As with our earlier worship of saints and facts, there is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting. The message of the competition/efficiency/marketplace Trinity seem...
I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an ar...
Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines...
Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and levity and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spi...
J. Edgar Hoover: We're too generous. We're too open. Now if we don't watch out, if we don't take steps now, impose some new discipline, some decency, then we're in trouble, deep trouble. And I know it's not fashionable to say this. We're celebrating,...
Daisy Werthan: [on the phone, trying to get a ride to her hair appointment] Well, I need you now, I have to be at the beauty parlor in half an hour... no, I most certainly did NOT know you have to call a minimum of three hours ahead! I don't know why...
Colonel Rolland: [dictating a letter] The plot describes above constitutes, in my view, the most dangerous single conception that the terrorists could possibly have devised to endanger the life of President De Gaulle. If the plot exists as described,...
The Joker: [over the PA] Tonight you're all gonna be part of a social experiment. Through the magic of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate, I'm ready right now to blow you all sky high. Anyone attempts to get off their boat, you all die. Each of you has...
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrating over a military parade in Moscow] In bourgeois terms, it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms, it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes - and which of them won was of total indi...
[longer introduction to "Dance of the Hours"] Narrator: Now we're going to do one of the most famous and popular ballets ever written: the "Dance of the Hours" from Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda". It's a pageant of the hours of the day. We see firs...
Melvin Udall: I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, "Spence," an...
Colonel Smithers: We, here at the Bank of England, Mr. Bond, are the official depository for gold bullion... just as Fort Knox, Kentucky is for the United States. We know, of course, the amounts we each hold, we know the amounts deposited in other ba...
Maude: I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They're so tall and simple. What flower would you like to be? Harold: I don't know. One of these, maybe. Maude: Why do you say that? Harold: Because they're all alike. Maude: Oooh, but they...
[first lines] Dalton Russell: My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I've told you my name: that's the Who. The Where could most readily be described as a prison ce...
Dave Lizewski: That's not me, by the way. That's some Armenian dude with a history of mental health problems. Who am I? I'm kick ass! [six months earlier] Dave Lizewski: That's me. Back before any of this crazy shit happened. I guess I'm the last per...
Sebastian: This has got to be, without a doubt, the single most humiliating day of my life! [Ariel pats him on the head] Sebastian: I hope that you appreciate what I go through for you, young lady! Now, we got to make a plan to get that boy to kiss y...
Nemo Nobody aged 118: I've got nothing to say to you. I'm Mr. Nobody, a man who doesn't exist. Young journalist: Do you remember what the world was like before telemerization? Quasi-immortality? What was it like when humans were mortals? Nemo Nobody ...
Diz Moore: [dictating into phone] In protest, the whole Senate body rose and walked out. Clarissa Saunders: No! No, not that straight stuff. Now listen, kick it up, get on his side, fight for him! Understand? Diz Moore: You love this monkey - don't y...
Ulysses Everett McGill: Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent. Delmar O'Donnell: Ok, Everett. Ulysses Everett McGill: Hit by a train! Truth mea...
Narrator: In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. Naturally, the stench was foulest in Paris, for Paris was the largest city in Europe. And nowhere in Paris was that stench ...
Jane Bennet: Do you really believe he liked me, Lizzie? Elizabeth Bennet: Jane, he danced with you most of the night and stared at you for the rest of it. But I give you leave to like him. You've liked great deal a stupider person. You're a great dea...
