E J Smith Quotes & Sayings

It wasn't easy telling my family that I'm gay. I made my carefully worded announcement at Thanksgiving. It was very Norman Rockwell. I said, 'Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?' She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed. — Bob Smith

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. — Huston Smith

It remained for the twentieth century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, however, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine-the imago dei-image of God, it is sometimes called. And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case love's bombardment — Huston Smith

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent and in doing good to all men; indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul - We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Begging for acknowledgment, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power. — Will Smith

Nuking Russia might not be a bad idea as far as the bleedin' world is concerned. They've plunged a lot of people into miserable lives. You've only got to be in East Germany to see it. It's a horrible way to live. It's like Doncaster. — Mark E. Smith

Live in the Acts of the Apostles, and every day you will see some miracle worked by the power of the living God. — Smith Wigglesworth

[The truth] is what actually happens. Not what you want to happen. Not what you're afraid will happen. We make up stories when we want things to happen or are afraid they may happen. And sometimes we do it for fun-or to scare people or make them do our way or to hurt them. And sometimes we do it because it's a pretty story and we tell it just as we fly a kite or send balloons floating. — Lillian Smith

I'm not interested in what you know," said Herod. "I'm interested in watching you scream."
"Then you're going to be disappointed." "We'll see," said Herod with a smile. — Seth Grahame-Smith

I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone - a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness. — J.D. Salinger

And see those clouds?'
'Hard to miss'
'Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?'
'I'm sure I should.'
They're the best ones.'
'How come?'
Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you're a kid. Which is nice, you know? ... — Jennifer E. Smith

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

Some people say "if we split up,we can cover more ground"-with blood — Seth Grahame-Smith

Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel. — Zadie Smith

They'll go to jail' said the Captain. 'And they'll stay there until Christmas. Then, if they promise to give up piracy and take an honest job somewhere, they may be allowed to go free. — Alexander McCall Smith

The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true. — Alexander McCall Smith

No person is perfect. I haven't, thank God, had any infidelity issues. But you can't say what you won't ever do. And you can't say that you won't have forgiveness in your heart if there were to be an issue like that. — Tasha Smith

She had a great respect for books herself, and she wished that she had read more. One could never read enough. Never. — Alexander McCall Smith

Feasting is also closely related to memory. We eat certain things in a particular way in order to remember who we are. Why else would you eat grits in Madison, New Jersey? — Jeff Smith

One problem that I kept in mind was that in avoiding the BODY BEAUTIFUL as exhibited in the pseudo-lesbians of David Hamilton or J. Frederick Smith, I ran the risk of reinforcing negative myths, i.e. that lesbians are women who cannot attract men because they do not conform to society's standard of beauty. — Tee Corinne

If the lord came back today, [Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni] thought, he would probably be a mechanic, he reflected. That would be a great honour for mechanics everywhere. And there is no doubt but that e would choose Africa: Israel was far too dangerous these days. In fact, the more one thought about it, the more likely it was that he would choose Botswana, and Gabarone in particular. Now that would be a wonderful honour for the people of Botswana; but it would not happen, and there was no point in thinking about it any further. The Lord was not going to come back; we had had our chance and we had not made very much of it, unfortunately. — Alexander McCall Smith

It would appear to a quoting dilettante - i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority - that, as phrased by Hobbes, "from like antecedents flow like consequents." Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship's captain:
"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident ... of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS
Titanic Captain Smith's ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history. — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

When it became clear that nothing of the kind was forthcoming, I took more direct action. I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone - a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.
- De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period (1952) — J.D. Salinger

I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something. — Elliott Smith

Love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults. — Alexander McCall Smith

God does not call those who are equipped, He equips those whom He has called. — Smith Wigglesworth

An education, then, is a constellation of practices, rituals, and routines that inculcates a particular vision of the good life by inscribing or infusing that vision into the heart (the gut) by means of material, embodied practices. And this will be true even of the most instrumentalist, pragmatic programs of education (such as those that now tend to dominate public schools and universities bent on churning out "skilled workers") that see their task primarily as providing information, because behind this is a vision of the good life that understands human flourishing primarily in terms of production and consumption. Behind the veneer of a "value-free" education concerned with providing skills, knowledge, and information is an educational vision that remains formative. — James K.A. Smith

If you're lucky, you go from being a movie fan to a movie maker. — Kevin Smith

It is, she considered gravely, a terribly dangerous world. She supposed it always had been, but she was only now really experiencing it. — S.D. Smith

Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still. — Zadie Smith

Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility? — Mary Lascelles

Most humans know their own "reason" only in the sense that Hume defined it, as "a slave to the passions"-and by "passions" he meant not moral passions or the passions of transcendent genius, but only low appetites or base desires, which society and economy ultimately shape and spur on in us. — Kenny Smith

You put on eyeliner, and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous. — Robert Smith

All I'm trying to tell you is to be strong. Don't ever let nothing get you down. Don't be afraid or ashamed to love, or to grieve when the thing you love is gone. Just don't let it throw you, no matter how much it hurts. — Patrick D. Smith

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

You don't really know a song until you play it live. — Robert Smith

Said good-bye to my corner. - What will happen to the tables and chairs? I asked. — Patti Smith

Daniel is asleep. A care assistant, a different one today is swishingaroundthe room with a mop that smells of pine cleaner.

Elisabeth wonders what's doing to happen to all the care assistants. She realizes she hasn't so far encountered a single care assistant here who isn't from somewhere else in the world. That morning on the radio she;d heard a spokesperson say, but it's not just that we;ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging the opposite of integration for immigrants to this country. It's that we've been rhetorically and practically encouraging ourselves not to integrate. We've been doing this as a matter of self-policing since Thatcher taught us to be selfish and not just to think but to believe that there's no such thing as society.

Then the other spokesperson in the dialogue said, well, you would say that. Get over it. Grow up. Your time's over. Democracy. You lost. — Ali Smith

It was mossed and lichened with antiquity; and there was a hint of beginning dilapidation in the time-worn stone of the walls. The formal garden had gone a little wild from neglect; the trimmed hedges and trees had taken on fantastic sprawling shapes; and evil, poisonous weeds had invaded the flower-beds. There were statues of cracked marble and verdigris-eaten bronze amid the shrubbery; there were fountains that had long ceased to flow; and dials on which the foliage-intercepted sun no longer fell. — Clark Ashton Smith

The juvenile adage Never kiss and tell had a sound moral instinct behind it. — Alexander McCall Smith