Best Chimera Quotes & Sayings

Mercy is a chimera. — Frank Herbert

Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will ... The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated. — Voltaire

Madness, in its wild, untamable words, proclaims its own meaning; in its chimeras, it utters its secret truth. — Michel Foucault

For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise. — Wyndham Lewis

You may think just a window
But you overtook my soul.
You are not just a whisper,
You are louder than my soul.
(from poem Chimera) — Deepa Bajaj

One can revise the rules, shift the goal posts, but to do so is just to conjure a chimera and mask it as a novum. — Hal Duncan

To call everything that appears illogical, fantasy, fairy tale, or chimera would be practically to admit not understanding nature. — Marc Chagall

If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it's this: victory is a chimera. — Andrew Bacevich

No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right. — William Borah

A wiser intelligence might now truthfully say of us at this point: here is a chimera, a new and very odd species come shambling into our universe, a mix of Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology. The combination makes the species unresponsive to the forces that count most for its own long-term survival. — Edward O. Wilson

He wanted you dead, now he doesn't, I don't know why. Chimera's crazy, he doesn't need a reason to change his mind. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Secrets, however long they are kept, usually still manage to be brought to light. The best you can hope for is that you'll be in control of when a secret gets out, not if it does."

-Melody in CHIMERA- — Vaun Murphrey

Do you know what most people have from their grandmother? A tea set. Or a quilt." Curran smiled. "If your family had a quilt, it would be made out of chimera skin and stuffed with feathers from dead angels. — Ilona Andrews

This, then, is the truth of the discourse of universal human rights: the Wall separating those covered by the umbrella of Human Rights and those excluded from its protective cover. Any reference to universal human rights as an 'unfinished project' to be gradually extended to all people is here a vain ideological chimera - and, faced with this prospect, do we, in the West, have any right to condemn the excluded when they use any means, inclusive of terror, to fight their exclusion? — Slavoj Zizek

All men love to talk about themselves, even the ones who are completely buggers. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Nature is only another chimera. — Julien Torma

Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that 'fine-tuning' the economy is a chimera, but that argument seems to have disappeared from the conservative handbook. — Alex Tabarrok

Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Darkis pointed toward the dwarf sitting btween them on the ground. "Uh, don't you think that's a bit much?"
Turi and Ethis each held separate ropes around the bound hands and feet of the dwarf. A gag was tied tightly over hi mouth.
Ethis considered the prisoner for a moment before replying. "No, it seems a resonable precaution." "Why? What did he do?" Darkis said. The chimera looked at each other, thier blank faces considering for a moment. "He kept promising not to escape," Thuri answerd at last. "He promised not to escape," Darkis asked, his brow furrowed with the puzzle, "and so you tied him up?"
"He wouldn't shut up about it," Ethis replied, his large eyes blinking indignantly. "He kept going on and on about how we could trust him and how he had nowhere to run and how he was glad it was us who took him as a slave captive of war."
"It was unnerving," Thuri finished. — Tracy Hickman

Every parasite needs a host," Jay said.
"Every Queen needs an empire," McLoughlin said. — Nathan M. Farrugia

The best a writer can hope for is hatred by the masses, revulsion among one's peers. — Hertzan Chimera

One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera. — Janos Bolyai

I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. — Sarah Hall

If it's a chimera alert, we just follows the screams. — Jasper Fforde

Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers. — John Donne

Clavain was looking at a hyperpig: a genetic chimera of pig and human. — Alastair Reynolds

When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman
known, marked, lined, familiar - -who hands him the paper every morning. — Naomi Wolf

Everyone knows that (1) happiness is the goal of life, and (2) happiness is a chimera. — Mason Cooley

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience. — Vasily Grossman

Only with people and among people do we stand a chance of and among people do we stand a chance of carrying on without going insane. We cannot in fact bear to be alone for very long, Reger said, we believe we can be alone, we believe we can be left on our own, we persuade ourselves that we can manage on our own, Reger said, but this is a chimera. Without people we have not the slightest hope of survival, Reger said, no matter how many great minds and old masters we have taken on as companions, they do not replace a human being — Thomas Bernhard

Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw. — Madeline Miller

Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace. — Florence King

We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your tears, and it will take on a body. Reality is nothing more than the chimera subjected to our desire and our suffering. — Nikos Kazantzakis

If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless. — Denis Diderot