Fascination For Quotes & Sayings

The Shah "had traveled to Europe and had been fascinated by the march of progress he observed there. But, once back in Terhan, this fascination had not been translated into sustained Persian modernization, but rather dissipated in the Shah's intense but short-lived passion for the latest novelties. "He is continually taking up and pushing some new scheme or invention which, when the caprice has been gratified, is neglected or allowed to expire". — Charles Emmerson

Knyghtwood, though the gales had stripped away most of its leaves, had not lost its fascination for Ben and the twins. Indeed, its spell seemed deeper than before. The trees all had faces now, the twins said, and fingers and toes. They dug their toes in hard when the wind blew, and stretched up their arms to the sky, and pulled down the clouds with their long, grey fingers, and made purple cloaks out of them that they wrapped about their bare limbs when the night fell coldly. — Elizabeth Goudge

I am not a speaker nor a preacher. I have no mission to change the world. I have no original words or teaching to give anyone. I reflect only what I've seen and heard - most ordinary, very common. I have no fascination for fresh ideas and activity. All enthusiasm for worldly endeavours and strivings have all but gone. For me, thoughts, words and deeds- the activities of life, are merely the utensils for serving out the 'prasad' of the Being-ness. — Mooji

I think that my fascination with clothes generally was motivated by trying to create the characters for the stage. — David Bowie

I'm not quite sure when I began to be troubled by the creeping sense of my own ludicrousness, but it persisted - and eventually grew into a fascination. I started writing about it. Thus, in His characteristically mysterious way, the Lord made clear His plans for me. — Glen Duncan

Marrows - alas! - are arriving in a steady stream at the back door ... Oddly enough, the majority of people who grow them in Fairacre say, as they hand them over: 'Funny thing! I don't care for them myself. In fact, none of the family likes them!' But still they plant them. It must be the fascination of seeing such a wonderful return for one small seed, that keeps marrow-growers at their dubious task. — Miss Read

Dancing. I couldn't understand the fascination my brother had for it, but I could respect what it meant to him. How could one imagine and wonder about something so simple? An action most take for granted, yet to those with limited abilities, it's as special as floating on a cloud and snatching the nearest star from the sky to stuff in your pocket so you might wish upon it whenever you choose. — Veronica Randolph Batterson

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies dance a dance of avoidance - but for all that, they were eager to dance. — Steven Erikson

I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians - threat and obsession, taboo and fascination. I have lived with this idea for many years; yet, at the museum, I found the children's position strangely unsettling. For them, in this context, aliveness seemed to have no intrinsic value. Rather, it is useful only if needed for a specific purpose. Darwin's endless forms so beautiful were no longer sufficient unto themselves. — Sherry Turkle

Start with a girl whose blood has been steeped in Korea for generations, imprinted with Confucianism and shamanism and war. Extract her from the mountains. Plant her in wheat fields between the Red River and the Mississippi. Baptize her. Indoctrinate her. Tell her who she is. Tell her what is real.
See what happens.
Witness a love affair with freaks, a fascination with hermaphrodites and conjoined twins, a fixation on Pisces and pairs of opposites. Trace a dream that won't die: a vision of an old woman slumped on a bench, her spirit sitting straight out of the body, joined to the corpse at the waist. — Jane Jeong Trenka

The village of Wall watched the battle of wills with fascination, wondering what the outcome would be, for no one crossed Bridget Forester: she had a tongue that could, the villagers said, blister the paint from a barn door and tear the bark from an oak. — Neil Gaiman

A prisoner lived in solitary confinement for years. He saw and spoke to no one and his meals were served through an opening in the wall. One day an ant came into his cell. The man contemplated it in fascination as it crawled around the room. He held it in the palm of his hand the better to observe it, gave it a grain or two, and kept it under his tin cup at night. One day it suddenly struck him that it had taken him ten long years of solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of an ant. — Anthony De Mello

The more divorced from practical reality any given theory is, the greater its fascination for those who are also divorced from reality. — Christopher G. Nuttall

When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words. — Michael Morpurgo

I've been doing TV for fourteen years, and I've always had a fascination with the political business side. It's ruled my life. Ratings or no ratings have decided where I live, who I work with, and how long I'll be doing that particular job. — Charlotte Ross

This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to myself. I had found that "feeling special" was a private experience, and no one else's projected fascination could substitute for quiet absorption in your own life. — Lionel Shriver

