There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and...
God is not here to be demanded of, begged from, or criticized. He hands out burdens to those who are strong enough to carry them, and I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of lining up with the other invalids and asking for mine to be allevia...
I have an idea for a new book. It's a novel about a beautiful yet sensitive author whose spirit is crushed by her domineering editor. Do you like it?
Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?
But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite film...
We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.
To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its anc...
Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn’t? I mean, I’m trying to figure out why I can’t seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do.
Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” “Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. “No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hat...
Knowing failure is part of our process, and leads to new ideas, stronger work, and more honest questions, liberates us to peer, a little less frightened, into the unknown.
Ideas rarely come out whole. They change as they get brought to life. New constraints appear, new directions suggest themselves, and new influences come to bear.
Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a ki...
Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!
I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.
Getting some redecorating ideas?’ Nico asked. ‘Maybe you could do your dining room in mediaeval monk skulls.’ Hades arched an eyebrow. ‘I can never tell when you’re joking.
How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like...
What matters to me is that I do what I think is right and I see, I'm a numbers guy, that's my attitude. I know we have a debt tsunami coming, we are bankrupting this country and I'm in a position where I can actually advance ideas to prevent that fro...
We ought to follow through on an idea that was first proposed by President Clinton to allow people over the age of 55 who are not eligible for Medicare into the Medicare system, at cost, and below cost for those who can't afford it. That takes care o...
We have to understand that we should, at all times, have the right and the power to make decisions about our bodies. And that is an idea that must be taught at a young age. You can't wait until a person is 18 years old and say, 'Now you have the righ...
Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to acce...
Failure's inevitable. It happens all the time in a complex economy. And how did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us, computers and cell phones and so on? Well, the process was trial and error. There were a bunch of ide...
