Most Rare Quotes & Sayings

Pure love was always difficult to witness. Why was that, she wondered? Because it was so rare? So beautiful? SO damned unattainable for most of the poor saps muddling through this life? — Lynda Sandoval

Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing. — Joe Abercrombie

PROBABILITY BY LIA PURPURA Most coincidents are not miraculous, but way more common than we think - it's the shiver of noticing being central in a sequence of events that makes so much seem wild and rare - because what if it wasn't? Astonishment's nothing without your consent. — Anonymous

The world needs people like you,' Simmon said in the tone of voice that let me know he was turning philosophical. 'You get things done. Not always the best way, or the most sensible way, but it gets done nonetheless. You're a rare creature. — Patrick Rothfuss

A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot. — Irvin D. Yalom

I have a feeling I'm falling on rare occasions but most of the time I have my feet on the ground I can't help it if the ground itself is falling. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The great educational value of the war against Christendom lies in the absolute truthlessness of the priest. Such purity is rare enough. The 'man of God' is entirely incapable of honesty, and only arises at the point where truth is defaced beyond all legibility. Lies are his entire metabolism, the air he breathes, his bread and his wine. He cannot comment upon the weather without a secret agenda of deceit. No word, gesture, or perception is slight enough to escape his extravagant reflex of falsification, and of the lies in circulation he will instinctively seize on the grossest, the most obscene and oppressive travesty. Any proposition passing the lips of a priest is necessarily totally false, excepting only insidiouses whose message is momentarily misunderstood. It is impossible to deny him without discovering some buried fragment or reality. — Nick Land

Readers will stand up and cheer for Karen Fox's Prince of Charming! Finally, a heroine who's a real woman. Finally, a hero who knows what a rare find she is! Finally, a book for us all to adore! Thank you Karen Fox for creating the most lovable hero romance has seen in a long, long time! — Maggie Shayne

Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging. — Russell Baker

Literature is a source of pleasure, he said, it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be disassociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book. He insisted on the fact. Have you noticed, he'd say, that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who would say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature performs, instructs, it prepares you for life. — Laurence Cosse

Most of all, Violet will know the smile: a slow and confident widening of a too-abundant mouth. This woman is something more than beautiful, something alchemical, an unstable mixture of rare elements bound together by nerve and charm. Am I interrupting something dreadfully important? she asks, with the ironic warmth of a woman who knows in her bones that she is always the most important object in the room. — Beatriz Williams

In the history of enterprise, most of the protagonists of major new products and companies began their education - not in the classroom, where the old ways are taught, but in the factories and labs where new ways are wrought ... nothing has been so rare in recent years as an Ivy League graduate who has made a significant innovation in American enterprise. — George Gilder

Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response ... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself. — Malcolm Forbes

It is only by loving others that we can learn to live; living is rare nowadays ... most people survive; that is all. — Sandra Chami Kassis

The most daring flights of genius do not always soar assured when they seek a throne in the fire & find a grave in copious tears.
For knowledge is also a vice: if it is not constantly curbed, & if this is not acknowledged, the greater the havoc it wreaks;
& if the flight is not brought down, fed & fattened on subtleties it will forget the essential for the sake of the rare & strange.
If a skilled hand does not prevent the growth of a thickly leafed tree, its proliferating branches will steal the fruit. — Juana Ines De La Cruz

The ability to try to understand existence, the ability to try to recognize the wonder and responsibility of one's own existence, the ability to know even fractionally the almost annihilating beauty, ambiguity, darkness, and horror which swarm every instant of every consciousness, the ability to try to accept it, or the ability to try to defend one's self, or the ability to dare to try to assist others; all such as these, of which most human beings are cheated of their potentials, are, in most of those who even begin to discern or wish for them, the gifts or thefts of economic privilege, and are available to members of these leanest classes only by the rare and irrelevant miracle of born and surviving 'talent. — James Agee

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare. — Dylan McDermott

In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world. — Henry James Sumner Maine

