Quotes about bit
page 5

“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

“But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Women, Men, Nature

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Life, Way, Thinking, Time

“I'm beginning to realize that things don't turn out the way you want them to. And sometimes, when they don't they can turn out just a little bit better.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Way

“Daisy had known the novel was silly even as she had read it, but that had not detracted one bit from her enjoyment.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Scandal in Spring

Reading

“It's a bit embarrassing… to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

Life, Way, Problem

“I can't tell them what to do!"
"Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Girl, Nature

“Did you miss me?’
“A little bit,” she said with a shrug.
“You have tears running down your cheeks,” he said with a grin. “I think you missed me more than a little.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Thinking, Tear

“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Feeling, Suicide

“Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

God

“She can shoot like a dream and she carries tiny grenades in her top, a bit of my addled mind thought. I think I might be in love.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

Love, Dreams, Thinking

“A little bit of fragrance always clings to the hands that gives you roses”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

“Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Life, Men, Thinking

“Any time I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Source: Many Bloody Returns

Time, Night

“Better be," Eve said. She mock-bit at his finger. "I could totally date somebody else, you know."
"And I could rent out your room."
"And I could put your game console on eBay."
"Hey," Shane protested. "Now you're just being mean.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Game

“The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Way, Loss

“His eyes widened just a bit, his lips flexed. I realized he was trying not to laugh. I hate it when people find my threats amusing.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Laughing Corpse

Source: The Laughing Corpse

Hate, People

“I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

Source: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script

Love

“Shopping is actually very similar to farming a field. You can't keep buying the same thing, you have to have a bit of variety. Otherwise you get bored and stop enjoying yourself.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Luck of the Bodkins

Source: The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

World, Law, Girl, Lovers

“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Sister

“I racked my brain trying to remember the names of all of Nut’s five children. Bit difficult without my brother, the human Wikipedia, around to keep track of such trivia for me.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Children

“… small helpings, no seconds, no snacking, and a little bit of everything. - Julia Child”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

Help

“But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Perfection

“There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

Loss

“I don’t want to die,” A. J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Time

“How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"

"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter bunny, um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that…"

"Everythings going to be alright.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Runaways, Vol. 1: Pride and Joy

God, School, Parent, Hurt

“Francesca: It's still a bit cold yet.
Michael: Never stopped John and me.
Francesca: Yes, well, you're Scottish. Your blood circulates quite well half frozen.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.”

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: Reflections on War and Death

Pain, Pleasure, Reality

“He crouched at the car window and looked in. 'What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one.' His finger jabbed the glass. 'That one's a bit ugly.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Love, Family, Cars

“People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

People

“It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 13 “Orchids and Assassins” section 4 (p. 567)

“Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice”?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“There's nothing more prized to a man than something he had to wait for, work for, or strugle a little bit to get.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Waiting

“Be warned - Hammond does tend to be a bit optimistic about these kind of things. If the army were made up of one-legged mutes, he would praise their balance and their listening skills.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

“Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway," the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: The Eye in the Pyramid

“It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Truth

“I think people would live a bit longer if they didn't know how old they were. Age puts restrictions on things.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

People, Age, Thinking

“People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, People, World

“Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

World, Home

“You will be leaving, of course."

"Or I could help you."

"I've had a bit of practice bathing myself and I think I can stumble my way through this.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

Way, Thinking, Help

“If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Science, Reading

“Watching people is a bit of a hobby of mine. It's quite fascinating, really.”

Keigo Higashino The Devotion of Suspect X

Source: The Devotion of Suspect X

People

“Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Life, Happiness, Truth, Perfection

“Nice plan. Take the gullible outsiders, walk them around for a bit, then feed them to the giant tortoise.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“The more powerful you become, the more others will find ways to master you. They'll do it through those you love and those you hate. They will find the bit and the bridle that fits your mouth and will make you yield.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Love, Hate, Way

“People say I'm not much of a girl either," Tiger Lily said.
She thought of Tik Tok, who was fond of saying that people were all bits of each thing, boy and girl.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

People, Girl, Boy

“In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Context: In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

Love, Men, Hate, World

“Uh-uh. We've played this game before. I hide. You never seek. I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm beginning to sense a pattern."
- Clay to Elena”

Kelley Armstrong book Bitten

Source: Bitten

Game, Sense

“Well…" St. Vincent walked slowly with her to the crowd of dancers. "I'm a wicked man who can, on occasion, be just a bit nice. And I've been searching for a nice girl who can, on occasion, be just a bit wicked.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

Search, Girl

“Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Shoe

“‎"You want more?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "Even after what we did?"
His mouth took on a sardonic twist. "I'm afraid quantity usually matters for me…"
--THE PRINCESS'S ASSASSINS”

Emma Holly (1961) American writer

Princess

“She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.”