At least since Darwin's day, we have known that all of us originally emerged from the sea. That fact may account for our abiding fascination with it, our longing to return there, whether to sail the main or merely contemplate its restless enormity. — J. D. McClatchy

I was seized at once with a profound fascination, a burning thirst to learn, to immerse myself totally, to melt away, to become as one with this foreign universe. To know it as if I had been born and raised there, begun life there. I wanted to learn the language, I wanted to read the books, I wanted to penetrate every nook and cranny.
It was a kind of malady, a dangerous weakness, because I also realized that these civilizations are so enormous, so rich, complex, and varied, that getting to know even a fragment of one of them, a mere scrap, would require devoting one's whole life to the enterprise. Cultures are edifices with countless rooms, corridors, balconies, and attics, all arranged, furthermore, into such twisting, turning labyrinths, that if you enter one of them, there is no exit, no retreat, no turning back. To become a Hindu scholar, a Sinologist, an Arabist, or a Hebraist is a lofty all-consuming pursuit, leaving no space or time for anything else. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come. Perhaps she had used up all her tears for Lady and Bran. It would be different if it had been Jory or Ser Rodrik or Father, she told herself. The young man in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad. — George R R Martin

Bringing nature into the classroom can kindle a fascination and passion for the diversity of life on earth and can motivate a sense of responsibility to safeguard it. — David Attenborough

A life being enacted onstage is a thing of utter fascination for me. And acting, it may begin out of vanity, but you hope that it's taken over by something else. I hope I've climbed over the vanity hurdle. — Joseph Wiseman

Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion? — Stephen Jay Gould

I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher- and I'm going to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week and I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queens my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see ti along for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own that bind, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes- what new beauties - what curves and hills and valley's further on. — L.M. Montgomery

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. — Oscar Wilde

I live for books that produce a mood of gathering creepy fascination, a true descent in the Weird. — Gemma Files

My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination - it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and, perhaps, a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things, of their complexity, fascination, and unexpectedness. — Annie Dillard

I think we love watching rich people behave badly. It has a sort of grisly fascination for us. — Laura Wade

That was the day I began cutting classes and returning to TV tapings; it ultimately led to a friendship with Johnny O, and an increasing fascination and respect for what he did. — Randy West

I've always had a fascination for everything surrounding things that are unexplainable. Not surprising that my first movie was a horror film, even though, of course, at the time I had no experience writing horror music. — Christopher Young

Only if you go forward do your environment, space, and the people you meet change; only then do you gain a new fascination for life, learning, and inspiration. — Ilchi Lee

It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods. — Stephen Jay Gould

From the first moment she met Stephen and in every minute of the short month she'd known him, a strange obsession to obey him, to please him, to give herself to him conquered her. In her innocence, she failed to comprehend the beauty of her fascination for him. She only understood the lively, provocative radiance coursing through her when he led and she followed. — April Vine

If the people of God were to transform the world through fascination, these amazing teachings had to work at the center of these peculiar people. Then we can look into the eyes of a centurion and see not a beast but a child of God, and then walk with that child a couple of miles. Look into the eys of tax collectors as they sue you in court; see their poverty and give them your coat. Look in to the eys of the ones who are hardest for you to like, and see the One you love. For God loves good and bad people. — Shane Claiborne

Hey, you have a soft spot for the mortal ones. A fascination with all the charming things they do while listening to the tick, tick, tick of their own looming lives. That's fine, that's good, everyone needs a hobby. — Rachel Hawthorne

The fascination for the Great Train Robbery has never diminished. — Luke Evans

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin. — Alan Watts

The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South. — James Weldon Johnson

Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you. Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus, I've lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit's vision, Gazing on the Crucified. — Oswald Chambers

He could have been married last year, but for his fascination with Lydia Charingford. The mornings when he tipped his hat to her on the street were always the brightest. He smiled when he saw her. He saw so little hope in the world, and she saw far too much. There were days he wanted to sit and watch her, to figure out where all that good cheer came from. — Courtney Milan

Yes, the simple truth about the greatest businesspeople I have known is that they have a genuine fascination for the truly astonishing impact little things done exactly right can have on the world. — Anonymous

I am interested in the conventions of picture-making, in the desire to picture the world and in our relationship, our continual love for and fascination with pictures. — Uta Barth

The US remains an object of fascination for me, and the subject of much study, but while many of my friends etc. are American and I have no plans at present to move elsewhere, I consider myself a permanent outsider. — Luc Sante

