J J M De Vries Quotes & Sayings

I suppose I shall marry eventually One does that, one drifts into stability — Peter De Vries

We are nothing but a string of gut on a stick of bone riding this piece of astral soot for one piteous splinter of eternity. — Peter De Vries

I tried to write worse but it was no good; my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged. — Peter De Vries

The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long. — Peter De Vries

There is a series of sectors which could be severely disrupted by terrorist attacks, particularly if they were to happen in several member states simultaneously. — Gijs De Vries

To trust someone's soul
is to love the emotions of his heart.
Petra — Petra Hermans

I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best
it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money
provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it. — Peter De Vries

Write drunk; edit sober. — Peter De Vries

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus. — Peter De Vries

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance. — Peter De Vries

Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy. — Peter De Vries

What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair. — Peter De Vries

It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate. The scattered particles of self - love, wood thrush calling, homework sums, broken nerves, rag dolls, one Phi Betta Kappa key, gold stars, lamplight smiles, night cries, and the shambles of contemplation - are collected for a split moment like scraps of shrapnel before they explode. — Peter De Vries

The wise and decent priest Jos de Vries
makes me smile by heart and soul.
Petra Hermans
November 4, 2016 — Petra Hermans

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services. — Gijs De Vries

Police forces collect information to be used in a public court to get people convicted. Security services gather information that does not necessarily lead to people being prosecuted and in many cases needs to remain confidential. — Gijs De Vries

People rarely do what they don't want to. — Peter De Vries

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetric-ally once, and by car forever after. — Peter De Vries

Look at Iraq; look at Afghanistan, where at great personal physical risk people have gone to the polls and have rejected the appeal from Bin Laden and his allies to stay at home. — Gijs De Vries

The greatest experience open to man then is the recovery of the commonplace. Coffee in the morning and whiskeys in the evening again without fear. Books to read without that shadow falling across the page. — Peter De Vries

What we are assigned to bear is in a sense a measure of our stature. — Peter De Vries

How do you expect mankind to be happy in pairs when it is miserable separately? — Peter De Vries

I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops. — Gijs De Vries

We have an integrated picture of the threat from outside and from within that is provided not only to our foreign ministers but also to our justice and interior ministers. — Gijs De Vries

We are familiar with terrorism. But indiscriminate, cross-border, religiously motivated terrorism is new. — Gijs De Vries

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us. — Peter De Vries

Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask. What's in it for me? — Peter De Vries

We turned on one another deep, drowned gazes, and exchanged a kiss that reduced my bones to rubber and my brain to gruel. — Peter De Vries

Dead drunk and cold-sober, he wandered out into the garden in the cool of the evening, awaiting the coming of the Lord. — Peter De Vries

Life is a crowded superhighway with bewildering cloverleaf exits on which a man is liable to find himself speeding back in the direction he came. — Peter De Vries

I am not impressed by big words,' said my uncle, who was always read enough to bandy 'predestination' and 'infralapsarianism. — Peter De Vries

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion ... " "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein. — Peter De Vries