Fifty Quotes - Page 17

• The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.

  R. D. Laing

  Children, Learning, Men

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none. JACK That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. ALGERNON Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.

  Oscar Wilde

  Girl, Drama, Home

  Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.259, Oxford Paperbacks

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• I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

  Henry Ford

  Men, Discovery, Years

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• The thing about plummetting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter - if you realize it's a bad idea when you're halfway down, it's too late.

  Rick Riordan

  Snacks, Ideas, Too Late

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• In a whirlwind, Reagan quickly knocked off fifty more push-ups, flipped, and did thirty crunches, then turned and landed a kick that dented the metal door. "I'm feeling sick, too, and look at me. What if Babe Ruth had said 'Time to Rest'? Or Michael Phelps? Or Neil Armstrong? Come on, guys–what are we?" "Hungry," Natalie said. "Sleepy," Alistair added. "Grumpy," Fiske said. "Sneezy," Phoenix piped up. "Shot," Nellie said.

  Peter Lerangis

  Doors, Phoenix, Sick

  Peter Lerangis (2012). “The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 3: The Dead of Night”, p.31, Scholastic Inc.

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• A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.

  Nicole Krauss

  Couple, Writing, Heart

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?" "Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.

  Norton Juster

  Eight, Two, Feet

  Norton Juster (2011). “The Phantom Tollbooth 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.175, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning.

  Mahmoud Darwish

  Morning, Horse, Eye

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• Dear A & M, I talked to the manager of the Beauty Bar because I definitely saw you guys getting married against a hot pink backdrop, but he doesn't think we can fit more than fifty people inside and I'm thinking three hundred. How would you feel about getting married in the park? It might get cold, but you could ride a horse-drawn carriage to the ceremony. How do you feel about matching wedding crowns? -Isabelle

  Cassandra Clare

  Horse, Thinking, People

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• ...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.

  Anne Fortier

  Thinking, Percent

  Anne Fortier (2012). “Juliet (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.33, Ballantine Books

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• The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.

  Jack London

  Zero, Men, Imagination

  Jack London (2008). “To Build a Fire”, p.6, The Creative Company

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• My friend Madea has "attitude" that comes with wisdom. Back in our teens and twenties, we thought we knew everything and made all those foolish mistakes. Then, when we got a little older, at thirty, we started getting these flashes of light, revelations of what a great and lucky thing it is that we didn't get caught doing those stupid things back then. Around forty, if we are lucky, we stop lying to ourselves. Fifty and above, we've run out of patience for foolishness. Take me to the bottom line.

  Tyler Perry

  Running, Attitude, Mistake

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• Look, Mrs. McGillicuddy, it's not my fault your son jumped out a dorm room window on Christmas eve. I've written over fifty books as a Columbia professor, all right? You don't do that by holding hands with every at-risk undergraduate who says he's homesick, or he's turning gay, or the dog ate his term paper. I write about Lincoln, and freedom, and great ideas. I don't always have time for students. It's like Dean Martin used to say: if you want to talk, go to a priest. Hey -- what's the gun for?

  Eric Foner

  Dog, Book, Writing

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• I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Years, Leaving, Another Chance

  "Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2011.

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• More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.

  Ronald Reagan

  Children, Book, Pursuit Of Happiness

  Remarks at the Annual Convention of the the National Association of Evangelicals, delivered 8 March 1983, Orlando, Florida

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• Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

  Robert Browning

  Dog, Baby, Cat

  'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' (1842) st. 2

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• Just because of that one disastrous blind date she had last year, where the guy turned out to be fifty-nine, not thirty-nine (He claimed it was a typo. Yeah, I’m sure his finger just happened to slip two spaces to the left).

  Sophie Kinsella

  Years, Two, Space

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• Before I could do anything rash, a familiar voice behind me said, "Hello, Sadie." The other girls let out a collective gasp. My pulse quickened from "slow walk" to "fifty-meter-dash." I turned and found that-yes, indeed-the god Anubis had crashed our dance.

  Rick Riordan

  Girl, Voice, Pulse

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• Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you.

  Iain Banks

  Years, Waking Life, Ordinary

  Iain Banks (1986). “The bridge”

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• If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy.

  Alfred Bester

  Fifteen, Wanted, Ifs

  Alfred Bester (1974). “Tiger! Tiger!”

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• Married pixy, I told myself, forcing my eyes back to the shelf of ceramic animals. Fifty-four kids. Beautiful wife, sweet as sugar, who would kill me in my sleep while apologizing for it.

  Kim Harrison

  Beautiful, Sweet, Sleep

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• The door opened, and we were met by a fifty-something man with a grizzled blond beard. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Also, he had an eye patch. "This is incredible," I heard Adrian murmur. "Beyond my wildest dreams.

  Richelle Mead

  Dream, Eye, Men

  Richelle Mead (2012). “The Golden Lily: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.161, Penguin

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• When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?

  Joss Whedon

  Fun, Writing, Men

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• God, I love you," he said, and laid his head on her belly, his arms locked around her hips. Madelyn slid her fingers into his hair. "It took you long enough," she said gently. "What I lack in quickness, I make up in staying power." "Meaning?" "That I'll still be telling you that fifty years from now." He paused and turned his head to kiss her stomach.

  Linda Howard

  Love You, Kissing, Hair

  Linda Howard (1990). “Duncan's Bride”, Mira Books

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• That's our plan? We're going to walk fifty kilometers, right past the Germans, to a poultry collective that maybe didn't get burned down, grab a dozen eggs, and come home?" "Well, anything would sound ridiculous if said it in that tone of voice." "Tone of....I'm asking you a question!

  David Benioff

  Home, Past, Eggs

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