Michael McDaniel > Michael's Quotes

“He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.”
― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

“As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.”
― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

“Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.

And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. I fyou won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.”
― Harold Pinter, Betrayal

“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
― Walker Evans

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”
― Christopher Paolini

“One day in the country
Is worth a month in town”
― Christina Rossetti

“Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.”
― James Thurber

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
― James Thurber

“The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.”
― James Thurber

“Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised”
― James Thurber

“For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.”
― James Thurber

“You can fool too many people, too much of the time.”
― James Thurber

“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.”
― Vaclav Havel

“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”
― Vaclav Havel

“I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.”
― Vaclav Havel

“Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.”
― vaclav havel

“All human suffering concerns each human being”
― Vaclav Havel

“The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.”
― Václav Havel

“There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.”
― Vaclav Havel

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.”
― Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
― Henry Miller

“See, the night doth enfold us! See, all the world lies sleeping!”
― Giacomo Puccini