Anton > Anton's Quotes

“<...> но в этом отношении г-жа Воке имела сходство со многими людьми, которые не доверяют своим близким и отдаются в руки первого встречного, — странное психологическое явление, но оно факт, и его корни нетрудно отыскать в самой человеческой душе. Быть может, некоторые люди не в состоянии ничем снискать расположение тех, с кем они живут, и, обнаружив перед ними всю пустоту своей души, чувствуют, что окружающие втайне выносят им заслуженно суровый приговор; но в то же время такие люди испытывают непреодолимую потребность слышать похвалы себе, — а как раз этого не слышно, или же их снедает страстное желанье показать в себе достоинства, каких на самом деле у них нет, и ради этого они стремятся завоевать любовь или уважение людей им посторонних, рискуя пасть когда-нибудь и в их глазах. Наконец есть личности, своекорыстные по самой их природе: ни близким, ни друзьям они не делают добра по той причине, что это только долг; а если они оказывают услуги незнакомым, они тем самым поднимают себе цену; поэтому чем ближе стоит к ним человек, тем меньше они его любят; чем дальше он от них, тем больше их старанье услужить.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Я был один. Благословенное небо, всеблагий господи, наконец-то я был один! Я знаю — нехорошо так говорить и даже думать, но до чего же в наше время сложно устроиться таким образом, чтобы хоть на неделю, хоть на сутки, хоть на несколько часов остаться в одиночестве! Нет, я люблю своих детей, я люблю свою жену, у меня нет никаких злых чувств к моим родственникам, и большинство моих друзей и знакомых вполне тактичные и приятные в общении люди. Но когда изо дня в день, из часа в час они непрерывно толкутся около меня, сменяя друг друга, и нет никакой, ни малейшей возможности прекратить эту толчею, отделить себя от всех, запереться, отключиться… Сам я этого не читал, но вот сын утверждает, будто главный бич человека в современном мире — это одиночество и отчужденность. Не знаю, не уверен. Либо все это поэтические выдумки, либо такой уж я невезучий человек. Во всяком случае, для меня две недельки отчужденности и одиночества — это как раз то, что нужно. И чтобы не было ничего такого, что я обязан делать, а было бы только то, что мне хочется делать. Сигарета, которую я закурю, потому что мне хочется, а не потому, что мне суют под нос пачку. И которую я не закурю, если мне не хочется, а не потому, что мадам Зельц не выносит табачного дыма. Рюмка бренди у горящего камина — именно в тот момент, не раньше и не позже, когда мне придет в голову, что выпить рюмку бренди у горящего камина — это хорошо. Это действительно будет неплохо. Вообще мне здесь, кажется, будет неплохо. И это просто прекрасно, мне хорошо с самим собой, с моим собственным телом, еще сравнительно не старым, еще крепким, которое можно будет поставить на лыжи и бросить вон туда, через всю равнину, к сиреневым отрогам, по свистящему снегу, и вот тогда станет совсем уже прекрасно…”
― Arkady Strugatsky

“Откровенно признаться в трусости может лишь тот, кто обычно страха не знает”
― Станислав Лем

“He was the worst kind of Christian, Philip realized: he embraced all of the negatives, enforced every proscription, insisted on all forms of denial, and demanded strict punishment for every offence; yet he ignored all the compassion of Christianity, denied its mercy, flagrantly disobeyed its ethic of love, and openly flouted the gentle laws of Jesus.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“…But Jessica changed all that. Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
"Here's your tea and your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those Tintorettos."
"Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate."
"I should have had that cherry cake," said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“When Miller had started working homicide, one of the things that had struck him was the surreal calm of the victims’ families. People who had just lost wives, husbands, children, and lovers. People whose lives had just been branded by violence. More often than not, they were calmly offering drinks and answering questions, making the detectives feel welcome. A civilian coming in unaware might have mistaken them for whole. It was only in the careful way they held themselves and the extra quarter second it took their eyes to focus that Miller could see how deep the damage was.”
― James Corey, Leviathan ontwaakt

“At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“В тетрадях светской музыки, проникавших в монастырь, слово «amour» (любовь) везде было заменено словами: «tambour» (барабан) или «pandour» (венгерский солдат). Это порождало загадки, над разрешением которых изощрялось воображение старших воспитанниц. Конечно, девушек не могло не заинтересовать, что могла означать, например, такая фраза: «Ah, que le tambour est agréable!» (Ах, как приятен барабан) или: «La pitié n'est pas un pandour» (Сострадание — не пандур).”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.

They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things — oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp — yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.

The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The first words which came into Eddie's mind were: “If you think you've gone insane, Odetta, you're nuts”. Brief consideration, however, made this seem an unprof­itable line of argument to take.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“The gun had been well cared for. Its aim was true. Remembering the podgy, underexercised looks of the gunslingers (policemen) he had taken these weapons from, it seemed that they cared better for the weapons they wore than for the weapons they were. It seemed a strange way to behave, but of course this was a strange world and Roland could not judge…”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Chambers' mind, the gross carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds which he called facts... or, in more informal circumstances, "factoids." His favorite phrase, spoken often and with reverence, was, "The fact is," and he used it every chance he got.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Don't ask me silly questions
I won't play silly games
I'm just a simple choo choo train
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along
Beneath the bright blue sky
And be a happy choo choo train
Until the day I die.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“The lessons which I remember the longest are always the ones that are self-taught”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“All right,” Roland said. “Rudeness is forgivable, Blaine; so I was taught in my youth, and the clay has dried in the shapes left by the artist’s hand. But I was also taught that stupidity is not.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Why’s a sticky word, though. It’s not especially productive to think of them as agents with agendas. Better to think of them as—as very complex interacting systems, just doing what systems do. Whatever the reagents tell themselves to explain their role in the reaction, it’s not likely to have much to do with the actual chemistry.”
― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

“May the pulpits of the land ring with exposition of the Word of God and exultation in the God of the Word.”
― John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching

“On July 30, 1723, when he was nineteen years old, Edwards wrote in his diary, “I have concluded to endeavor to work myself into duties by searching and tracing back all the real reasons why I do them not, and narrowly searching out all the subtle subterfuges of my thoughts.” A week later he wrote, “Very much convinced of the extraordinary deceitfulness of the heart, and how exceedingly… appetite blinds the mind, and brings it into entire subjection.”
― John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching

“Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?”
“I don't know. The falling sickness?”
“Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat.
His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?”
“Your soup,” I told him.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company