Become One Quotes & Sayings

Donald Lydecker: Alcoholism is not a disease, it's a failing. You've turned it into a church. You worship the altar of self-pity. I come to these rooms for one reason, to remember what I don't want to become ... helpless, impotent, and weak. — James Cameron

My one challenge with the support group that I'd become involved with on campus is that the people seem to spend as much time talking about their ill-begotten pasts as their promising futures. It's as if people are drawn to looking back. They can't move on until it all makes sense. Humbly submitted: It never does. — Carol Plum-Ucci

After I retired, it seemed to me that there was a whole new world out there, which was a digital world driven by a marketplace, basically, which had a huge potential driven by handheld devices, which would one day become the virtual retail store of India. — Ratan Tata

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head. — Judy Blume

No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance - it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you - You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it - at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. — William Shakespeare

I was at college studying psychology, philosophy, textiles and drama. But because I wasn't one of those all-singing, all-dancing stage-school kids, I just assumed I'd never become an actor. — Kathryn Prescott

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence ... There are realms of reality or - more exactly - of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing. — Paul Tillich

So many things have now become interesting to me because at first I had to do them whether I liked them or not, and thus one is kicked into conquering new countries where one is afterwards at home. — C.S. Lewis

Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature. — Edward Witten

I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do. — T.E. Lawrence

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people. — Jacque Fresco

It makes one sad to see the sell-out of President Fox, really it makes one sad. How sad that the president of a people like the Mexicans lets himself become the puppy dog of the empire. — Hugo Chavez

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. — Ada Louise Huxtable

I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit forming. — Warren Buffett

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? — Friedrich Nietzsche

The empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also our most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation (and also are best fighters for excellence, effectiveness, competence). And it also becomes clearer and clearer that our best 'helpers' are the most fully human persons. What I may call the bodhisattvic path is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal, i.e., the best way to become a better 'helper' is to become a better person. But one necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people. So one must and can do both simultaneously. — Abraham H. Maslow

When love is real, even when you can't find it under mountains of hurt feelings and shuttered emotions, it's not really gone. All it takes is finding one new reason to fall in love. Just one, and all the other reasons become clear again. — Amy E. Reichert

How long did it take to become a gracious person? One who could accept help and give thanks without being resentful of it? — Tracy Guzeman

That happens a lot when people become parents, too. There's just so much at stake suddenly, and you're also witness to the total miracle of birth, and stuff like that. So I started reading tons of religious texts and checking everything out. One of the things I wanted to make sure of on the record is that it still has a "searching" vibe rather than an authoritative vibe. — Mason Jennings

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.' — Jose Saramago

Today, fantasy is, for better or for worse, just another genre, a place in a bookshop to find books that, too often, remind one of far too many other books; it is an irony, and not entirely a pleasant one, that what should be, by definition, the most imaginative of all types of literature has become so staid, and, too often, downright unimaginative. — Neil Gaiman

Books are one thing I love above all else. In a story, I can become anyone, travel any place. In those pages lives my only true freedom. — Sherry D. Ficklin

In this vast universe There is but one supreme truth- That God is our friend! By that truth meaning is given To the remote stars, the numberless centuries, The long and heroic struggle of mankind ... O my Soul, dare to trust this truth! Dare to rest in God's kindly arms, Dare to look confidently into His face, Then launch thyself into life unafraid! Knowing thou art within my Father's house, That thou art surrounded by His love, Thou wilt become master of fear, Lord of Life, conqueror even of death! — Joshua L. Liebman

We are all more interested in ourselves than in any one else in this world, until love comes; then we soon learn to a love man more than life, and when a child comes we learn another love, so clear, so high, so purifying, that we become of no moment at all, and live only for those we love." "You — Gene Stratton-Porter

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them ... You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted ... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules. — Joseph Campbell

The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. — James Madison

He had ambitions, at one time, to become a sex maniac, but he failed his practical. — Les Dawson

If our mental processes become focused on our internal dogmas and isolated from the unfolding, constantly dynamic outside world, we experience mismatches between our mental images and reality. Then confusion and disorder and uncertainty not only result but continue to increase. Ultimately, as disorder increases, chaos can result. Boyd showed why this is a natural process and why the only alternative is to do a destructive deduction and rebuild one's mental image to correspond to the new reality. — Robert Coram

The more perfectly you can refine the process of Frisbee, the tighter your energy is and the more you become one with the nothingness of the Frisbee, the nothingness of the play. — Frederick Lenz

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one. — W. Somerset Maugham

Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to his character have we become? — Elyse Fitzpatrick

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

One drawing demands to become a painting, so I start to work on that, and then the painting might demand something else. Then the painting might say, 'I want a companion, and the companion should be like this,' so I have to find that, either by drawing it myself or locating the image. — Gary Hume

