Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition
Source: What Happened to Lani Garver
"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", sermon at the National Cathedral, 31 March 1968, published in A Testament of Hope (1986)
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth
“He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.”
Source: This Lullaby
Source: White Teeth (2000)
Context: You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Source: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
“Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.”
Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole
“Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers”
Nausea (1938)
Source: Nausea, The Wall and Other Stories
“A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.”
Source: The Prince of Tides
Source: Belgarath the Sorcerer
“I don't have alot of people to talk to. Not alot of people are worth my time.”
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 5
“The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.”
“Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
The Sun Rising, stanza 1
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
The portion after the second semicolon is widely paraphrased or misquoted. Two examples are "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" and "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
1910s
Source: "The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917); later published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 53
Context: Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star. We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth. We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects. We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death. We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half. We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars. We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.
Source: City of Lost Souls
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas
Episode 1, Opening introduction voice-over
The Power of Myth (1988)
Source: Dust Tracks on a Road
“They were at the wrong place at the wrong time naturally they became heroes”
Source: A New Hope
“But who has time to write memoirs? I’m still living my memoirs.”
Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
“Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that humans created.”
“There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.”
Source: Tales of Burning Love
“I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.”
Katniss, p. 241
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Source: Journal 1970-1986
“Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.”
Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames
“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
“The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.”
Source: Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys
“Ever since time began, people have recognized their true Love by the light in their eyes.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.”
“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”
Source: The Book Thief
Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran
“There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.”
Source: Pussy, King of the Pirates
Source: The Truth About Forever