I have not lost my fascination with death. I have not become a noticeably less intense person. I have not, nor will I ever, completely lose the longing for that something, that thing that I believe will fill an emptiness inside me. I do believe that the emptiness was made greater by the things that I did to myself. — Marya Hornbacher

During the 1920s, progressives developed a fascination with and admiration for Italian and German fascism, and the fascists, for their part, praised American progressives. These were likeminded people who spoke the same language, and progressives and fascists worked together to implement programs to sterilize so-called mental defectives and "unfit" people, resulting subsequently in tens of thousands of forced sterilizations in America and hundreds of thousands in Nazi Germany. — Dinesh D'Souza

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me apologetically "I don't read fiction," I wouldn't have to write fiction anymore. And I share that fascination with the truth. I'm not looking down my nose at it. — Ron Currie Jr.

It's still hard for me to understand, what is to me, the morbid fascination with celebrity. I just want to sing, I want to work on my music, I want to make my movies, that's all I want to do. I understand, you know, the interest but I really don't understand the fascination with it. — Marc Anthony

For years afterward when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the cold slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the power of regretting it. Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I tell this anecdote with tongue in cheek at the start of my book William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, but my academic involvement with Burroughs was entirely due to my tutor at Oxford, Peter Conrad. I was discussing with him the idea of staying on to do graduate work and when I tossed the name of Burroughs into the conversation - well, he let it fall loudly onto the floor, and proceeded to cross himself as if warding off an evil spirit. Since I was very ambivalent about an academic career in any case, that decided it for me. — Oliver Harris

My fascination for studies proved highly beneficial, it assisted the development of my aesthetic understanding of chess, and improved my endgame play. — Vasily Smyslov

Despite the sometimes sordid turns his life took, Michael Jackson always held my fascination, like he did for most of us. — Shawn Amos

We inculcate in our children the sensibilities of raccoons, a fascination with shiny objects and an appetite for garbage, and then carp about 'the texting generation' as if thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who couldn't boil an egg are capable of creating a culture. They grow on what we feed them. It has never been otherwise. The only thing that changes is the food. — Garret Keizer

Old books exert a strange fascination for me
their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt. — Lauren Willig

There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive. She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others - likely to tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear. — George Eliot

No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he'd known, she was the only one he was compelled to be with, driven to touch. Beyond the physical, the basic and apparently unsatiable lust she inspired in him, was a constant fascination. Her mind, her heart, her secrets, her scars. He had told her once they were two lost souls. He thought now he'd spoken no more than the truth. But with each other, they'd found something that rooted them. For a man who had been wary of cops all of his life, it was staggering to know his happiness now depended on one. — J.D. Robb

We begin life as uninhibited explorers with a boundless fascination for the ever growing world to which we have access. And what I find amazing is that if that fascination is fed, and if it's challenged, and if it's nurtured, it can grow to an intellect capable of grappling with such marvels as the quantum nature of reality, the energy locked inside the atom, the curved spacetime of the cosmos, the elementary constituents of matter, the genetic code underlying life, the neural circuitry responsible for consciousness, and perhaps even the very origin of the universe.
- Brian Greene — Brian Greene

The focus on self has led our society into a fascination with pleasure, emotional and sexual stimulation, and "personal fulfillment." America's compulsion for "maximum personhood" is evidenced everywhere. — Billy Graham

My heart gave a weird little flutter. I'd been around Lexi for over a month, listening to her gush over boys, watching her point out the "gorgeous" ones. I understood human beauty now, and I'd even reached the point where I could nudge Lexi toward a cute guy, and she would agree that he was hot, but I still didn't get the fascination.
Maybe all the boy-watching had finally sunk in, because this stranger was, to use two of Lexi's favorite words, absolutely gorgeous. — Julie Kagawa

There is another thing about a kid, if we all remember, that you have an attraction to evil. Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of kids have a fascination for it. — Thomas Foran

I think the reason for my fascination with craft is what it represents, what it means in our culture, what it means in our history and in humanity. It was the idea that you could go to your butcher to get something, you could go to your tailor to get this, and you could go to your cobbler to get that. — Waris Ahluwalia

The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilets, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world. — William Makepeace Thackeray

It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices. — Antony Beevor

I've always wanted to shave my head for a role because I've wanted to play a character who had a shaved head. I don't know what the fascination is. — Elisha Cuthbert