Roadblock #5: It's Unpredictable
By and large, human beings don't like surprises. I know that I don't. Okay, maybe I like that rare piece of unexpected good news or a letter from a friend or a thoughtful thank-you. But I'm willing to bet that people in funny hats jumping out of dark closets are responsible for more heart attacks than expressions of unbridled delight. When the doorbell rings late at night, I'm under no illusion that it's the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol!
This, most likely, goes back to our caveman past when a big, exciting surprise was apt to be something like an 800-pound,snarling, saber-toothed tiger about to rip the head from our shoulders. Surprises were usually bad news. (Think about this the next time you're crouching in the dark in somebody's front hall closet with their raincoats and umbrellas.) — Paul Powers

Making It in Hollywood is the most disgusting phrase in the English language. It's more disturbing than prolific serial killer and rare terminal illness. — Caroline Kepnes

TALENT and WORK ETHIC, the most important and RARE combination. — Hubie Brown

Suicide attempts at the Empire State Building are rare, but the same unfortunately cannot be said about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the most popular such site in the United States. (The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China is widely regarded as the world's most popular suicide bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge is number two.) We don't know, officially, how many people have taken their lives there because when the number hit 997, authorities stopped counting to avoid giving anyone the incentive of being jumper number 1,000. Whatever the number is, it could have been much higher. In 1994, California Highway Patrol Sergeant Kevin Briggs was assigned to patrol the bridge. Since then, he's managed to talk an estimated 200 people out of jumping. — Dan Lewis

The levelling of the European man is the great process which cannot be obstructed; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, distance, order of rank, is therefore imperative - not the necessity of retarding this process. This homogenizing species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it lies in serving a higher and sovereign race which stands upon the former and can raise itself this task only by doing this. Not merely a race of masters whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race that may grant itself every great luxury - strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative, rich enough to have no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a hothouse for rare and exceptional plants. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Even in a crowded field, it is a rare pleasure to come across a prose stylist like Kellie Wells, whose intellect and language bid one another beautifully to a dance. She dares to be at play in the most unsettling questions of her day. Surely when the present generation of writers shakes down to its unique and irreplaceable voices, Kellie Wells will be one of them. — Jaimy Gordon

Christopher Argent kept stealing disbelieving looks at Farah, his blue eyes reflecting the ambient glow like an alley cat's. Dorian understood why the man would dare in his presence.
First, because Christopher Argent was an unfeeling, fearless killer-for-hire.
And second, because most of the incarcerated men at Newgate had considered Dougan's Fairy some mythical creature, a sight too rare and beautiful to be beheld by a common man. Maybe even a fancy born of an imagination keen enough to take possession of the prison. To meet her was to gaze upon a fantasy realized, to remember the desperate yearnings of a lonely prisoner bereft of kindness, mercy, or beauty. To be blinded by the embodiment of all three of those things. For a man like Argent, one born to incarceration, the sight might have him reassessing some long-held cynical philosophies. — Kerrigan Byrne

My guess is that you would find that the intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector [of society], for good reasons. It's their role as a secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense that they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it's not that crucial that they really believe it. But for the intellectual elite themselves, it's crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for a very rare person who's an outright liar, it's hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you've internalized it and come to believe it. — Noam Chomsky

The extra time and trouble required to follow Dr. Bob's alternative schedule are hard to justify unless the dangers of contracting infectious diseases early in life are minimized and the dangers of vaccinating early in life are exaggerated. Much of The Vaccine Book is devoted to this minimization and exaggeration. Tetanus is not a disease that affects infants, according to Dr. Bob, Hib disease is rare, and measles is not that bad. He does not mention that tetanus kills hundreds of thousands of babies in the developing world every year, that most children will encounter the bacteria that causes Hib disease within the first two years of their lives, and that measles has killed more children than any other disease in history. — Eula Biss

Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive. — Charles Baudelaire

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The audience and I have an intimacy that is, I believe, rare, most times out. — Val Kilmer

To live in this world is a rare thing; most people just exist. — Oscar Wilde

In life, you'll have moments of uncertainty when you're just don't know what to do or what to choose. You'll be confused and unsure. Those moments are rare opportunities of possibility. Most of the time, we know what we will decide before it's even presented to us. We're so sure of what we want or don't want that we rarely sit in the openness of possibility. But in the moments when we're uncertain, in the moments of confusion, anything is possible. Instead of letting that paralyze you, let it inspire you and open you up to a new pathway. It just might be exactly what you need right now. — Emily Maroutian

