Commentary Quotes

“The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.”
― Rachel Maddow

“And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.”
― Jane Austen

“Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”
― Arthur Miller

“Tore up from the floor up. Followed by a big outtie.

John Mathew”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

“The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought… The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui ( latin for vacuum suction )from the poverty of their own mind , which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others… It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves… When we read, another person thinks for us; merely repeat his mental process. So it comes about that if anybody spends almost the whole day in reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge and very little experience , the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, “Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.” I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you’re a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is “four bare legs in a bed.”

It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong—unless you steal nectarines.

And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of “sex” and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful. I deny the charge. Foam-born Venus … golden Aphrodite … Our Lady of Cyprus… I never breathed a word against you. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

“The club is too loud to talk, so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the centre of attention but completely cut off from participating with anyone else.
You're the corpse in an English murder mystery.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives.”
― Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor

“Comments are free but facts are sacred.”
― C.P. Scott

“If a man tells you that he is fond of the Imitation, view him with sudden suspicion; he is either a dabbler or a Saint.”
― Ronald A. Knox

“She turned quickly to face him, and with one part of his mind he thought, They call it falling in love, admiring as always the wisdom of the language. Not stumbling in love, not walking, striding, jumping, bouncing, crawling in love. You fall in love, straight forward like a chopped tree, straight down like a rock from a cliff: gravity, earth, concussion.”
― Max Byrd, Jackson

“Yardy doing a good job out there—1-14 off his five overs so far—but Bangla are letting this drift. The bowling is there to attack, but they're as passive as sleeping sloths at the mo.”
― Tom Fordyce

“The Hebrew word, qeren (#H7161 קֶ֣רֶן), is a horn of a bull, or is sometimes used to describe the tusk of an elephant. The English translation here is, “might.” In either case, the business-end of either animal is the symbol of its strength.
pg 41”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Lamentations: how narcissistic leaders torment church and family

“I watch people play golf in silence. Even after they hit I remain quiet, because my commentary won't help the ball roll into the hole, but it will saturate the air with unwanted pressure. Spoken words are like direct energy weapons, and I don't deploy them at an unarmed target.”
― Jarod Kintz, To be good at golf you must go full koala bear

“I am the prodigal son every time i search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called the child of God, the beloved of my Father?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

“In Tibet, there were innumerable great scholars and bodhisattvas, but unless a scholar was told by his root guru to compose a commentary on a specific text or received a prediction from his yidam deity, he would not write one. Even when great scholars or bodhisattvas did write something, they would first check themselves to make sure that their intention was not merely to win respect, prove themselves to be a great scholar, gain material wealth, or acquire a good reputation. As every Dharma text is meant to benefit being and guide them on the spiritual path, they would only write if they had a pure, unselfish motivation.

Even in the context of the Sutrayana path, though the past great scholars and realized beings wrote many commentaries on the Buddha's teachings, these writings would first be examined by other great scholars to determine whether the text was in exact accord with the Buddha's teachings. If the text did agree with the Buddha's teachings, it would be presented to the Dharma king and discussed with him. If they all agreed that the text was qualified, the writer would be invited to discuss the text and answer questions from the Dharma king and the scholars. If it was perfect and qualified as a text that could benefit beings, the author would be recognized as a good scholar and the text would be respected. If the author claimed to be a scholar but wrote a commentary that the others found not to be in accordance with the Buddha's teachings and therefore not beneficial, they would proclaim that the text had no value. It would be tied to a dog's tail, and after the dog had run around with it for a while, the text would be thrown into a fire. This was because a commentary would be read by many people, and if it was not in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha, readers could develop wrong views, create negative karma, and fall into the lower realms in their next life.”
― Penor Rinpoche, An Ocean of Blessings: Heart Teachings of Drubwang Penor Rinpoche

“When they had measured the attic they had to get a pencil and do a sum. They both got different answers to it at first, and even when they agreed I am not sure they got it right.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“Wait,” one of the apes objected, “we have never driven a car! What if we destroy everything? The humans might use our lack of experience to add stronger restrictions to apes, and we might look incapable.”

“Well,” another member insisted, “that would be absurd. It’s not our fault that we are inexperienced! The humans were the ones who did not give us access to the experience we need! It’s in their nature: discrimination. I mean, they even restricted each other from having education, voting, and career rights!”
― Lucy Carter, For the Intellect

“No society wants you to be wise. It’s a painstaking fact. As the winds gather momentum and their energy is felt on the bellies of the wise, the fools are led to the epicenter of death. The world has changed so many books were hidden from a black man, under the skies of colonialism the majority forced from knowledge and we built a culture of straight education which is not education but instilling slogans of slavery. Lone reading, lone understanding, lone accumulation is what we fought for, just a social forgery we are still under post colonialism barbarism”
― Tapiwanaishe Pamacheche, Depth of colour

“God is blameless and perfect, loving the blameless and perfect and seeking to draw them to himself. His presence is a hurricane of glory. God is a fierce storm, and when he draws near, mountains quake, the earth cracks, seas rage, and men tremble and fear. The storm of God's presence creates, judges, separates, and re-creates. The wind of God divides and tears apart before reuniting and healing. The very good God loves to take good men, break them apart, and turn them into very good men. The perfect and glorious God loves to take perfect men, break them apart, and turn them into greater glory and greater perfection.”
― Toby Sumpter

“When God loves his sons, he sends them into battle. If God did not spare his own Son in his love, how much more so will he love all of his beloved sons? His love is not aimless; it is not sadistic. His love rejoices in the glory that comes after the battle, the glory of victory, and preeminently the glory of communion with him.”
― Toby Sumpter

“Am I for ever to be made the property of strangers?”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“There's damn little caring for mothers, babies, old people, or anybody physically or economically weak these days as we become ever more industrialized and militarized with the guessers in charge.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson

“Donald Trump makes it hard on us pundits, cause he's so blatant there's nothing interesting to say.”
― David Brooks

“There were no gods in the shrine she passed, at least not visible ones. Gods never showed themselves to humans even when they dumped miracles on them, which Shesheshen thought was wise. If humans got used to the presence of gods, they'd probably hunt them for profit and glory and other nonsense, just as they did to monsters. Gods were smart to keep a light touch.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“These were emotions she didn't know how to carry. There was the insult of having her death celebrated when she wasn't even dead. When she was, in fact, amidst them all right now, and only out here because they'd sent killers to fail in her home.

But this? To be dying from the poison of those assassins, and while looking for emergency food to survive the injury, to be told by a drunk rich boy with inconvenient hair that she had never really existed? Now their songs made unkind sense to her. This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.

Never had she imagined such a thing. Humans were so creative in their disappointments.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“If I could rewrite the ending of any Shakespeare play, it would definitely be the finale of Romeo and Juliet. That dénouement just seems so far-fetched, over-complicated, and forced into a tragedy. It would have worked much better with a happier ending. While it is realistic that young lovers might take their own lives because of relentless interference and persecution, the Tragic Ex Machina (a sudden, unearned disastrous intervention) mechanism chosen was neither believable nor apt. The Bard perfected the character-driven tragic architecture later in Hamlet and King Lear.”
― Stewart Stafford

“when humans don’t understand why something happens, we make it up.
Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? That’s the direction of the Greek god Helios’s chariot.
How did zebras get stripes? A zebra got burned walking through a baboon’s fire.
How did the novel coronavirus spread so quickly? 5G towers.”
― Ashely Alker, MD, 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them