In Harm's Way Book Quotes & Sayings

It is my hope that this book will help to demystify the origins of travel writing and show that when thousands of travelers follow a guidebook word-for-word, recommendation-for-recommendation, it not only harms contemporary international travel but can also do serious harm to places in developing countries. — Thomas Kohnstamm

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko

The anceints devoted a lifetime to the study of arithmetic; it required days to extract a square root or to multiply two numbers together. Is there any harm in skipping all that, in letting the school boy learn multiplication sums, and in starting his more abstract reasoning at a more advanced point. Where would be the harm in letting the boy assume the truth of many propositions of the first four books of Euclid, letting him assume their truth partly by faith, partly by trial? — John Perry

What would happen, they conjectured, if they simply went on assuming their children would do everything. Perhaps not quickly. Perhaps not by the book. But what if they simply erased those growth and development charts, with their precise, constricting points and curves? What if they kept their expectations but erased the time line? What harm could it do? Why not try? — Kim Edwards

Marv's a guy you've got to be careful around. He doesn't mean any harm, but he causes plenty. — Frank Miller

This book will not harm you unless someone throws it at you which is a possibilty never to be discounted. — Pseudonymous Bosch

Many times one does exactly the opposite of what one thinks, or thinks one is doing. You are on the road to that realm, but you are turning inwards. You think you are reading the book, yet you are rewriting it. When you imagine you are helping, you inflict harm. Most people want neither a new life nor a new world. So they kill the book's author — Orhan Pamuk

Just keep her away from bookstores, if you can."
Bookstores.
Thanks, Grayson. That helps.
Apparently whoever said, "no harm ever came from reading a book," hadn't met this girl. — Jena Leigh

We have to emphasize to the gay community that opposition to same-sex marriages is not about hate, but about debate. Opposition to what some of us see as a devastating move that will further weaken the family and harm children
such opposition is not hateful. Morality is not bigotry.
In their book The Homosexual Agenda, authors Alan Sears and Craig Osten give this illustration, which I've summarized: Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of a cliff and you are watching as someone on the ledge above you is walking backwards, and in a few steps he will surely fall over the precipice. You shout, warning him to stop, and before you know it, a crowd gathers around you, snapping your picture and accusing you of "hate speech." You are being warned to keep your prejudices to yourself. After all, who are you to tell someone where they can and can't walk? Who are you to say that someone can't walk backwards? You are dumbfounded, but there you are, the object of everyone's wrath. — Erwin W. Lutzer

For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism. — David Hume

I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings. — Richard Cobden

Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so full of tenderness that it would harm any dictatorship. — Juan Gelman

you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm. — Oscar Wilde

This is the one time in this book this book that I felt Mustang acted like himself. His thoughts were so "Mustang". A frown furrowed Jenna's brow. "Oh, come on. What possible harm could it do?" "Darlin', I couldn't even begin to list all the harm her meeting you could do." He pictured that cozy introduction. Sage, this is Slade and his girlfriend, Jenna. She's the woman we shared for a week in Tulsa. You should read her book. It tells all about it, right down to the old double P. Yeah, right. He might as well add on, Oh, and by the way, that the name of the porno I starred in to. — Cat Johnson

Tis the land of Fancy, and is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it, - whisk! - you clap the leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready for every-day life, with no harm done. — Howard Pyle

And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person.' — Doris Lessing

So, if we're to make any sense of the mess that the pharmaceutical industry - and my profession - has made of the academic literature, then we need an amnesty: we need a full and clear declaration of all the distortions, on missing data, ghostwriting, and all the other activity described in this book, to prevent the ongoing harm that they still cause. — Ben Goldacre

The men and women, the weapons, the deerhunt all make a huge and fragile danger in John Bolger's novel The Hunters. There is care and harm in this book and all written with felicitous and steady grace. — Ron Carlson

I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play. — Sylvia Plath

This perfected body can be compared to a mirror, and the human spirit to the sun. Nevertheless, if the mirror breaks, the bounty of the sun continues; and if the mirror is destroyed or ceases to exist, no harm will happen to the bounty of the sun, which is everlasting. This spirit has the power of discovery; it encompasses all things ... — Abdu'l- Baha

What is fear? Why are you so afraid? Even if everything is known about you and you are an open book, why fear? How can it harm you? Just false conceptions, just conditionings given by the society - that you have to hide, that you have to protect yourself, that you have to be constantly in a fighting mood, that everybody is and enemy, that everybody is against you. Nobody is against you! Even if you feel somebody is against you, he is not against you because everybody is concerned with himself, not with you — Rajneesh

I was going to suggest some hard-won guidelines for responsible reviewing. For instance: First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill. Sixth, let a hundred Harolds Bloom. — John Leonard

I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them. — Kurt Vonnegut

We may need to put down the book from time to time, but we should make sure not to let the computer become the new book. The universal medium, like the universal library, is a dream that does more harm than good. — Andrew Piper

The decrees of the Sovereign Ordainer, as related to fate and predestination, are of two kinds. Both are to be obeyed and accepted. The one is irrevocable, the other is, as termed by men, impending. To the former all must unreservedly submit, inasmuch as it is fixed and settled. God however, is able to alter or repeal it. As the harm that must result from such a change will be greater than if the decree had remained unaltered, all, therefore, should willingly acquiesce in what God hath willed and confidently abide by the same. — Baha'u'llah

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. — Oscar Wilde

Madame Picard believed that a child should be allowed to read anything: 'A book never does any harm if it is well written.' While she was there, I had once asked permission to read Madame Bovary and my mother, in an oversweet voice, had said: 'But if my darling reads books like that at his age, what will he do when he grows up?' 'I shall live them!' This reply had met with the most complete and lasting success. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: "WHY?"
And here is the best answer I can give: Because.
Because sometimes, life is damned unfair.
Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply.
Because sometimes, as the writer, you have to put your characters in harm's way and be willing to go there if it is the right thing for your book, even if it grieves you to do it.
Because sometimes there aren't really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time.
Because acceptance is yet another of life's "here's a side of hurt" lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there.
Why, you ask? Because, I answer.
Inadequate yet true. — Libba Bray

Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. — Oscar Wilde

And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough
you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me
be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody. — Djuna Barnes

And if I had a bookshop of my own? Well, it wouldn't make any money. So I am no help to anyone. But I would set it somewhere with a garden, where light poured in through the windows. Sit in the sun, I'd tell my customers. Open this book. Try it. It won't do any harm, after all, to sit a while and read. — Jen Campbell

The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder ... What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems. — Pseudonymous Bosch

The Bible has done more harm than any other book in the world. — William Floyd

Kant comes to identify the institution of property with freedom because he sees it in a fundamental sense as an extension of the self. An object which is, he argues, my property belongs solely and exclusively to myself, and it is my right to consume or use it in whatever way I please. Indeed, so strongly does the individual feel about his ownership, Kant thinks, that if somebody takes it without his consent they harm the individual just as much as though they had injured his body. From this point of view, the individual has every justification in feeling as upset about the theft of a favourite book as he has about a bruised knee. To threaten the individual's property, in the sense of its being an extension of the self, prejudices not only his feeling of well-being but also his very existence. — Howard Williams

Working on the Dark Side of the Moon" is meant to lift the curtain on secret places where smart, dedicated people work to protect the US and our allies from those who would do us harm. The NSA is easy to vilify because it works in secret, and it is powerful enough to bear watching. But it also deserves to be appreciated. This book shows the human face of two parts of the US Intelligence Community. — Thomas Reed Willemain