Morton Quotes & Sayings

who does any unauthorized act in relation — Kate Morton

The true secret of success in the investment and speculative world is not so much which good securities to buy, but rather which investments to avoid. — Morton Shulman

I was physically abused and I retaliated. — Samantha Morton

We don't go out there into the world and do what would make us feel happy and fulfilled with our lives, because what if it's not good enough for our parents? What if it's not cool enough for our friends? What if our choices aren't good enough for everybody else? "But know this: no matter what you do, you will never escape judgment and criticism. Don't even take this as bad news. It just is. It's what people do. They can't help it. You're getting judged either way, so you might as well do what makes you happy. — Katie Morton

I love doing movies but I loved doing theatre just as much. — Joe Morton

The Latter, I can tell, is added for my benefit. An assumption that the elderly cannot help but be impressed by the old fashioned. — Kate Morton

It is a universal truth that no matter how well one knows a scene, to observe it from above is something of a revelation. — Kate Morton

They are doodlehums."
"Doodlehums?"
"Antisocial individuals, intentional circumventors of statutes."
"Oh, hoodlums. Yes I guessed that much on my own. What can you tell me about them?"
"Morton Zeemeister," he said, indulges in many such activities. He is the heavy one with the pale fur. Normally, he remains away far from the scene of his hoodling, employing agents to execute it for him. The other, Jamie Buckler, is one such. He has hoodled well for Zeemeister over the years and was recently promoted by him to guard his body. — Roger Zelazny

You might be on the back nine of life, but it's good to finish strong. — Morton Shaevitz

Strange that in the day of tumult, it should be something so innocuous as a dribble of water that prompts a person to tears. — Kate Morton

After all, Jews invented psychiatry to help other Jews become Gentiles. — Morton Feldman

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance. — Kate Morton

But John Morton would marry her tomorrow if he were well, - in spite of all her ill usage! Of course, he would die, and so she would again be overwhelmed; - but yet she would go and see him. As she determined to do so, there was something even in her hard callous heart softer than the love of money, and more human than the dream of an advantageous settlement in life. — Anthony Trollope

One [event] is the discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform [in 1847] by James Simpson of Scotland. Following the reports of [William] Morton's demonstration [1846], he tried ether but, dissatisfied, searched for a substitute and came upon chlorophorm. He was an obstetrician. His use of anesthesia to alleviate the pains of childbirth was violently opposed by the Scottish clergy on the ground that pain was ordained by the scriptural command, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", and that it was impious to attempt to avert it by anesthetic agents. And it was Simpson who stilled this opposition by his own famous quotation from scripture; he pointed out that when Eve was born, God cast Adam into deep sleep before performing upon him the notable costalectomy. Anesthesia was thus permissible by scriptural precedent. — Howard Wilcox Haggard

For the perfect gentleman was out there somewhere, waiting for her. He would be nothing like Father, he would be an artist, with an artist's sense of beauty and possibility, who didn't care two whits about bricks and bugs. Who was open and easy to read, whose passions and dreams brought light to his eyes. And he would love her, and only her. — Kate Morton

Youth is an arrogant place... — Kate Morton

There was a lid for each pot, she'd told me often and soberly, and she thanked God she'd found her lid in my grandfather. — Kate Morton

The young are quick to presume themselves the exclusive possessors of all strong feelings. — Kate Morton

Actions have consequences. — Morton Blackwell

babies in prams at the park. — Kate Morton

A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting. — Kate Morton

The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard. — Samuel George Morton

What you are is a complicated girl with simple needs. You need your books and time to read, and you need a few friends and you need someone-not to take care of you, but to care for you. If you have all those things, you'll always be alright. — Brian Morton

These weren't just any walls, these were the stones of Milderhurst Castle, beneath whose skin the distant hours were whispering, watching. — Kate Morton

A person never forgets the landscape of their childhood'. — Kate Morton

Without her glasses Vivian did look a little frightening. She had tight sinewy strappy muscles and a face that was hardened and almost brutal - a face that might have been chiseled by a sculptor who had fallen out of love with the idea of beauty. — Brian Morton

Better to makes changes for oneself that try to mend holes torn by the decisions of others. — Kate Morton

While their normal working relations are pervaded by an atmosphere of intrigue and competitive resentment, Diana still feels a sense of responsibility towards her husband. When he returned to public duties last year following a lengthy recuperation from his broken arm he intended to make a bizarre "statement" regarding the intense speculation surrounding his injury. He instructed his staff to find a false arm with a hook on the end so that he could appear in public like a real-life Captain Hook. Diana was consulted by senior courtiers worried that he would make a fool of himself. She suggested that a false arm should be obtained but then conveniently mislaid shortly before he was to attend a medical meeting in Harley Street, central London. While Charles was annoyed by the subterfuge, his staff were relieved that his dignity had been preserved thanks to Diana's timely intervention. — Andrew Morton

People change as they get older ... grow wiser, make better decisions ... i am very old,Laurel. Anyone who lives as long as I have can't help but collect regrets along the way ... things they did in the past ... things they wish they'd done differently. — Kate Morton

There's nothing wrong with accumulating wealth, receiving recognition for your efforts, and having some power and status--what's wrong is when you think that's who you are. — Morton Shaevitz

There's plenty of emphasis on success in our culture, but we have to help people focus on significance as well. — Morton Shaevitz

Children don't require of their parents a past and they find something faintly unbelievable, almost embarrassing, in parental claims to a prior existence. — Kate Morton

I think anybody who has been abused as a kid - and I was abused as a kid, by various people - will say it's irrational because violence is irrational. — Samantha Morton

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be. — Kate Morton

Solid human being, moving in and out of the orbits of others. — Kate Morton

I've been sitting here watching the river. It never stops, you know. — Kate Morton

The whales always fell silent when the throbbing hum of humanity grew overwhelming. Whenever a ship of any size came near, I had to take off the headset to protect my ears. I wondered if a species that had taken millennia to evolve such a delicate and sophisticated sense of hearing could adapt to humanity's sonic onslaught. My notes from the time bear witness to the effect on my own primitive ears: "I have been listening to boats all day; my head is throbbing; the silence of my canvas tent feels good tonight - poor whales." That — Alexandra Morton

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. — Kate Morton

The composer makes plans, music laughs. — Morton Feldman

Bullshit," says Viv. "Did you have your eyes open the other night in the pub? Mabe, I've never, ever seen him so happy and the way he was looking at you made even me melt. He's in love with you."
"No, he isn't."
"Yes, he is. It's just unfortunate that he's a fuckwit as well. — Lily Morton

There comes a moment in all travel when you know that you have really started. It may be weeks before you start or weeks after you have started; it is a spiritual emotion, a turning towards the future with an eager heart... — H.V. Morton

You cannot make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends. — Morton Blackwell

The cycle of God, the good, is broken by a single act of negativity. The cycle of negativity is stopped by choosing the good
not just once, but again and again until it is goodness that prevails in your life and in our world altogether. — John Morton

After so many months of hoping, long spells of illness and worry and confinement, I hold in my arms my darling child. Everything else fades away. She is perfect. — Kate Morton

His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story. — Kate Morton

All through her life she was guided, not by argument or debate, but by instinct and intuition. It was a river which took her on a journey into the worlds of astrologers, psychics, soothsayers and therapists. Here lies the key that unlocks the doors between her personality and her universal appeal. This is why if Diana had lived for ever, the media would never have understood or appreciated her. For she was not of their world nor did she share their values. When she looked at a rose she savoured its beauty, they counted the petals. — Andrew Morton

Heather resented it that this woman was his daughter. How does a writer of the most subtle, serious fiction end up with a daughter who watches Oprah? I'd be a better daughter for him than she is. — Brian Morton

Without thinking twice, he'd lifted his hand, still clutching the penknife, and drawn it swiftly along her milky skin, made his pain her own . . . — Kate Morton

Behind everything in London is something else, and, behind that, is something else still; and so on through the centuries, so that London as we see her is only the latest manifestation of other Londons, and to lover her is to plunge into ancestor-worship. — Henry Vollam Morton

My cheeks burned: with disillusionment, with the feverish afterglow of confrontation, but most hotly with embarrassment. I had perceived a closeness where none existed. — Kate Morton

Even if she loathes it. To do so would be akin to denying the existence of an awkward child. — Kate Morton

It suddenly seemed to Laurel that all the absences in her own life, every loss and sadness, every nightmare in the dark, every unexplained melancholy, took the shadowy form of the same unanswered question, something that had been there since she was sixteen years old - her mother's unspoken secret. — Kate Morton

Alice experienced one of her swift certainties then. She wasn't sure where they came from, these insights into other people's states of mind, only that they arrived unexpectedly and fully formed. She just knew things sometimes. To — Kate Morton

Married, married. My ring on your finger. Yours on mine. Till death do us part," he rattles off. "Come on Mabes, it's the next logical step. We've been living together for long enough. It's time to make an honest man out of me."
"We've been living together for five hours," I say, looking at the clock.
He shrugs. "When it's right, it's right. — Lily Morton

Don't wait too long to realize what's important. Your family might drive you mad sometimes, but they're worth more to you than you could ever imagine. — Kate Morton

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians. — Morton Feldman

There's something I want to say in this space, but it's an emptiness where there's usually a hug. - Colin Morton to Mary Lee Bragg, 1972 — David Eso

The single static note amidst the swirl of activity was Grandmother deShiel, who sat small and hunched on the cast-iron garden seat outside the library, lost in her cobwebbed memories and completely oblivious to the round glass lanterns being strung up in the trees around her - — Kate Morton

The parasite of art, the virus of art, never ceases to gnaw awat at your brain, never ceases to torture you with the knowledge that whatever you're doing could be done more beautifully, more powerfully, more stirringly, more disturbingly, more deeply. — Brian Morton

If you do what you fear, you won't fear what you do. — Gordon Morton McGregor

It's a terrible thing, isn't it, the way we throw people away? — Kate Morton

Don't treat good guys like you treat bad guys. — Morton Blackwell

You must learn to know the difference between tales and the truth, my Liza, she would say. Fairy tales have a habit of ending too soon. They never show what happens afterwards when the prince and princess ride off the page. — Kate Morton

