Affair Quotes - Page 16

• Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

  Baruch Spinoza

  War, Tyrants, Evil

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• Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

  Stephen King

  Reading, Long, Way

  Stephen King (2016). “Skeleton Crew”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• ...some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. ...it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.

  D.E. Stevenson

  Book, Adventure, Winter

  D. E. Stevenson (1978). “Listening Valley”

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• The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

  Milan Kundera

  Play, Rivers, Next Day

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• Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair.

  Terry Eagleton

  Art, Ideas, Looks

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• ...What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with Life.

  Dashiell Hammett

  Discovery, Steps, Disturbed

  Dashiell Hammett (2010). “The Maltese Falcon”, p.71, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I am grateful for emphasis on reading the scriptures. I hope that for you this will become something far more enjoyable than a duty; that, rather, it will become a love affair with the word of God. I promise you that as you read, your minds will be enlightened and your spirits will be lifted. At first it may seem tedious, but that will change into a wondrous experience with thoughts and words of things divine. Gordon B. Hinckley

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Grateful, Reading, Promise

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• In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that whether we wish it or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world. It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or not.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Play, People, Mind

  "A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1905".

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• She dealt her pretty words like Blades -- How glittering they shone -- And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone -- She never deemed -- she hurt -- That -- is not Steel's Affair -- A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -- How ill the Creatures bear -- To Ache is human -- not polite -- The Film upon the eye Mortality's old Custom -- Just locking up -- to Die.

  Emily Dickinson

  Hurt, Eye, Steel

  Emily Dickinson (2012). “Emily Dickinson: Everyman's Poetry”, p.83, Hachette UK

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• Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Distance, Eye

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.437

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• The few love affairs which had come my way had been rather silly and sordid. They had not revealed the possibilities of love; in fact I had thought it a somewhat overrated pleasure, a brief and brutal blindness with boredom and disgust hard on its heels.

  Aleister Crowley

  Silly, Boredom, Way

  Aleister Crowley (2010). “The Diary of a Drug Fiend”, p.47, Weiser Books

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• The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fear, Mean, Race

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Wish, Desire

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.59, Penguin UK

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• I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?

  Margaret Mead

  Religious, Animal, Hands

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• It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.

  William Ralph Inge

  Real, Thinking, Two

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• And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Two, Events, Wickedness

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.3, e-artnow

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• One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs.

  E. M. Forster

  Children, Home, Men

  E.M. Forster “Howards End”, Рипол Классик

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• This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of idle chatter, and pour into our wounded bosoms the soothing balm of vengeance.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Idle Chatter, Tides, Vengeance

  Seth Grahame-Smith, Jane Austen, Roberto Parada (2009). “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance--now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem”, p.262, Chronicle Books

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• Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting

  Ambrose Bierce

  Cheating, Peace, Fighting

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• During the fifteen minutes that followed, the proud and sensitive girl suffered a shame and pain which she never forgot. To others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone

  Louisa May Alcott

  Girl, Pain, Years

  J. M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Johanna Spyri, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum (2015). “Greatest Christmas Novels in One Volume: Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Heidi, The Romance of a Christmas Card, The Little City of Hope, The Wonderful Life, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Peter Pan…”, p.636, e-artnow

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• Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.

  A. S. Byatt

  Real, Ego, Say Anything

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Sep 01, 2014

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• It's not enough to believe! Don't you see that, you stupid girl? You could spend your whole life hoping and believing! If a love affair is one-sided, then it's only ever a question, never an answer. You can't live your life waiting for an answer.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Girl, Stupid, Believe

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• Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.

  Chris Cleave

  Life Is, Current Affairs, Currents

  Chris Cleave (2012). “Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set: Little Bee, Incendiary, Gold”, p.154, Simon and Schuster

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• A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

  Eric Hoffer

  War, Men, People

  Eric Hoffer (2011). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Flower, Night, Men

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West”, p.153, Vintage

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