“You can never tell about a person by guessing… that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”
Source: Practical Magic
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Alice Hoffman 85
Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer 1952Related quotes

Fraternity (1909)
Context: "To take life," went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, "was the chief mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race. … They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed."

Interview for French TV (1998)
Source: The Haunting of Hill House

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne