Monella Torrent Quotes & Sayings

We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit — Aristotle.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge. — Charles Baudelaire

In my view, if you have one in 10 unemployed - something is wrong with the economy whether you call it recession or not. — Amity Shlaes

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present. — Edmond De Goncourt

Where has thou been all the dumb winter days When neither sunlight was nor smile of flowers, Neither life, nor love, nor frolic, Only expanse melancholic, With never a note of thy exhilarating lays? — Alfred Austin

Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul. — Alexander MacLaren

During Advent, we have to sit in our own anxiety and funkiness long enough to know what a Promised Land would be like, or, to put it another way, what it means to be saved
which, if we are to believe Jesus or Gandhi, specifically means to see everyone on earth as family. — Anne Lamott

Some days you wake up changed. This was one for Starling, she could tell. What she had seen yesterday at the Potter Funeral Home had caused in her a small tectonic shift. Starling had studied psychology and criminology in a good school. In her life she had seen some of the hideously offhand ways in which the world breaks things. But she hadn't really known, and now she knew: sometimes the family of man produces, behind a human face, a mind whose pleasure is what lay on the porcelain table at Potter, West Virginia, in the room with the cabbage roses. Starling's first apprehension of that mind was worse than anything she could see on the autopsy scales. The knowledge would lie against her skin forever, — Thomas Harris

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill. — Philip Roth

So we know that human nature, and that includes our nature, yours and mine, can very easily turn people into quite efficient torturers and mass-murderers and slave-drivers...To the extent that the statement is true, and there is such an extent, it's just not relevant: human nature also has the capacity to lead to selflessness, and cooperation, and sacrifice, and support, and solidarity, and tremendous courage, and lots of other things too. — Noam Chomsky

Saddam is a war criminal and there are no two people who can argue over this. — Muqtada Al Sadr

Smith, you don't realize it's a privilege to practice giving presents to others.' The way he did it was charming; there was nothing glittery and Christmasy about it, but almost sad, and sometimes his gifts were old beat-up things but they had the charm of usefulness and sadness of his giving. — Jack Kerouac

Causality is a pointless superstition. These days it would take more than one book to persuade anyone of that. — Arif Ahmed

Right before doing an exercise, take a few deep breaths to prime your body with oxygen and to get rid of some extra carbon dioxide. Then, breathe out as you contract your muscles and start the exercise. Focus on breathing regularly as you continue doing the exercise. If the exercise is so intense that you can't breathe regularly, take shallow breaths instead. — Raymond Wu

To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket
spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside
confused him so he lost his faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won't hold still for us! Damn it anyway! — Ken Kesey