Marie's eyes slammed the furthest wall after a back-forth, back-forth swinging from horror to horror, from skull to skull, beating from rib to rib, staring with hypnotic fascination at paralyzed, loveless, fleshless loins, at men made into women by evaporation, of women made into dugged swine. the fearful ricochet of vision, growing, growing, taking impetus from swollen breast to raving mouth, wall to wall, again, again, like a ball hurled in a game, caught in the incredible teeth, spat in a scream across the corridor to be caught in the claws, lodged between thin teats, the whole standing chorus invisibly chanting the game on, on, the wild game of sight recoiling, rebounding, re-shuttling on down the inconceivable procession, through a montage of erected horrors that ended finally and for all time when vision crashed against the corridor ending with one last scream from all present. — Ray Bradbury

Some of us will admit to a simple fascination with the inner world for its own sake, a fascination with no further goal than the thrill of discovery, the pleasure of engaging the mysterious, dark ground of our own nature. — Sandra Lee Dennis

For mile after mile the same melodic phrase rose up in my memory. I simply couldn't get free of it. Each time it had a new fascination for me. Initially imprecise in outline, it seemed to become more and more intricately woven, as if to conceal from the listener how eventually it would end. This weaving and re-weaving became so complicated that one wondered how it could possibly be unravelled; and then suddenly one note would resolve the whole problem, and the solution would seem yet more audacious than the procedures which had preceded, called for, and made possible its arrival; when it was heard, all that had gone before took on a new meaning, and the quest, which had seemed arbitrary, was seen to have prepared the way for this undreamed-of solution. — Claude Levi-Strauss

Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable — Niklaus Wirth

He did say I fascinated him, but he really should have clarified to me that I was just the fascination for the day. — Abbi Glines

It's the Hitler within us that's our problem," said the media expert Peter Boenisch. "Germans are pigheaded. The fascination of Hitler is a reaction to the complexity of the world, so complicated and so insoluble for the lower strata. There is no outlet for frustration. — Peter Wyden

They lived for different futures, but they were each other's unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace. — Thomas Pynchon

The explosion of museum exhibitions is only a mirror image of what has happened to fashion itself this millennium. With the force of technology, instant images and global participation, fashion has developed from being a passion for a few to a fascination - and an entertainment - for everybody. — Alexander McQueen

I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible. — Diane Von Furstenberg

Even the great Van Helsing is not immune from these confusing and cloying vampiric attractions, 'the fascination of the wanton Un-dead' (p. 393). But destroy the vampires though he and the other men indeed do in the end, it is Mina who remains the most important enabling factor for the defeat of Dracula, with the aid, of course, of what she calls 'the wonderful power of money!' (p. 378). And the reason for this is her ambiguous sexuality. In her is to be found something — Bram Stoker

Our fascination with the outlaw, the killer, the meth dealer, is emblematic of a pretty embarrassing problem: we trim the fat of evil. We size it up, add a glitter to it never present in reality, and make it pretty for the cameras. It looks more boring and crude than anything else, so we give it a tummy tuck. — John Thomas Allen

In each life, no matter how it's lived, there is cause for fascination and often delight — Hugh Massingberd

Oh! Great Lady of Fascination! We arise in somnambulant awe and dance entranced as you glide slowly and softly through the Heavenly Dome and suffuse our presence with unfathomable desires for faerie worlds, where all is order, where all is beauty, where nuances of quality proliferate miraculously in myraids of delicious subtleties. — Lady Svetlana

Silence is banished from our screens; it has no place in communication. Media images (and media texts resemble media images in every way) never fall silent: images and messages must follow one upon the other without interruption. But silence is exactly that - a blip in the circuitry, that minor catastrophe, that slip which, on television for instance, becomes
highly meaningful - a break laden now with anxiety, now with jubilation, which confirms the fact that all this communication is basically nothing but a rigid script, an uninterrupted fiction designed to free us not only from the void of the television screen but equally from the void of our own mental screen, whose images we wait on with the same fascination. — Jean Baudrillard

Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning. — Dorothy Dunnett

I'd like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science. — Joshua Lederberg

One of the important things to learn about parenting is that the more you worry about a child, the less the child will worry abouthim- or herself ... instead of worrying, watch with fascination and wonder as your child's life unfolds, and help the child take responsibility for his or her own life. — Charlotte Sophia Kasl