In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too. — Elias Canetti

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place. — Jodi Picoult

Fearlessness is not what you do to win, but what you don't do. When you love yourself as much as your God, you won't see other people as the source of your pain. Rather, you will see who you have become because you honestly believed that your chains would be broken through hatred, instead of kindness. — Shannon L. Alder

If you met the robbers and they robbed you, you should not cry. Think 'how will I go on [do progress] now?' You will get all the help you need. What does one gain by crying 'what will become of me?' Who is the one suffering, the robber or the one who was robbed? The fault is of the sufferer. — Dada Bhagwan

The character and the actor in a long-running series slowly become one. I think there must be funny stories about actors who, in the pilot for a TV series, did some weird thing with their eyes, or some speech impediment or something, and the next thing you know, it's eight years later, and they're still doing that freaking gag. — William H. Macy

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I'm an alcoholic who doesn't (and doesn't want to) drink anymore so I exist in a state of never-ending micro-addictions that reveal themselves in the form of obsessions. I was the same as a child. These obsessions are things I want, want to do, or want to be. I become so fixated I neglect every other aspect of my life. What results is that I get really good at doing a lot of different things but no matter what I do, it's never the thing that gives me the feeling, this is what I've been searching for, I am home. In other words, I never feel thin. One hundred percent of the time. It — Augusten Burroughs

I consistently run into young adults who have quickly turned away from traditional jobs at great companies to try their hand at a start-up. I believe that some of this stems from the desire to strike it big like Mark Zuckerberg, but I also believe it is because starting a company has become far cooler than working in one. — Maynard Webb

Our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and understands that this process of climbing higher takes preparation, time, and commitment. He understands that we will make mistakes at times, that we will stumble, that we will become discouraged and perhaps even wish to give up and say to ourselves it is not worth the struggle. We know it is worth the effort, for the prize, which is eternal life, is "the greatest of all the gifts of God." And to qualify, we must take one step after another and keep going to gain the spiritual heights we aspire to reach. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

While it only takes one spouse to be friendly, it takes both spouses to be friends. When both spouses are unfriendly, the marriage is marked by conflict and coldness. When one spouse is friendly and the other is unfriendly, the marriage is marked by selfishness and sadness. But when both spouses each make a deep, heartfelt covenant with God to continually seek to become a better friend, increasing love and laughter mark the marriage. — Mark Driscoll

they feel ignored, unappreciated, and unloved. That's because their context-blind Aspie family members are so poor at empathic reciprocity. As we have learned, we come to know ourselves in relation to others. This doesn't just apply when children are developing self-esteem. Throughout our lifespan, we continue to weave and re-weave the context of our lives, based on the interactions we have with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones. This is why it is so important for an NT parent/partner to get feedback from their spouse. A smile, a hug, a kind word, a note of encouragement: These are messages that reinforce the NT's self-esteem and contribute to a healthy reciprocity in the relationship. Without these daily reminders from their loved ones, NTs can develop some odd defense mechanisms. One is to become psychologically invisible to others and even to themselves. — Kathy J. Marshack

One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old — Leon Trotsky

The Voice of Christ: MY CHILD, do not trust in your present feeling, for it will soon give way to another. As long as you live you will be subject to changeableness in spite of yourself. You will become merry at one time and sad at another, now peaceful but again disturbed, at one moment devout and the next indevout, sometimes diligent while at other times lazy, now grave and again flippant. But the man who is wise and whose spirit is well instructed stands superior to these changes. He pays no attention to what he feels in himself or from what quarter the wind of fickleness blows, so long as the whole intention of his mind is conducive to his proper and desired end. — Thomas A Kempis

As we learn in [the] scriptures, the fundamental purposes for the gift of agency were to love one another and to choose God. Thus we become God's chosen and invite His tender mercies as we use our agency to choose God. — David A. Bednar

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity
precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for ii
to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it. — Robert Greene

It has affected me very much in the last 10 years. I get it from my grandmother. She was very superstitious as well. I'm funny about numbers. It's become a phobia, so I have to watch it. It affects your day a lot. Before I go on stage, there are certain things I do that are semi-sort of Gypsy superstitious things, but I'm coping with them. It hasn't affected the music, thank God. If you got really bad, you'd say I'll pick that note instead of that one or sing this song before that. — Rory Gallagher

The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much. — Benjamin Hoff

Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other? — Thomas Pynchon

This is one of the truths of the influence industry in Britain: lobbyists are central to the process of government. To see lobbyists as separate and external to the system is a mistake. Rather than being parasitical, lobbyists should more accurately be viewed as essential to it, subsidising it even. As lobbying activity has increased, so our government has become ever more dependent on lobbyists to function. 'Our vaunted constitution is really a framework of lobbying', Austin Mitchell MP remarked twenty years ago.18 — Tamasin Cave

Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide. — Paul Davies

Coffee could easily become lunch if one was not careful, and lunch could so comfortably slip into afternoon tea. — Alexander McCall Smith

Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they'll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I'm lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone's hallway. — Amanda Sledz

All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. — Doris Lessing

According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct result of a policy authorized by the first American Catholic president.' At one point an aide tried to console him by reminding him that Diem and Nhu had been tyrants.
'No," he replied. "They were in a difficult position.' They did the best they could for their country. — Stephen Kinzer

Due to the failure of politics, which has become a process of middle-management, art has become one of the last open spaces to question core beliefs and to design a viable future. Art becomes an open space where we can ask fundamental questions about ourselves. — Antony Gormley

One is either an artist or one is not. It is not something one becomes. It is something that one is from birth. We do not study to be artists. We study to become more proficient. To understand more. — Edward Swift

What did that say about me? Had I become one of the monsters I thought I was fighting?
"Things didn't have to be like this," I commented. "He could've made different choices. — J.M. Northup

But then anytime you join in a mass movement you're going to find yourself standing alongside idiots. One reason people go to mass rallies is to become stupider and surer of themselves than they are when they're alone. — Tim Kreider

By the time that adorable steak and I had become one flesh I could have taken on the whole Valmy clan singlehanded. — Mary Stewart

He lay there realizing how thoroughly he'd removed himself from the world or obligations, how stupidly independent he'd become: he needed no one, knew no one, was not a part of anyone's life. He'd so thoroughly removed himself from the world of dependencies and obligations, he wasn't sure he still existed. — A.M. Homes

Alone, her soul destroyed and her heart bereft and empty, the Lady Ninnia touched her amulet and closed her eyes. "No," she breathed, "I was wrong. This time, my wisdom has failed me. Our daughter is not ready. To become the Handmaiden of Orion, one must know terrible grief in order to learn compassion." She gazed after her husband and shook her head sorrowfully. "Even the deaths of us, her parents, are not, I fear, enough. May she find what she needs upon that dark and deadly road upon which I have sent her. My poor, poor child - farewell. — Robin Jarvis

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage. — Rajneesh

If we start worrying whether our nose is too big or too small, we should think, "What if I had no head? - now that would be a problem!" As long as we have life, we should rejoice. If everything doesn't go exactly as we'd like, we can accept it. If we contemplate impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or burned, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make ourselves or others unhappy. — Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I think that ties into our name and the meaning behind our name, going Against the Current. We don't really want to fit in to one section. If we're able to be grouped into one category then we've become something that already exists, probably. We want all of those kids that would come out to that pizza shop to come to our show and all of those kids who know us from the radio to come to that show. We have kids that come to our show that have been coming to concerts for years, and ones that it's their first concert and they just wanted to see it. I think that's the best way to do it. — Chrissy Costanza

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. — Karl Marx

Well being is a condition one has to groom, a condition one has to become aquainted with in order to seek it — Carlos Castaneda

This basic problem of relevance-cum-subservience has been given an added twist in the modern world, where relevance has become not only hollow but fragile and short-lived. A wider range of choices, a deeper uncertainty of events, a more pressing need for new styles - all this makes for an accelerating turnover of issues, concerns and fads. Nothing tires like a trend or ages faster than a fashion. Today's bold headline is tomorrow's yellowing newsprint. Thus the relevance-hungry liberals achieve relevance, but their victory is Pyrrhic. It is precisely as they win that they lose. As they become relevant to one group or movement, they become irrelevant to another and find themselves rudely dismissed. Far from being in the avant-garde, Christian liberals trot smartly behind the times. Far from being genuinely new or radical, they catch up and announce their discoveries breathlessly, only to see the vanguard disappearing down the road on the trail of a different pursuit. — Os Guinness

Moving pictures have become one of the greatest revitalizing forces in race adjustment. — Oscar Micheaux

Most Christians seem to have two kinds of lives, their so-called real life and their so-called religious one. Not (C. S.) Lewis. The barrier so many of us find between the visible and the invisible world was just not there for him. It had become natural for Lewis to live ordinary life in a supernatural way. — Walter Hooper

It was one of the most sublimely exhilarating moments of my life. I was half a step in front of the real, an inch or two beyond the confines of my body, and when the thing happened just as I thought it would, I felt my skin had become transparent. I wasn't occupying space anymore so much as melting into it. What was around me was also inside me, and I had only to look into myself in order to see the world. — Paul Auster

And then a new screen, one I had never seen before, never even heard of popped up. It gave me a choice. I could become the new Lord of Darkness myself, or I could take a gamble and be reincarnated. I chose wisely. — Laurie Halse Anderson

