Lofty Pursuits Quotes & Sayings

What satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world ... It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist. — Sarah Parcak

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be. — J.J. Abrams

Supporters of the [environmental] movement often appear to worship not the God of heaven, but the god of nature. This is a dangerous form of idolatry. Anytime animal life becomes more sacred in our view than human life, we have lost sight of our proper priorities. — Billy Graham

Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrow seems always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably; not one of them is translated. True, "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father's knowledge," but they do fall, nevertheless. — Henry David Thoreau

Prostitutes go to jail. Their customers go home and read the New York Times. In this country you're allowed to buy anything. If you need a shirt, you have a right to buy it. If you need sex, you don't. What's more important, sex or a shirt? — Jackie Mason

One person's craziness is another person's reality. — Tim Burton

Burn to be great, Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone. The plains are everlasting as the hills, The bard cannot have two pursuits; aught else Comes on the mind with the like shock as though Two worlds had gone to war, and met in air. — Philip James Bailey

Why would our brains throw us into a temporary insanity? What's the evolutionary purpose for this whacked-out loss of control? To understand why fascination grasps us so irresistibly, keep in mind the illogic of flirtation, and the lunacy of love. Fascination, as we've seen, is a visceral and primal decision-making process, one that's largely involuntary. Fisher says that our brains are literally "built to fall in love" because it's in our evolutionary best interest not to think clearly during the two-year time period it takes to meet, court, and produce a child, or else we might come to our senses and avoid the inconvenience of child rearing altogether. — Sally Hogshead

The inevitable end of multiple chiefs is that they fade and disappear for lack of unity. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I lost quite a bit of skin on the left side of my body and sustained some deep cuts in my hand and around my knee, but the doctors were able to stitch it all back together. Luckily I didn't hurt my shoulder but I'm now at the point where the only thing on my body which isn't hurting is my bad shoulder. — Jens Voigt

My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance. — Anne Rice

Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed. — Michelangelo

Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green. — Rabindranath Tagore