The fascination for me writing about crime in Berlin was the idea that there was this much bigger crime taking place in the background, a fantastically epochal moment in history which is just going on. That just sort of makes the whole thing have a greater resonance. — Philip Kerr

He Looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards. — Thomas Hardy

Jeeves," I said, "listen attentively. I don't want to give the impression that I consider myself one of those deadly coves who exercise an irresistible fascination over one and all and can't meet a girl without wrecking her peace of mind in the first half-minute. As a matter of fact, it's rather the other way with me, for girls on entering my presence are mostly inclined to give me the raised eyebrow and the twitching upper lip. — P.G. Wodehouse

We cannot resist the fascination of sacrifice, since a passion for sacrifices is part of a Chessplayer's nature — Rudolf Spielmann

The Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination — Frederick William Faber

And for almost four hours they sat at the opposite ends of the couch, the portable phonograph on the coffee table before them, their faces lit with silent and sorrowful fascination, listening as the music of a dead world filled the summer night. — Stephen King

The mind believes what it sees and does what it believes; that is the
secret of fascination. And in his book, St Augustine does not doubt the
reality of this fascination for one moment. — Antonin Artaud

An early fascination with higher mathematics at the university level blossomed into speculative thinking that could provide a basis for dealing with economic issues. — Lawrence R. Klein

Typical of their mania for the trivial, their legalistic fascination with documents, proclamations, ads. — Philip K. Dick

The greatest tragedy in life is our inability to experience and express fascination for the people and events we love while in their presence. — Darrell Calkins

The fascination to go into space has existed for hundreds of years. But as we do things and they're successful, people get bored. — Jim Lovell

There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius. — Vladimir Nabokov

Have you seen interviews with the young John Lennon or Bob Dylan, when the reporter tries to ask about their personal selves? The boys deflect these queries with withering sarcasm. Why? Because Lennon and Dylan know that the part of them that writes the songs is not "them," not the personal self that is of such surpassing fascination to their boneheaded interrogators. Lennon and Dylan also know that the part of themselves that does the writing is too sacred, too precious, too fragile to be redacted into sound bites for the titillation of would-be idolators (who are themselves caught up in their own Resistance). — Steven Pressfield

The horrors of Vivisection have supplanted the solemnity, the thrilling fascination, of the old unetherized operation upon the human sufferer. Their recorded phenomena, stored away by the physiological inquisitor on dusty shelves, are mostly of as little present use to man as the knowledge of a new comet or of a tungstate of zirconium ... -contemptibly small compared with the price paid for it in agony and torture. — Henry Jacob Bigelow

Swanstein seriously had tears coming down his face! I watched in amazement. Seeing girls cry makes me very uncomfortable, but a fellow male in tears, in public, was pure fascination. I wanted to get a front-row seat and put on some 3-D glasses for the show. — Flynn Meaney

Descartes argued "I think, therefore I am," and people after Freud translated that into the modern vernacular by saying, "I feel, therefore I am a self"; modern evangelicals of the relational type seem to have added their own quirk to it by saying that "I feel religiously, therefore I am a self." The search for the religious self then becomes a search for religious good feelings. But the problem with making good feelings the end for which one is searching is, as Henry Fairlie argues, that it is possible to feel good about oneself, even religiously, "in states of total vacuity, euphoria, intoxication, and self-indulgence, and it is even possible when we are doing wrong and know what we are doing." This kind of self-fascination is by no means an excrescence of an otherwise robust sector of religious life. It is at the very center of evangelicalism. — David F. Wells

As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It's a very curious thing. But I deal with human beings with whom I've come in contact and have had a chance to closely observe. Their upper-classness is not a matter of particular fascination for me. — Louis Auchincloss

All the fascination of King Solomon's Mines seems to be behind those great mountains and this I may add is a bit of advance work for mother, an entering wedge to my disappearing from sight for years and years in the Congo. — Richard H. Davis

She had not, as yet, enough introspection to realize that part of his fascination for her had arisen from his unpredictability, and her conception of him as a mysterious being from a superior world who had miraculously condescended to desire her. Nor did she realize how tightly she was enmeshed by his physical attraction, a bondage woven not only from the magnetism of his body but from the very fear and pain he caused her — Anya Seton

My fascination is broadly with biology and the fact that our increased understanding of biology allows for breakthroughs in a broad set of diseases. — Bill Gates