EJ cries, "We've been best friends since kindergarten. You can't become a babe slayer and leave me in the dust! I don't have an older sister. I'm disadvantaged. All I got is Emmy, who can only drop preschool wisdom like, 'No pull Barbie's hair!'"
"That's probably some early girl wisdom. Nobody likes to get their hair pulled," I say. "Except this one chick in my porno; I think she's into it. I cant really tell, though. I wish they would slow down. — Brent Crawford

You know, that is one of the consequences of the weak sense of responsibility of the press. The press does not feel responsibility for its judgments. It makes judgments and attaches labels with the greatest of ease. Mediocre journalists simply make headlines of their conclusions, which suddenly become generally accepted. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent. — Eleanor Roosevelt

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, 'Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate a camel. The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed them you.' ... 'Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up'. What a downright weird story. What a peculiar psychology. — Yann Martel

Because Buffy really has become the straight man, every once in a while it's nice to be the one that tells the joke and it's nice to be the one that is the joke and it's nice to do something that's a little bit different. — Sarah Michelle Gellar

A man should begin with his own times. He should become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is living and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or too little. He should take his reading as he does his food or his exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will discover from his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or merely enjoyable, in past literature. He should have the pleasure of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to them by the scalp. — Henry Miller

The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a daness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain. — Bao Ninh

Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims. — Evgeny Morozov

The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. — Daniel M. Gilbert

It seems quite bizarre how much I loved one big bundle of all of my demons, but that may have been his core appeal. If he could embrace me, there was a chance I could become tolerable, even passable in those worlds that considered me a plague. — Maggie Young

We know that to become a Christian we shouldn't try to fix ourselves up, but when it comes to praying we completely forget that. We'll sing the old gospel hymn, "Just as I Am," but when it comes to praying, we don't come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up. Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you've been taught. — Paul Miller

More than that, the thought rattled uncomfortably in my child brain that I would one day become one of them. My body then was sexless. Though I had seen the curves of adults, I couldn't fathom the chrysalis that would turn my featureless body into something with heft and gravity, curves and the inclination to use them. — Valentine Glass

Scientific knowledge has taught [humans] much since the days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further. And, as for the great necessities of Fate, against which there is no help, they will learn to endure them with resignation. Of what use to them is the mirage of wide acres in the moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seen? As honest smallholders on this earth they will know how to cultivate their plot in such a way that it supports them. By withdrawing their expectations from the other world and concentrating all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers, they will be able to say without regret: 'We leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows. — Sigmund Freud

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Always preoccupied with his profound researches, the great Newton showed in the ordinary-affairs of life an absence of mind which has become proverbial. It is related that one day, wishing to find the number of seconds necessary for the boiling of an egg, he perceived, after waiting a minute, that he held the egg in his hand, and had placed his seconds watch (an instrument of great value on account of its mathematical precision) to boil!
This absence of mind reminds one of the mathematician Ampere, who one day, as he was going to his course of lectures, noticed a little pebble on the road; he picked it up, and examined with admiration the mottled veins. All at once the lecture which he ought to be attending to returned to his mind; he drew out his watch; perceiving that the hour approached, he hastily doubled his pace, carefully placed the pebble in his pocket, and threw his watch over the parapet of the Pont des Arts. — Camille Flammarion

I love Koscielny, I've seen him a lot. He has good leg speed, which reminds me of Lilian [Thuram]. The last time we spoke I told him to work hard and he'll become one of the best defenders in the world. He's at the standard of a Vidic or Pique. I mean that sincerely. — Marcel Desailly

I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to. — William Stanley Jevons

Work is experienced as discipline--the background of which is ascesis--even though it also gives pleasure. One is allowed to become "depersonalized" in work, to forget the self (to lose contact with its most intimate feelings and needs)--indeed all that is necessary if one is to give oneself fully to the work. — Susan Sontag

The scene had been a nightmare, one of those insane nightmares where the most normal objects become infinitely menacing. — Philippa Gregory

The Celestial (Heavenly Gods) become pleased with the one who isn't hungry for fame and recognition. The whole world can be pleased with us, but because of our hunger they are not pleased with us. — Dada Bhagwan

A library is such a potent symbol of a town's values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND DULL. — Caitlin Moran

Following the Universal Way means practicing selflessness and extending virtue to the world unconditionally. In this way one not only eliminates the heavy contamination accumulated throughout many lifetimes but may also bring about the possibility of restoring one's original divine nature and become an integral being of the multi-universe. — Lao-Tzu

14Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise h partook of the same things, that i through death he might j destroy k the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and deliver all those who l through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he m helps the offspring of Abraham. 17Therefore he had n to be made like his brothers in every respect, o so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest p in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18For because he himself has suffered q when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. — Anonymous