All the Pretty Horses (1992)
Context: He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened to the wind in the emptiness and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and die in the darkness at the edge of the world and as he lay there the agony in his heart was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.
“You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?”
How to Make a Million Dollars
Literary Lapses (1910)
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Stephen Leacock 17
writer and economist 1869–1944Related quotes
Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: The perfect ideal would be that a man who is essentially nonviolent would be able to defend himself against any form of violence. But this is very rare in life. But this raises one of the most important themes in Eternity, why Prewitt does not shoot back at the MPs who kill him as he tries to get back to his unit after his murder of Fatso Judson. You see, when Prewitt kills Fatso he is carrying the theory of vengeance by violence to its final logical end. But the thing is that Fatso doesn't even know why he is being killed; and when Prewitt sees that, he realizes what a fruitless thing he has done.
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
“A sensible man takes pleasure in what he has instead of pining for what he has not.”
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus
“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”