Inadulterate Quotes & Sayings

Real talent harnesses what it has and unlocks what it doesn't. There is natural ability, there is the discipline that develops natural ability, there is the unending study of one's craft, and there is the exponential lifting of performance by the selfless combination of efforts. — Ken Goldstein

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance. — Julian Barnes

You cannot go to the cemetery and ask to be enlightened on matters of this kind, though it would ease my mind considerably if you could. — William Maxwell

I wanted to believe, of course, but I wanted to believe with my intellectual integrity and intuition intact, with both my head and heart fully engaged. The more I was asked to choose, the more fragmented and frayed my faith became, the more it stretched the gossamer of belief that held my world view together. — Rachel Held Evans

For decades I've had an intense interest in the history and mythology of the Silk Road, I think in part because an aspect of me loves the resonance of long distance travel as a theme or anchor, if you will, for narrative. The ways that cultures rise and fade across centuries, the ways cultures connect and conflict, absorb and reject, transform or remain static: As a writer this is thematic content that never gets old for me. A million million stories rise out of the endless back and forth of cultural contact in all its best and worst aspects, and everything in between. Weave that within a story of adventure or empire or a journey into unknown spaces and I'm in writer and reader hog heaven. — Kate Elliott

Scriptures were just words on a page and my prayers failed to lift ... — Lynn Austin

We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication. — Jack Gilbert

Elves know a lot and are wondrous folk for news and know what is going on among the peoples of the land as quick as water flows, or quicker. — J.R.R. Tolkien

If moral statements are about something, then the universe is not quite as science suggests it is, since physical theories, having said nothing about God, say nothing about right or wrong, good or bad. To admit this would force philosophers to confront the possibility that the physical sciences offer a grossly inadequate view of reality. And since philosophers very much wish to think of themselves as scientists, this would offer them an unattractive choice between changing their allegiances or accepting their irrelevance. — David Berlinski

At the end of the day, remind yourself that you did the best you could today, and that is good enough. — Lori Deschene

It is the consciousness of the threefold joy of the Lord, His joy in ransoming us, His joy in dwelling within us as our Saviour and Power for fruitbearing and His joy in possessing us, as His Bride and His delight; it is the consciousness of this joy which is our real strength. Our joy in Him may be a fluctuating thing: His joy in us knows no change. — Hudson Taylor

Being able to embrace contradictions is a sign of intelligence.
Or insanity. — Richard Kadrey

It's the special things close to home, and the breadth of life, that makes our time on this earth so valuable. — Fennel Hudson

Let my muse
Fail of thy former helps, and only use
Her inadulterate strength. What's done by me
Hereafter shall smell of the lamp, not thee. — Robert Herrick