Mental effort, I would argue, is relatively rare. Most of the time we coast. — Daniel Kahneman

I should like to have friends, I confess. I do not suppose I ever shall. But there have been moments when I have realized what friendship might be. Rare moments - but never forgotten. Friendship is a binding, as solemn as marriage. We take each other for life, through everything - forever. But it's not enough to say we will do it. I think, myself, it is pride which makes friendship most difficult. To submit, to bow down to the other is not easy, but it must be done if one is to really understand the being of the other. Friendship isn't merging. One doesn't thereupon become a shadow and one remain a substance. Yet, it is terribly solemn - frightening, even. — Katherine Mansfield

I crave space. It charges my batteries. It helps me breathe. Being around people can be so exhausting, because most of them love to take and barely know how to give. Except for a rare few. — Katie Kacvinsky

This real fucking genius, though I don't really think anybody knew that back then, but there was something in him. Charisma. Gentleness, a kind of acceptance of people for who they are. That's rare, you know? Someone who never, never judges. Most people have a nasty interior monologue going on at all times, not Lotto. He'd rather think kindly of you. Easier that way. — Lauren Groff

Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion. — Benjamin N. Cardozo

He is sure to be more happy who has eaten well and slept well and has besides a little money in his jeans. Such men are rare to find for the simple reason that most men are incapable of appreciating the wisdom of such a simple truth. The worker thinks he would be better off if he were running the factory; the owner of the factory thinks the would be better off if he were a financier; and the financier knows he would be better off if he were clean out of the bloody mess and living the simple life. — Henry Miller

Because Ragen is kind hearted and strong at the same time, and I know how rare that kind of man is. Because I never doubted that he loved me, and would come back. But most of all, because the moments I had with him were worth all the ones apart. — Peter V. Brett

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays. — Henry David Thoreau

It is a rare person who can pierce the veil between ordinarly life, consumed with matters of physical survival, and pursuit of the empowered path of purpose and meaning unless he or she is motivated by a crisis. Most often we require the failure of some system of power that we rely on before we take action. — Caroline Myss

The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east — James A. Michener

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives ... Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is 'eyeballs. — Laura Miller

It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Around age 40 I put on twenty pounds. I had always had a perfect metabolism. But, my metabolism betrayed me as it does most people, except a very rare few who will always be thin. — Suzanne Somers

When people are kind, rational, generous and loving..
Be grateful, appreciate it and make the most of it at that time..
Because it is not necessarily the normal/real way of things at all..
Reason, generosity, kindness & love are rare resources in this world.. — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Consolidate What's Been Learned While it is true that you learn the most in the midst of a project, the lessons are not generally coherent. Any individual can have a great insight but may not have the time to pass it on. A process might be flawed, but you don't have time to fix it under the current schedule. Sitting down afterward is a way of consolidating all that you've learned - before you forget it. Postmortems are a rare opportunity to do analysis that simply wasn't possible in the heat of the project. — Ed Catmull

Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it. — Nicole Krauss

The most interesting people are the unusual. No one writes about or discusses the average, the ordinary, or the common; they write about and discuss the weird, the mad and the different, so if you are one, even though the opinions of others are of no importance, you are, in their eyes, significant enough to notice and remember. — Donna Lynn Hope

Hitting a baseball well, as in cricket, is a very rare skill. One of most difficult things to do in the world to do, hitting a ball coming at you at ninety miles an hour with a round bat. Wonderful to watch. — Peter Tork

Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown are widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling. — William H Gass

A squirrel attacked me. I got attacked by a squirrel in Battersea Park. They're dangerous. It's rare. I've torn most of the ligaments in my knee. So no football for me. It's early retirement now. I've got a floating knee-cap! — Niall Horan

And you, Prince Elric?" She attracted the albino's wandering attention. "Do you know his story?"
Elric shook his head.
"I only know," he said, "that he is a shape-changer and, that most cursed of souls, a person of rare goodness and sanity. Imagine such torment as is his! — Michael Moorcock