The house, she'd explained to them many times, had spoken to her; she'd listened, and it turned out they'd understood one another very well indeed. Greenacres was an imperious old lady, a little worn, to be sure, cranky in her own way-but who wouldn't be? — Kate Morton

The feminist girls she knew at Oberlin, her roommate among them, were the kind of people who made you feel bad for liking what you liked. Sometimes when Emily was tired or blue she liked to watch "When Harry Met Sally", or "Love Actually", or old episodes of "Friends", and at Oberlin she'd had to wait until her roommate had gone out or fallen asleep. — Brian Morton

Stories about Diana's fashions, about possible rows between Charles and Diana, these were meat and drink. — Andrew Morton

It wasn't that she wanted to seduce him - not literally. But flirting was a pleasure, and flirting with intelligent people - male or female - was one of the supreme pleasures of life. — Brian Morton

A noise, and the past was chased away, dispersed into the shadows like smoke by the brighter, louder present. — Kate Morton

The certainty that she would find what it was she sought just slipped away, until one night she knew there was nothing, no one waiting for her. That no matter how far she walked, how carefully she searched, how much she wanted to find the person she was looking for, she was alone - The Forgotten Garden — Kate Morton

Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery ... — Kate Morton

life wasn't a fairy tale and there were instances when one couldn't have everything one wanted, not at the same time. As — Kate Morton

He'd found the virgin, the sacrificial lamb, and in a way he was obsessed with me. — Andrew Morton

But it is human, is it not, to long for that from which we are barred? — Kate Morton

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway, — Kate Morton

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge. — Jelly Roll Morton

People are fascinating, aren't they, the closer you get to knowing what makes them tick? — Kate Morton

For it is said, you know, that a letter will always seek a reader; that sooner or later, like it or not, words have a way of finding the light, of making their secrets known. — Kate Morton

Because desperate people cling to hope like sailors to their wreaks. — Kate Morton

But if the ants are not despondent because they have failed to produce a new social invention or convention in 65 million years, why should we be discouraged because some of our institutions and castes have not been able to evolve a new idea in the past fifty centuries? — William Morton Wheeler

I will check the internet for at least an hour every morning scanning worldwide news to do with child abuse. So if you're constantly putting yourself in an environment where you're checking up on social economics or homelessness problems, if you keep yourself aware of it, you don't really have a day off. — Samantha Morton

At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by Boulez, which is a little like saying he learned Danish to read Kiekegaard. — Morton Feldman

shoes made soft, apologetic sounds. — Kate Morton

Our hands meet for an instant and she withdraws quickly, frightened she might catch something. Old age perhaps. — Kate Morton

Poisons are more my thing — Kate Morton

So we recast the wisdom of the great thinkers in the shape of our illusions. They are shiny from their makeovers, they are fabulous and gorgeous, and they want us to know that we can have it all. — Brian Morton

While Diana finds the monarchy as presently organized a crumbling institution, she has a deep respect for the manner in which the Queen has conducted herself for the last forty years. Indeed, much as she would like to leave her husband, Diana has emphasized to her: "I will never let you down." Before she attended a garden party on a stifling July afternoon last year, a friend offered Diana a fan to take with her. She refused saying: "I can't do that. My mother-in-law is going to be standing there with her handbag, gloves, stockings and shoes." It was a sentiment expressed in admiring tones for the Sovereign's complete self-control in every circumstance, however trying. — Andrew Morton

That so unlikely an outcome should accrue to a man possessed of such limited talent and so many flaws, and one lacking in a sense of ethics and decency was one of the bitter ironies of history. — William Thomas Green Morton

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures. — Jelly Roll Morton

But in my humble opinion, a house needs a good party once in a while; remind folks it exists. — Kate Morton

For the time was almost upon him, he could — Kate Morton

Unfortunately, most actors want to play off their own personal mystique and good looks and whatever, but that will only carry you but so far. — Joe Morton

Adults weren't supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did. — Kate Morton

When I started off many years ago, I made a determination that there were certain roles I didn't want to play. — Joe Morton

Manifesting the blessings is not really anything that is complicated or even difficult. Clear out what is not serving you or no longer actively being utilized. Give and share joyously. Receive graciously. Make amends. Adorn yourself first with inner beauty so the outer beauty may benefit from your best intentions. Contribute more than you take. Make each place you find yourself better than you found it. Be an abundant source of good tidings to and from God. In short, let go and let God. — John Morton

Composing is my life blood. — Morton Gould

American naturalist William Morton Wheeler made the English term popular as the study of "habits and instincts."11 — Frans De Waal

A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She'd been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he'd stopped her to say how much he'd enjoyed it. "You've a great talent for observation," he'd said. "Ears, eyes, and heart, all at once. — Kate Morton

It's not easy, getting old, feeling one's relevance slip away. — Kate Morton

People might think writing is a hard business, but it's nowhere near acting. — Kate Morton

We're all unique, just never in the ways we imagine. — Kate Morton