowly sand that you trample underfoot, if you throw it into a furnace and let it melt and seethe, will become sparkling crystal; and thanks to such as this a Galileo and a Newton will discover the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead