Barsandbooths Quotes & Sayings

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs. — Gustave Le Bon

If you are designing cryptosystems, you've got to think about long-term applications. You've got to try to figure out how to build something that is secure against technology in the next century that you cannot even imagine. — Whitfield Diffie

What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals. — Karl R. Popper

We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude. — Thomas S. Monson

I can be more cold than people would like me to be. — Maelle Gavet

The meal was breakfast: the subject, utility clothing. 'As for the stuff they're turning out for men nowadays,' said Mr Thwaites bitterly, 'I wouldn't give it to my Valet.'

Mr Thwaites' valet was quite an old friend. An unearthly, flitting presence, whose shape, character, age, and appearance could only be dimly conceived, he had been turning up every now and again ever since Miss Roach had known Mr Thwaites. Mostly he was summoned into being as one from whom all second-rate, shoddy, or inferior articles were withheld. But sometimes things were good enough for Mr Thwaites' valet, but would not do for Mr Thwaites. — Patrick Hamilton

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry. — Nathalie Sarraute

Lose Faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are. — Tobias Wolff

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions. — Daniel Dennett

Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit. — Guy Debord

One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends. — Stephen Spender

Avoid pulpits, platforms, stages and pedestals. Keep to the hard ground. It is the only way you can judge your approximate status as a man. — Antonio Machado

She held her sword like she was ready to use it on anyone who got close. Darquesse could see her own reflection in the blade. A pretty girl with a scar on her cheek, fifteen years old and dark-haired. Her pale face splattered with other people's blood. Her eyes, dark-ringed. Is this what they all saw, she wondered, or did the see something else? Something magnificent and terrible? Something monstrous? — Derek Landy