"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Quotes about sort
page 4
The way my mother and sister treat me to this very day is a source of unspeakable horror; a real time bomb is at work here, which can tell with unerring certainty the exact moment I can be hurt — in my highest moments, … because at that point I do not have the strength to resist poison worms …
"Why I Am So Wise", 3, as translated in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings (2005) edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, p. 77
Ecce Homo (1888)
In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
to make a world
de todos ha de haber en el mundo (literally, “There must be of all [types] in the world”)
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 6 / El ingenioso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha, Capítulo VI
Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60
On how envisioning an ending allows him to conclude each character’s journey in “Extended interview: Colson Whitehead on writing ‘The Nickel Boys’" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/extended-interview-colson-whitehead-on-writing-the-nickel-boys/ in CBS News (2019 Jul 14)
Quamlibet multa egerimus, quodam tamen modo recentes sumus ad id quod incipimus. quis non obtundi potest, si per totum diem cuiuscunque artis unum magistrum ferat? mutatione recreabitur sicut in cibis, quorum diversitate reficitur stomachus et pluribus minore fastidio alitur.
H. E. Butler's translation:
However manifold our activities, in a certain sense we come fresh to each new subject. Who can maintain his attention, if he has to listen for a whole day to one teacher harping on the same subject, be it what it may? Change of studies is like change of foods: the stomach is refreshed by their variety and derives greater nourishment from variety of viands.
Book I, Chapter XII, 5
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
“Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.”
Source: Reasons to Stay Alive
Source: Uncommon Criminals
Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
Source: 引爆趨勢 : 小改變如何引發大流行 [Yin bao qu shi: xiao gai bian ru he yin fa da liu xing]
Source: Infinite Jest (1996)
Context: These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light—the soul’s certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.
Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I
Source: Daughters of Darkness
Source: Magic Bleeds
Source: Baby Proof
“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
“We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”
Source: The Name of the Wind
“Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 3
“I've had the sort of day that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies.”
Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Source: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”
Source: The 39 Steps
As quoted in Charting the Candidates '72 (1972) by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7
1940s–present
Context: The state — or, to make the matter more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Source: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
Source: Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins
“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.”
Variant: Today is just one of those days the sun comes out to really humiliate you.
Source: Fight Club
“You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.”
Source: Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life
“Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.”
Yukon Ho!