Terrible Quotes - Page 21

• But the involuntary tricks of memory and the voluntary ones of imagination make always such terrible havoc of facts that truth, be it ever so much sought and cared for, appears in history and biography only in a more or less disfigured condition.

  Frederick Niecks

  Truth, Memories, Imagination

  Frederick Niecks (2016). “Frederick Chopin”, p.709, Frederick Niecks

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• If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Ambition, People, Goal

  Nadine Gordimer (1980). “Burger's Daughter”, Penguin Group USA

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• The situation of the Salvadorian people is terrible; all their rights are violated. There is a direct violation against the human person, a violation of rights that is endemic in society.

  Maria Julia Hernandez

  Rights, People, Situation

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• What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did? There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, but because you think I should be. I look back on the way I was. A young, stupid kid that committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left.

  Stephen King

  Sorry, Regret, Stupid

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• I've seen some springs that ended up being terrible winters. We human beings are gregarious. We can't live alone. For our lives to be possible, we depend on society. It's one thing to overturn a government or block the streets. But it's a different matter altogether to create and build a better society, one that needs organization, discipline and long-term work. Let's not confuse the two of them. I want to make it clear: I feel sympathetic with that youthful energy, but I think it's not going anywhere if it doesn't become more mature.

  Jose Mujica

  Powerful, Block, Spring

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• It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.

  Mark Twain

  Eye, Men, Heaven

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation

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• Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

  James Bryant Conant

  Tyrants, Political, Magic

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• How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Stars, Flower

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• East of the sun and west of the moon.' As unfathomable as the words were, I realized I must figure them out, reason it through. For I would go to this impossible land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. From the moment the sleigh had vanished from sight and I could no longer hear the silver bells I knew that I would go after the stranger that had been the white bear to make right the terrible wrong I had done him.... All that mattered was to make things right. And I would do whatever it took, journey to wherever I must, to reach that goal.

  Edith Pattou

  Moon, Journey, Sight

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• It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.

  Maggie O'Farrell

  Thinking, Want Something, I Realized

  Maggie O'Farrell (2008). “The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?

  J. D. Salinger

  Love You, Connections, Ends

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• When a man's pride is subdued it's like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Growing Up, Pride, Men

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• [Peter Pan] has never broken his terrible habit of eavesdropping. So, maybe that wasn't the rustle of pages you heard while this story lasted, but Peter Pan himself, listening in. In exchanged for a story of yours, he might show you his most prized possession: James Hooks' map of Neverland. In exchange for a smile, he may show you Neverland itself.

  Geraldine McCaughrean

  Broken, Listening, Hook

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• So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense. -Dr. Watson, The Sign of the Four

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Thinking, Law, Energy

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “The Sign of the Four”, p.51, Arthur Conan Doyle

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• Things come in three major degrees in the human experience, I think. There's good, bad, and terrible. And as you go down into progressive darkness towards terrible, it gets harder and harder to make subdivisions.

  Stephen King

  Thinking, Darkness, Degrees

  Stephen King (2009). “Stephen King Goes to the Movies”, p.519, Simon and Schuster

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• He could feel V's eyes sharpen, the vampire's fierce intellect churning over the situation. Among the brothers, Vishous had the most raw brainpower, but he paid for the privilage. Man, Wrath sure had his own demons, and they were no walk in the park, but he wouldn't have wanted Vishous's cross to bear. Seeing what had yet to come was a terrible burden. -Wrath's thoughts

  J.R. Ward

  Brother, Eye, Men

  J.R. Ward (2005). “Dark Lover: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.125, Penguin

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• It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Beautiful, Baseball, Party

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• Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life.

  J. K. Rowling

  Flames, Agony, Causes

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• They crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running, she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head. Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something, and then they remembered and her tongue moved again: "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Wall, Moving

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.17, Hamilton Books

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• But once in a great while he remembered that he had felt pain, a terrible ache in his heart, and he swore he would never let himself feel love for a human again.

  Susan Cooper

  Pain, Heart, Ache

  Susan Cooper (2001). “The Boggart”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.

  Charles Bukowski

  Flower, People, Growing

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life. That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin. And this was her penance. Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.

  Melina Marchetta

  Brother, Years, Alive

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• Well I'm not dancing," Will said through gritted teeth. "I don't know how." Oh yes you are," Alyss told him. "Let's hope you're a fast learner." He glanced at her and saw no prospect of escape. "Well,at least I won't be the only one," he said. "Halt will be terrible too." But nobody in the assembly knew tat for the past ten days, Halt had been taking dance lessons from Lady Sandra.

  John Flanagan

  Past, Dancing, Teeth

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• Memory is a slippery thing. When something terrible happens to you, like the loss of someone you love...memory can turn into a soft blanket that hides you from the loss.

  Kathi Appelt

  Memories, Loss, Someone You Love

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• How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage for that matter.

  Libba Bray

  Care, Want, Matter

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.519, Simon and Schuster

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