Basilischium Quotes & Sayings

Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Cave basilischium! The rex of serpenti, tant pleno of poison that it all shines dehors! Che dicam, il veleno, even the stink comes dehors and kills you! Poisons you ... And it has black spots on his back, and a head like a coq, and half goes erect over the terra, and half on the terra like the other serpents. And it kills the bellula ... '
'The bellula?'
'Oc! Parvissimum animal, just a bit plus longue than the rat, and also called the musk-rat. And so the serpe and the botta. And when they bite it, the bellula runs to the fenicula or to the cicerbita and chews it, and comes back to the battaglia. And they say it generates through the oculi, but most say they are wrong.'
I asked him what he was doing with a basilisk and he said that was his business. — Umberto Eco

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. — Sarah Kendzior

When you move beyond your fear, you feel free. — Spencer Johnson

Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can not be transcended through capitalism itself; it must be done through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I'm also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington. — Hugo Chavez

God does not look at your outer forms,
but at the love within your love. — Rumi

Life is too short to be in a hurry. — Oscar Wilde

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual. — Charles Caleb Colton

European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion. — Virginia Postrel

The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don't fold. — Yoon Ha Lee

In religious affairs, history shows us that churches have their palmy days, and then again their times of drought. The Universal Church has been thus circumstanced; it has had its Pentecosts, its Reformations, its revivals; and between these there have been sorrowful pauses, in which there was much more cause for lamentation than for rejoicing, and the Miserere was more suitable than the Hallelujah. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When you write, you start with what you know and build from there. I knew a little something about the border, Texas and Mexico from my journalism days. Knew some cops and redneck outlaws, too. And I knew I wanted to write a noirish detective novel. So I started with that and went from there. Out popped Ed Earl Burch, Carla Sue Cantrell and THE LAST SECOND CHANCE: An Ed Earl Burch Novel. — Jim Nesbitt