The stars were going out now, one by one, dropping like pennies behind the television aerials and the skylights and the washing strung between the chimneys. The sky was still dark - a sated, navy-blue woman - but the grass was jittery with the expect...
Jack Kennedy brought an "intense concentration" and a "gently teasing humor" to the dinner table, along with what Katherine Graham called his habit of "vacuum cleaning your brain.
The market economy is delivering miracles by the minute and yet we hardly notice or care; worse, we denounce the realization of this dream of all of history, this coming of heaven on earth and call it decadent and dangerous.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as...
Word of advice, sister mine. If you want to keep your papers private, don't write 'Private' on the cover. It set the mater right off. It was all I could do to stop her sniffing around like some great sniffing thing.
Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma--it just is.
If the private life of the sea could ever be transposed onto paper, it would talk not about rivers or rain or glaciers or of molecules of oxygen and hydrogen, but of the millions of encounters its waters have shared with creatures of another nature.
I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart.
Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus attention on what matters most.
With the death of what described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we b...
You should see my corgis at sunset in the snow. It's their finest hour. About five o'clock they glow like copper. Then they come in and lie in front of the fire like a string of sausages.
All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.
If a potato can produce vitamin C, why can't we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No point asking. Nobody knows.
Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.
In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First ...
Sister Aloysius Beauvier: What happened in the rectory? Father Brendan Flynn: Happened? Nothing happened. I had a talk with a boy. Sister Aloysius Beauvier: About what? Father Brendan Flynn: Private matter. Sister Aloysius Beauvier: He's twelve years...
Corporal Upham: "War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man." Captain Miller: I guess that's Emerson's way of findi...
Captain Miller: This Ryan better be worth it. He'd better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting lightbulb or something. 'Cause the truth is, I wouldn't trade 10 Ryans for one Vecchio or one Caparzo. Sergeant Horvath: Amen.
Private Henry Hook: [Throws Sergeant Maxfield across his shoulder] Twenty eight days field punishment! No pay! You know what he did? Sent my money to my Missus. [Slaps Sereant Maxfield's buttocks] Private Henry Hook: What did you do that for?
Going into a country the first time, ask what is forbidden; on entering a village, ask what are the customs; on entering a private house, ask what should not be mentioned.
Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.
