Llywelyns Webster Quotes & Sayings

Prayer doesn't work. Perhaps it makes the believer feel better (in the same way that meditation or deep thought would), but prayer doesn't actually affect the external world. Not only is it ineffective, but it is also a very narcissistic practice ... why would a 'God' change its 'Divine Plan' to accommodate any person's wishes? — David G. McAfee

We do not find among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and the Orientals the same value placed on love because we do not find there the same positive value placed on suffering. Suffering was not the hallmark of seriousness; rather, seriousness was measured by one's ability to evade or transcend the penalty of suffering, by one's ability to achieve tranquillity and equilibrium. In contrast, the sensibility we have inherited identifies spirituality and seriousness with turbulence, suffering, passion. For two thousand years, among Christians and Jews, it has been spiritually fashionable to be in pain. Thus it is not love which we overvalue, but suffering - more precisely, the spiritual merits and benefits of suffering. — Susan Sontag

I found in general, I got involved in that station toward the end of my freshmen year, and I just loved how there's this incredible library of music that I'd never heard of from all over the world and different genres. — Chris Baio

Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt. — Salman Rushdie

Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as "Florida Purchase, 1819" - but it came from Andrew Jackson's military campaign across the Florida border, burning Seminole villages, seizing Spanish forts, until Spain was "persuaded" to sell. He acted, he said, by the "immutable laws of self-defense. — Howard Zinn

Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake. This young bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an unsuccessful life, or, as you call it, 'grey'?"
"Because - "
"One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests - wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows" he smiled - "are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs. I quite grant - I look at the faces of the clerks in my own office, and observe them to be dull, but I don't know what's going on beneath. — E. M. Forster

Women can be very annoying. Sometimes they are very nice and they make you stay up all night thinking about them, unable to breathe because you feel your heart wanting to jump out of your chest. Other times they act as if the world is theirs to take, as if men were made to fulfil their every need. — Elnathan John

I look at Bill Clinton, the way I look at Bill Gates. As long as my Microsoft stock is going up, I don't care what Bill Gates does in the privacy of his own home. — Will Smith

Most people live under the misconception that it takes a long time to change. This is not true. It can take a long time to prepare to change or to decide to change or even to want to change. Change itself, however, happens in a heartbeat. — Andy Andrews

Dynamical beauty transcends specific objects and phenomena, and invites us to imagine the expanse of possibilities. For example, the sizes and shapes of actual planetary orbits are not simple. They are neither the (compounded) circles of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Nicolaus Copernicus, nor even the more nearly accurate ellipses of Kepler, but rather curves that must be calculated numerically, as functions of time, evolving in complicated ways that depend on the positions and masses of the Sun and the other planets. There is great beauty and simplicity here, but it is only fully evident when we understand the deep design. The appearance of particular objects does not exhaust the beauty of the laws. — Frank Wilczek

O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue,
with peace you force all the restless work to end;
those who exalt you see and understand,
and he is sound of mind who honours you.
You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so
you offer calm in your moist shade; you send
to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend
up to the highest, where I long to go.
Shadow of death that brings to quiet close
all miseries that plague the heart and soul,
for those in pain the last and best of cures;
you heal the flesh of its infirmities,
dry and our tears and shut away our toil,
and free the good from wrath and fretting cares. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers. — Doris Lessing

She had always been different, even when she tried not to be, unable to curb her curiosity which led her to read a great number of books. Her world was constantly expanding until she could no longer fit herself into the culture that was most important to her. — Susan Power