Jack Kerouac book Maggie Cassidy

Source: Maggie Cassidy

Soul

“I gave him a smile. I was aiming for sweet, but he turned a shade paler and scooted a bit farther from me. Note to self: work more on sweet and less on psycho-killer.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Smile

“Well, I don't like the first bit and I don't know the last bit. So I'm really hoping the middle bit is exceptional.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Hope

“Yes, you bit me, yes, I kind of liked it, yes, let's not talk about it again, said Jace. You're not a vampire anymore. Focus.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Simon Lewis and Jace Herondale, pg. 716
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
Context: Simon was looking at Jace as if he were both fascinating and also a little alarming. 'Did I-- did we ever-- did I bite you?'
Jace touched the scar on his throat. 'I can't believe you remember that.'
'Did we... roll around on the bottom of a boat?'
'Yes, you bit me, yes, I kind of liked it, yes, let's not talk about it again,' said Jace.

“Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Light, Science

“One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

People, Idea

“I don't like girls in the daytime,' he said shortly, and then thinking this a bit abrupt, he added: 'But I like you.' He cleared his throat. 'I like you first and second and third.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Girl, Thinking

“I guessed life was like that. You gained and you lost, and if you saved anything from the ruins, even if only a shred of self-respect, it was enough to take you through the next bit.”

Dick Francis Whip Hand

Source: Whip Hand

Life

“It was a little sexy, Simon said. He felt much better, having fed, and couldn't help but poke at Alec a bit. It wasn't, said Alec. I had some feelings, said Simon.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Feeling, Help

“Loyalty was a funny thing. So was love. They both bit you when you least expected it.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Peaches

Love, Loyalty

“Compromise means to go just a little bit below what you know is right. It's just a little bit, but it's the little foxes that spoil the vine.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“I seem to be the most wordy when it comes to monsters because I'm a bit of a monster freak. I grew up just loving all the Draculas. Especially I just loved watching all the Universal classics. And Bela has been my favorite ever since. I would say though that I have a new favorite Dracula here. I've always loved those movies. And it was such an honor to be cast with this role.”

Silvia Colloca (1977) Singer, actress, author and TV cooking personality

An Interview with Dracula and his Brides (2004)

Love, Universe

“Stuart Wheeler says women are no good at poker?! If he fancies playing a bit of Heads Up, he knows where to find me.”

Victoria Coren (1972) British writer, presenter and poker player

Responding to Stuart Wheeler's suggestion that women are not good at chess, bridge or poker.
Evening Standard Quote of the Day, Friday 16 Aug 2013, p. 16

Women

“For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding of reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue”

Tim O'Brien book The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried (1990), How to Tell a True War Story

Way, Guy, Feeling, Reality

“But high up on the mountain
When the wind is hitting it
If you're watching very closely
The rock slips a little bit…”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

The Rock
Song lyrics, Portrait Gallery (1975)

Mountain

“But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 336
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Life, Strong

“[T]he least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man's body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men. He does not hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a bit better than another because he can knock him down or carry a bigger sack of potatoes than he.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 11

Men, God, Children, Training

“I do not regard the late Carl Sagan as any kind of authority. On the contrary, as this book will show, I regard him in many ways as a dubious publicity seeker and careerist, more concerned to maintain his reputation as the brilliant and sceptical representative of hard-headed science than to look squarely and honestly at the facts. In short, a bit of a crook.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. xix-xx

Books, Way, Science

“In various bits and pieces, we have steered Intel from a start-up to one of the central companies of the information economy.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Andrew Grove, in: " 1997 Technology Leader of the Year http://www.industryweek.com/companies-amp-executives/1997-technology-leader-yearandy-grove-building-information-age-legacy", IndustryWeek.com, December 15, 1997 <br class="br">1980s - 1990s

“I had a look at the keeper and I was thinking that he was a bit too much forward from his line. I tried instinctively to shoot and to hit the target. I was a bit lucky but that's what I wanted to do.”