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare - most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the "backseat driver" syndrome. — Robert A. Heinlein

The undivided heart is a good thing, as long as you love somebody. In fact, a divided heart that loves someone is better than an undivided heart that loves nobody
the latter would actually be undivided egoism. It would mean having one's heart full, but with the most corrupting thing there is: oneself. Of this type of virgin and celibate, unfortunately none too rare, Charles Peguy has rightly said: Because they do not belong to someone else, they think they belong to God. Because they love no one else, they think that they love God. — Raniero Cantalamessa

Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings. — John Graunt

Little boys are still playing the game [baseball], more little girls are playing, and it is still the world's most interesting game, a duel, a chess match, a foot race, a gymnastics exhibition, that rare opportunity for individuals to be recognized within a group effort. — Robert Lipsyte

But the real cause was, that the people, in electing their representatives to the grand council, were particular in choosing them for their talents at talking, without inquiring whether they possessed the more rare, difficult, and oft-times important talent of holding their tongues. The consequence was, that this deliberative body was composed of the most loquacious men in the community. As they considered themselves placed there to talk, every man concluded that his duty to his constituents, and, what is more, his popularity with them, required that he should harangue on every subject, whether he understood it or not. There was an ancient mode of burying a chieftain, by every soldier throwing his shield full of earth on the corpse, until a mighty mound was formed; so, whenever a question was brought forward in this assembly, every member pressing forward to throw on his quantum of wisdom, the subject was quickly buried under a mountain of words. — Washington Irving

How, in good conscience," Alessandro asked, "can you ride across the countryside in perfect safety, as if you were on holiday, stopping mainly to swim and eat oysters, while men are crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches?" "Because the object of war is peace, and I have merely thrown out the middle. If everyone did the same, no one would be crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches." "Everyone doesn't have the privilege. You do because you're a field marshal in command of a microscopic unit." "I realize that," Strassnitzky answered, "and, given such a rare opportunity, of which most men cannot even dream, I would be unforgivably remiss if I failed to seize it, would I not? I exploit it to the full. — Mark Helprin

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure not the switch could persuade him to change his answer. — Laura L. Sullivan

Take Tom Jones and mix him with Enrico Caruso, the Italian tenor-cum-castrato singer. Then add tons of pathetic love songs, faked sex appeal and musical kleptomania focusing on Western hits from the 1970s. Spice it up with a political flexibility rare even for Central European standards and a personal status close to that of the Pope. What do you get? Karel Gott, Czech pop music's most mega-super, long-lasting and brightest star. — Terje B. Englund

Outside of New York, the sight of someone reading at a bar is rare enough to excite comment; if you're single and aren't in New York and want to meet other people, I'd recommend it as an icebreaking tactic. Don't attempt this in the city itself, though: Your competition will be heavy, and most of the other readers will likely be more attractive and more successful and richer than you. — Marc Romano

There was a moment of tenderness between them, and for a moment he experienced the most rare, ridiculous emotion- hope. — Tessa Dare

Only in the most unusual cases is it useful to determine whether a book is good or bad; for it is just as rare for it to be one or the other. It is usually both. — Robert Musil

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. — Avi Steinberg

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. — Henry David Thoreau

Language of the Gun shows why Bernard Harcourt has earned a reputation as one of our most provocative and informative analysts of the administration of criminal justice. Thoroughly interdisciplinary, he brings to bear on his subject a remarkably wide range of sources. Most striking are his probing interviews with at-risk youths which provide a fascinating and rare glimpse into how they think about guns and gun carrying. This book bristles with insight and information. — Randall Kennedy

Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar. — James Surowiecki

Gifted people of discernment, intelligence, and talent flourish in virtually every occupation. Every field produces perceptive and prescient persons whom exhibit the rare capacity to observe what eludes most people. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Most of the rare species seemed to be very fond of clover, particularly red clover, and other wild legumes such as tufted vetch and bird's-foot trefoil, probably because these plants provide pollen that is unusually rich in protein. — Dave Goulson

