Quotes about doubt

page 10

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

“Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?”

“Oh, here’s a clever one. Do you remember this question from the first test? It reads, ‘What’s wrong with this statement?’ And do you know what Constance wrote in reply? She wrote, ‘What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.”

“All novels… are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”

“use questions to raise questions”

“The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren't you, Ms. Lane? When did you last see him? what else did he tell you?
I'm asking the questions tonight.
If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it.”

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

“If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer.”

“To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”

“What do I want?
The answer to that question does not exist.”

“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.”

“You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"
"My brother always says curiosity is my besetting sin.”

“The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.”

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

“adj.
It has always been my habit, ever since junior high school, to ask that question:
“What are you thinking?”
It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.”

“Sometimes, questions are more hurtful than insults.”

“I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'
There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.
It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.”

“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.”

“I'm not making a problem out of a personal question; I make of a personal question an absence of a problem.”

“When you live a life without questions, you're unprepared for the questions when they come.”

“Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.”

“I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?”

“Dip a slice of bread in batter. That's September: yellow, gold, soft and sticky. Fry the bread. Now you have October: chewier, drier, streaked with browns. The day in question fell somewhere in the middle of the french toast process.”

“Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.”

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!”

“I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.”

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

“Which brings me to the question of why we always 'fall' in love. One falls down steps, off ladders, into rivers and down mountains. If love is so wonderful, why don't we soar in love or climb in love?”

“Question: If there were two of you which one would win?”

“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?”

“You must be careful when you ask people whether they’re happy; it’s a question that can upset them a great deal.”

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure”

“Love, too, was just a question of time”

“There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.”

“Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.”

“I've been burdened by questions I've asked myself a thousand times since the last time we were together.
Why did I do it? And would I do it again?
It was I, you see, who ended it.”

“You don’t learn unless you question.”

“Someone has to ask you a question," George continues meaningly, "before you can answer it. But it's so seldom you find anyone who'll ask the right questions. Most people aren't that much interested….”

“Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.”

“Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.”

“Your test had cheese meteor questions?”

“It is a remarkable question- Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them?”

“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like — people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore — to control your life? How long?”

“Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.”

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

“Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.”

“Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.”

“If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.”

“He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.”

“I’m asking the questions tonight.” One day I was going to write a book: How to Dictate to a Dictator
and Evade an Evader, subtitled How to Handle Jericho Barrons.”

“The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.”

“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise human science is at a loss.”

“The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.”

“Is Tyson okay?' I asked.
The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. 'He's fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though 'peanut butter' is a strange battle cry.”

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”

“Know all the Questions, but not the Answers
Look for the Different, instead of the Same
Never Walk where there's room for Running
Don't do anything that can't be a Game”

“She'd never seen a monster like that before, had never heard of one in all the Lore. When she grappled with the question of what it was, her sharply honed scientifical mind deduced one answer: manbearpig.”

“Any questions?"
"Ya why do your drawings suck so bad?”

“It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because… you are always me.”

“The minute I knew I was in love was the minute when there was no question about it.”

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”

“A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”

“People who are crazy rarely question whether they're crazy.”

“Death: Do you never stop questioning?
Antonius Block: No. I never stop.”

“Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul”

“all I feel sure of are questions.”

“There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?”

“If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.”

“Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.”

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

“Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question”

“Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?

Oh God. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still have sex?”

“I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.”

“The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?”

“We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.”

“Rule One, boy: shoot first then ask questions
Rulw Two, Double tap just for good measure. Better safe then sorry. -Bubba”

“mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues”

“Nicholas this is one of those 'yes' or 'no' questions again. You seem to have a problem with those. Did you or did you not kill a woman - Jo”

“Enjoy the questions and forget the answers.”

“Belief?"
"Yes," Sazed said. "Tell me, Mistress. What is it that you believe?"
Vin frowned. "What kind of question is that?"
"The most important kind, I think.”

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

“Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions.”

“… but to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu?”

“[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”

“We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.”

“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?”

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”

“You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”

“In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.”

“Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay? When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not.”

“stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions”

“Come on," I said. "I've got some questions for Thoth. And then I'm going to punch him in the beak.”

“Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.”

“The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?”

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”