Olivier Giroud (1986) French footballer

About his spectacular goal in the 2014 Community Shield http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20140810/giroud-on-his-community-shield-goal

Thinking

“At first you think, 'Gosh, monkeys, that's so kind of incredible … But you started to kind of feel a little bit, not competitive with the monkeys, but that they weren't really — they didn't really have your best interests at heart. They aren't these … They want to replace you. They're not that impressed with the opposable thumbs.”

Owen Wilson (1968) American actor and screenwriter

On working with monkeys, in an Artist on Artist interview on MySpace (26 October 2007) http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=20862626.

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Lost Highway" interview by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone (6 March 1997)

Life, Death, Way

“With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Martin Gayford, " 'Photography is crumbling,' " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/05/18/bahock18.xml The Telegraph, (18 May 2004) <br class="br">2000s

War, Time, Painting

“Yes, India is the land of the Gods par excellence… The experience of the divine presence in India is within the reach of anyone who searches even a little bit. The temples are full of flowers and offerings, and you only have to flow along with the crowd, melt into it and place yourself in the hands of the Gods. I do not advocate conversion to Hinduism, but I do recommend its inspiration. I told this to the brahmins that took me into their homes. One said, 'Establish your reawakened Paganism on a valid foundation and there'll come a day when it will catch on. It won't be long.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

As true Pagans, they feel no need to convert anyone.
Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

God, Feeling, Home, Search

“Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real world for others.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 176.

World

“Sexual dysfunction often plays a key role in risk management by couples over time. It seems crucial not to get too excited about the other, and diminished excitement serves the purposes at once of self-protection and revenge. I was once excited about you, the diminished arousal seems to be expressing, but there is not much to get excited about now. Often lovers work together to pretend they are safer (even if also a bit sadder) over time, by collapsing their expectations of each other in collusively arranged, choreographed routine. Each feels the other is less exciting because of being so familiar and predictable. And each acts towards the other in as wholly and artificially predictable a fashion as possible. But, of course, lowering expectations also empties out passion. No risk, no gain.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 143

Feeling, Lovers, Fashion, Revenge

“I have a bit of a consummate victim in my head. That’s who I identify with throughout history. When I was 10 I would draw black eyes on myself because I thought it was cool. You’re so into people who are tragic. You want to be that so badly. But you probably aren’t really the tragic genius that you think you are.”

Peter Wentz (1979) American musician

"This Charming Man," interview, Out.com (August 2008)

People, History, Thinking, Drawing

“The army led America in integration… The army recognized early on that, you know, black people are pretty much the same as white people; they just tend to be a little bit darker. They make just as good soldiers.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, In Depth with Tom Clancy (2002)

People

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s

Men, Way, Freedom, Change

“Compared with the elegant inventions of the theorists, nature's code seemed a bit of a kludge.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 4, Inventing The Genetic Code, p. 66

Nature

“When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money… Today, Bashar Al-Assad is playing the role of the son of the Levanter, offering his services to any would-be buyer through interviews with whoever passes through the corner of Damascus where he is hiding. At first glance, the Levanter may appear attractive to those engaged in sordid games. In the end, however, the Levanter must betray his existing paymaster in order to begin serving a new one. Four years ago, Bashar switched to the Tehran-Moscow axis and is now trying to switch back to the Tel-Aviv-Washington one that he and his father served for decades. However, if the story has one lesson to teach, it is that the Levanter is always the source of the problem, rather than part of the solution. ISIS is there because almost half a century of repression by the Assads produced the conditions for its emergence. What is needed is a policy based on the truth of the situation in which both Assad and ISIS are parts of the same problem.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Like Father, Like Son http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341622/opinion-like-father-like-son, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 20, 2015).