When I walk into a room, you're the only person I see. My brain doesn't get a choice anymore, because there's something inside you so rare it radiates out and blocks everyone else. You have the kind of beauty that can't be manufactured - the kind that comes from in here." He tapped a finger against her chest. "I didn't know what real beauty was before I met you, but I get it now. So trust me when I say you're the most breathtaking girl in my world. — Melissa Landers

her on the dorm board. We had only twenty girls in a batch of two hundred. Goodlooking ones were rare; girls don't get selected to IIM for their looks. They get in because they can solve mathematical problems faster than 99.99% of India's population and crack the CAT. Most IIM girls are above shallow things like makeup, fitting clothes, contact lenses, removal of facial hair, body odour and feminine charm. Girls like Ananya, if and when they arrive by freak chance, become instant pin-ups in out testosterone-charged, estrogen-starved campus. — Anonymous

On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I think it's important to view the issues on the broadest possible reference plane. In fact, if you firmly believe in any issue, I urge you to read the opposite of it. Most of the time, it'll merely reinforce your original beliefs, but on the rare occasion, it might change your mind. — Michael Ramirez

Disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion. — John Courtney Murray

I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out. — John Waters

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

I have heard Ori Kam on several occasions over the last few years and have always been deeply impressed with his playing. He possesses a rare combination of musical talent, technical facility, intelligence, and charisma, and he is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary young artists I have heard in recent years. — Daniel Barenboim

If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green. — Charlotte Bronte

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Adepts of either Good or Evil are relatively rare in human shape. Most of us are still amateurs, which is fortunate for us all, because even moderate experts of evil can cause enough harm among humanity as it is. — Anonymous

Love is both hard and soft. It is the most believable truth and fiction. It is something we fight for and fight with. It is the yin and yang. It is the most contradictory of emotions, making you believe in both the extraordinary existence of heaven and scorches of hell. If you allow it, a saturation of complexities can destroy it and leave you desperately choking for the remnants, clawing for a miniscule flake of ash of what you had . True love is a rare miracle held in the highest veneration. Blessed are those who even come close its illumination. Only those who are selflessly brave can become victorious and claim this exceptional phenomenon, if just for a memory in time. — S.V.C. Ricketts

Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. — Thomas Jefferson

Pirate Hunters is a fantastic book, an utterly engrossing and satisfying read. It tells the story of the hunt for the rare wreck of a pirate ship, which had been captained by one of the most remarkable pirates in history. This is a real-life Treasure Island, complete with swashbuckling, half-crazy treasure hunters and vivid Caribbean settings-a story for the ages. — Douglas Preston

Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement. — Frances Trollope

Yet most women I know - no matter how clever, no matter how strong - are dragged down by husbands or fathers or titles or too many petticoats, or priests clutching at their hems, telling them, 'No, you cannot do that, you cannot be that.' I never listened. That's rare. Even a woman like the Comtesse pretends to pay attention to the sermons and the instructions, but then does whatever she wishes. I — Kelly Gardiner

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are; having, for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horsehair trunks: spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his profile, nobody would recognise it for a pig's likeness. They are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son: but this is a rare case: perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, being their foremost attributes. — Charles Dickens

I think most of us, as writers, have had experiences where you get edited and it doesn't feel like your voice at all. And so it's been nice to go through the experience of having a lot wind up on the cutting-room floor, and yet still feel that your voice is being - not purified, but made more yourself. I think that's a very rare thing. — Sarah Stillman

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. — Steve Martin

Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated. — Sherman Alexie

What makes a treasure a treasure." Marine replied, "is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most. — Jodi Picoult

I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth. — Herman Melville

She cried easily. Evidence that she felt much, and most often for other people. A rare and beauty filled gift. — Charles Martin

I hate gowns. It's a rare gown indeed that is cool. Most are elegant or whatever, a quality I don't put a big premium on. — Mindy Kaling

We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing. — Gore Vidal

A ... difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The vast majority of criminal cases are settled by plea bargaining. Only the rare civil case goes to trial, not least because most judges now see "case management" rather than presiding over trials as their primary responsibility. Late — Mark Tushnet