Beinecke Rare Quotes & Sayings

If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life [than a non-believer]. — Woody Allen

When a person assumes that his or her revelation is the only true one, it only says that this person has had very few religious revelations and hasn't realized how many there are. — Margot Adler

A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet. — Francois Mauriac

If Euclid's point, though incapable of being drawn by any human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. — Mahatma Gandhi

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion... — Jeremy Wade

I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. — Jojo Moyes

It's so much easier to use the default sounds in the synthesizers in Logic than it is to make your own thing or to learn how to play an instrument. — D.A. Wallach

Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone. — Annie Dillard

A person's greatness is that which makes him/her equal to others — Bert Hellinger

Of course, to lose weight, dieters need to eat fewer calories than they burn. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Regret, Joss. Regret does awful things to a person. — Samantha Young

That was indeed to live
at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones. — Sharon Creech

Obama did not want to join a historically Christian black church in Chicago that took traditional Christian doctrines seriously. Rather, he sought out a liberal church that would help him advance his budding political career. Remnick notes that Obama could have joined "Reverend Arthur Brazier's enormous Pentecostal church on the South Side." But he didn't, and Brazier explained to Remnick why Obama didn't join his church: Reverend Wright and I are on different levels of Christian perspective. Reverend Wright is more into black liberation, he is more of a humanitarian type who sought to free African-Americans from plantation policies. My view was more on the spiritual side. I was more concerned, as I am today, with people accepting Jesus Christ. Winning souls for Christ. The civil-rights movement was an adjunct; as a Christian, you couldn't close your eyes to the injustice. But in my opinion the church was not established to do that. It was to win souls for Christ. — Phyllis Schlafly