Life, Money, Truth, Game

“For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Journal entry (11 June 1938), published in Working Days : The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1990) edited by Robert DeMott

Books, Feeling, Time

“It is really — one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this — what did he call it? — a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on Al Gore's March 21 testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
2000s

“After years of entrenched drug abuse, you have a mourning period. I know it’s a bit sad, but I’m in mourning. I’m in mourning for an armful.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

NME (New Music Express), November 5, 2007 (days before heroin relapse)
Drugs

Sadness

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Life, Death, People

“[I] Pray do you remember carrying me to a picture-dealer's somewhere by Hanover Square, [London], and my being struck with the leaving and touch of a little bit of tree[? ]; the whole picture was not above 8 or 10 inches high and about a foot long. I wish if you had time that you'd inquire what it might be purchased for..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 11 May 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 383 (Appendix A - Letter VI) <br class="br">1755 - 1769

Tree, Time

“I have to believe… the reason I got the part is that in their eyes I represented the character and what he’d really be like if he were alive. But the reason I represented him is that as a kid growing up I constantly thought about it. I was a bit of a loner. I used to come back home from school and then while I was kicking a ball against the wall for hours, I’d daydream about this. I really believe this shapes our lives and brings things to us. Fans like to think that there’s an element of kismet when an actor is cast as a superhero — that the actor was somehow fated to play the character. I believe that if there is such a thing that it would apply in my case. If you look at my screen test, which you can see online, you can see the dedication that I had… even in the screen test. I was so into it, that for me, it was real.”

Burt Ward (1945) American actor

Burt Ward — A Slice of SciFi Interview http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2011/04/27/burt-ward-a-slice-of-scifi-interview/ (April 27, 2011)

Fate, School, Home, Thinking

“The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 105)

Time, Waiting

“Yeh I know but, I remember one on our estate, right. And she was a bit… what's the word that you can use cos I don't want to offend anyone? I'd say mental… but sort of mental homeless, is that a term?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 2
On People

“If you look at early shamanic texts and cultures, the magical powers that the shaman hopes the gods might give him, flying, turning into animals, invisibility, poetry – as if poetry was a magic power. As if it was the equivalent of turning into a dog or flying. As if. What does this tell us? Maybe there was a time when we could legitimately ask the gods for it as a gift. But we know there aren’t any gods, and that they can’t give those gifts, so the best thing we can do is go to church, listen to the lesson and hope we don’t burn. Have no direct contact with whatever form of god we choose to worship. It’s like the magical or spiritual equivalent of the big flaw in Marxism. Karl Marx, lovely geezer, very humane, a bit middle class but we’ll gloss over that, but his big flaw was that when he said “The reins of society will inevitably rest in the hands of those who control the means of production” didn’t take into account middle management. All the people who get between those with the means of production and the society. That translates onto a spiritual level as the shift from our earliest beliefs, which are all shamanic.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Love, God, People, Dogs

“Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Love, Heart

“I want so much for my work to grow forth out of the material, just as in nature the plants grow forth out of the earth, which corresponds to their character. In the print 'Lebensfreude' [Joy of living] I worked for the most part with my finger, and the effect I hoped for was achieved. There is hidden in the print a bit of wantonness, in the representation as well as in the boldness of the technique. If I were to make the "ragged and moving" contours "correctly" in the academic sense, this effect would not nearly be achieved.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

in a letter to his friend Gustav Schiefler, 1906, in 'Gustav Schiefler and Christel Mosel', Emil Nolde: Das graphische Werk, vol. 2.; M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne, 1966-67, p. 8; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p.50
Nolde described how the exhilarating new sense of collaboration with the medium had freed him from the constraints of traditional etching techniques and encouraged a bolder, freer expression
1900 - 1920

Hope, Nature, Sense, Joy

“The notion of being an “enlightened” person does not reduce simply to that of being a person who has highly developed cognitive abilities or disposes of a vast stock of knowledge; neither does it reduce to the idea of being a morally good or socially useful person. “Enlightenment” is not a value-free concept because it is connected with some idea of devoting persistent, focused attention to that which is genuinely important in human life, rather than to marginal or subsidiary phenomena, to drawing the “correct” conclusions from attending to these important features—whatever they are—and to embodying these conclusions concretely in one’s general way of living. It involves a certain amount of sheer knowledge, an ability to concentrate and reflect, inventiveness in restructuring one’s psychic, personal, and social habits; but to be enlightened is not to “have” any bit of doctrine, but to have been (re)structured in a certain way.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

Source: Outside Ethics (2005), pp. 9-10.

Life, Way, Idea, Knowledge

Quotes about bit page 5

Quotes about bit
page 5