Devorah Sperber Quotes & Sayings

The only thing Native Americans ever did better than the rest of us is spirituality. Of course, that's everything, isn't it? — Deacon Jones

Taken to extremes even the best human qualities would go sour. — Veronica Roth

Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world. — John McPhee

With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we believe. — P.D. James

Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one. — Philip K. Dick

Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with. The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject. — Amity Shlaes

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly ... — Zhuangzi

It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every 17 seconds a child dies on this planet from no clean drinking water. Good. Let's try to speed it up ... there are too many people. — Doug Stanhope

It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up. — W. Somerset Maugham

Even now, you think only in terms of the game. You are well chosen, little bird. Or are you a stoat?" Madame Spetuna bent forward, looking even harder at Sophronia's palms. She was close enough for Sophronia to feel the woman's breath on her skin. "Give your heart wisely." She paused a long time over one particular wrinkle. "Oh, child, you will end the world as we know it." Madame Spetuna swallowed and then turned Sophronia's hands over and placed them, palm down, on the table. She leaned forward, pressing them into the tablecloth as though she might rub out what she had seen. — Gail Carriger

My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process. — Tadao Ando

I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. [ ... ] The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. — Ashley Judd

An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold on to it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave. — Timothy Keller

The world is filled with archaic objects - mailboxes which look like alarm boxes, banks which look like places to break out of rather than places to enter. — Raymond Loewy