If you are offered a bull, do not ask how much milk he will give.
If the hunter comes back with mushrooms, don't ask him how his hunt was.
If you would make an enemy, lend a man money, and ask for it back again.
What men usually ask for when they pray to God is, that two and two may not make four.
If you see a frog squatting on his house, don't ask him for a chair.
He who asks for alms blushes once; he who refuses, twice.
I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .
Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point...
Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security. But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessings...
As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous, and that those behind it have exceptional powers of resistance. [On witchburning...
The polarization is such that the conservatives on this side have their prayer meeting and their choir meeting. And the liberals on this side have their prayer meeting and their choir meeting, and the two sides never get together and talk about it. T...
I think people get excited about their perspective on sexuality because it gives them the feeling that, their failures notwithstanding, if they take a hard stand on what they consider to be godly, maybe God will be more merciful to them.
Shouldn't it be atheists, believing they are not being watched, who commit virtually all the crimes and fill up all the prisons, while people who believe in an omnipresent god lead spotless lives out of either respect or fear? But this is far from th...
How does the Christian who claims a weeping statue of Mary is a miracle explain the milk-drinking statues of the Hindu god Ganesha? How does the Christian who says a healing miracle proves the existence of Jesus feel about millions of claims of divin...
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attach...
The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real questions facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but "What do we want to want?' Tho...
So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed...remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know. The question is what we're capable of knowing, and d...
A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the fir...
Jake Gittes: Maid's night off? Evelyn Mulwray: Why? Jake Gittes: What do you mean, why? Nobody's here, that's why. Evelyn Mulwray: I gave everyone the night off. Jake Gittes: Easy. It's an innocent question. Evelyn Mulwray: No question from you is in...
Jep Gambardella: To this question, as kids, my friends always gave the same answer: "Pussy". Whereas I answered "The smell of old people's houses". The question was "What do you really like the most in life?" I was destined for sensibility. I was des...
Roger Murtaugh: See how easy that was? Boom, still alive. Now we question him. You know why we question him? Because I got him in the leg. I didn't shoot him full of holes or try to jump off a building with him. Martin Riggs: Hey, that's no fair. The...
