“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”
Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children
Source: Midnight's Children
1965. Quoted in "What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa" - Page 249 - by David E. Murphy - History - 2005
“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”
Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children
Source: Midnight's Children
“I won’t bother to offer explanations because the media is determined to distort all I say.”
Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India
quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.
2014
John Donne (1572–1631) English poet
VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
“I felt the first man I slept with must be intelligent, so I could respect him.”
Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar
Source: The Bell Jar
Heloise (1101–1164) French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess
Letter IV : Heloise to Abelard
Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Context: I own, to my confusion, I fear more the offending of man than the provoking of God, and study less to please him than you. Yes, it was your command only, and not a sincere vocation, as is imagined, that shut me up in these cloisters. I fought to give you ease, and not to sanctify myself. How unhappy am I? I tear myself from all that pleases me? I bury myself here alive, I exercise my self in the most rigid fastings; and such severities as cruel laws impose on us; I feed myself with tears and sorrows, and, notwithstanding this, I deserve nothing for all the hardships I suffer. My false piety has long deceived you as well as others. You have thought me easy, and yet I was more disturbed than ever. You persuaded yourself I was wholly taken up with my duty, yet I had no business but love. Under this mistake you desire my prayers; alas! I must expect yours. Do not presume upon my virtue and my care. I am wavering, and you must fix me by your advice. I am yet feeble, you must sustain and guide me by your counsel.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes
4/11/46. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - Page 255 - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995
John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England
B. v. Knight and Burton (1699), 1 Raym. 527.