Antepenultimate Quotes & Sayings

Emperor Bharat's empire could be described as the apogee of the feminine way of life - of freedom, passion, beauty. At its best, it is compassionate, creative and especially nurturing towards the weak. But as feminine civilisations decline, they tend to become corrupt, irresponsible and decadent.
The masculine way of life is defined by truth, duty and honour. At its peak, masculine civilisations are efficient, just and egalitarian. But as they decline, they become fanatical, rigid and especially harsh towards the weak. — Amish Tripathi

The conversation at dinner hadn't been successful either; it bore the marks of an old married couple who had very little left to say to each other. — Steve Martin

Parents sat gloomy and still, like rows of turnips in a grocer's box. Their little criminals sat with them, tapping LOLs on their phones, or milled in the yard outside stinking of Lynx and taut nonchalance. Solicitors strode in and out in a twist of slacks and briefcases. — Lisa McInerney

every man's watchman, is his conscience. — Harper Lee

Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep - for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: "Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Powerful warm, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?" A bit of a scare shot through Tom - a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said: "No'm - well, not very much. — Mark Twain

Friends aren't forever. They're not even for a while. They come into your life
and they leave when something or someone changes. Nothing grounds them to you.
Not blood or loyalty. They're just ... fleeting.-Daisy Calloway — Krista Ritchie

Conservatives frequently complain of being frozen out of the culture industry, though, like all industries, the culture industry will produce or sell anything it expects to profit from. — Alex Pareene

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. — George Orwell

Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do. — Robert Frost

We believe only what we see. So, with television, we believe everything. — Dieter Hildebrandt

Are you sure you've never dated girls before? You're awfully good at this."
Hunter's gaze returned to me. I could see some of that hated anger still in her eyes. "Kissing?"
I couldn't help laughing. "That, top. But I meant facing off against the Purity Crusader over there," I clarified. "I've been with women who were too afraid to even hold my hand in public."
I don't see it as a big deal," Hunter replied. "It shouldn't matter if a person is straight or gay or something in between. If I want to show i care about someone, I shouldn't have to hide it. — Eliza Lentzski

The world we want to transform has already been worked on by history and is largely hollow. We must nevertheless be inventive enough to change it and build a new world. Take care and do not forget ideas are also weapons. — Subcomandante Marcos

Amor fati: this is the very core of my being - And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it! - To it, I owe even my philosophy. ... Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time - forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity, - on which things we had formerly staked our humanity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Sharpe had no thought of deserting now, for now he was about to fight. If there was any one good reason to join the army, it was to fight. Not to hurry up and do nothing, but to fight the King's enemies, and this enemy had been shocked by the awful violence of the close-range volley and now they stared in horror as the redcoats screamed and ran towards them. The 33rd, released from the tight discipline of the ranks, charged eagerly. There was loot ahead. Loot and food and stunned men to slaughter and there were few men in the 33rd who did not like a good fight. Not many had joined the ranks out of patriotism; instead, like Sharpe, they had taken the King's shilling because hunger or desperation had forced them into uniform, but they were still good soldiers. They came from the gutters of Britain where a man survived by savagery rather than by cleverness. They were brawlers and bastards, alley-fighters with nothing to lose but tuppence a day. — Bernard Cornwell

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them. — Ben Okri