Quotes & Sayings About Passages

The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child; and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle dews in one summer, that will not cause as much remark as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who are more struck by those passages of the Bible that announce the indignation of God than by those that announce His affection. — Thomas De Witt Talmage

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary. — Ken Follett

One helpful way of identifying these kingdom features is to examine closely the "preview" passages in the Bible. Pop a movie into your DVD player, and you'll first see previews of coming attractions. Similarly, throughout the Bible are previews of the "feature film": the kingdom of God in all its consummated fullnness. These texts offer us glimpses into what live will be like in the new heavens and new earth. — Amy L. Sherman

I often reread passages of "Lolita" for its exquisite language. To me, "Lolita" has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life. — Amy Tan

Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and denial. — Edith Wharton

In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication. — Alberto Manguel

Starting with a melody, she'll lead you far away down passages of poetry where dreamers often play. — Susan Waterwyk

Am I learning how to use my Bible? The way to become complete for the Master's service is to be well soaked in the Bible; some of us only exploit certain passages. Our Lord wants to give us continuous instruction out of His word; continuous instruction turns hearers into disciples. — Oswald Chambers

We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry — Vasily Grossman

It is obvious that the aspects of mystery which gather round the word "election" are not confined to it alone. An important class of words, such as "calling," "predestination" "foreknowledge," "purpose," "gift," bears this same character; asserting or connoting, in appropriate contexts, the element of the inscrutable and sovereign in the action of the Divine will upon man, and particularly upon man's will and affection toward God. And it will be felt by careful students of the Bible in its larger and more general teachings that one deep characteristic of the Book, which with all its boundless multiplicity is yet one, is to emphasize on the side of man everything that can humble, convict, reduce to worshipping silence (see for typical passages Job 40:3, 1; Ro 3:19), and on the side of God everything which can bring home to man the transcendence and sovereign claims of his almighty Maker. — James Orr

The embryological record, as it is usually presented to us, is both imperfect and misleading. It may be compared to an ancient manuscript, with many of the sheets lost, others displaced, and with spurious passages interpolated by a later hand ... Like the scholar with his manuscript, the embryologist has by a process of careful and critical examination to determine where the gaps are present, to detect the later insertions, and to place in order what has been misplaced. — Francis Maitland Balfour

If not for my diaries, I would swear I had lived only half as long as I have. Long periods of my life seem to have vanished. And now I read the passages and wonder who I was when I wrote them, for I cannot remember the events of my life. There are times I sit and wonder where it all has gone. — Nicholas Sparks

When they coughed, they coughed like people accustomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and in draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink ... — Charles Dickens

What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose is to benefit you. — Chris Prentiss

When you change the way you see and interpret events, suddenly everything will be different for you. Everything will make sense. — Chris Prentiss

Changing your mind can move you into another dimension. Passages materialize exposing a hidden world that was there all along. — Bryant McGill

As believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment. — John Dewey

Reflections ... passages in time..sometimes, the only things that make sense..the only peace I find..is found somewhere, unwritten..in between the lines. — Victoria June

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go. — Paul Auster

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things. — Jane Brox

A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude. — S. S. Van Dine

The world actually is a mirror, and as you change, you will see everything around you changing as well as mirroring your changes. — Chris Prentiss

I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative. — Janet Evanovich

The Bible ... provides no guide to reading the Bible. In fact, it is full of such inconsistencies, contradictions, lacunae, obscurities, baffling tales, and poetic imagery that to quote it at all is to select from conflicting alternative passages. Every quotation is therefore necessarily an interpretation. — James P. Carse

I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit. — Lisa Randall

There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true? — Guy Gavriel Kay

The witness of which the New Testament passages speak is God's gift, not our accomplishment. — Lesslie Newbigin

Now the twelfth canto of Book II is an almost literal translation from Tasso description in the Jerusalem Delivered of the island of Armida. That poem was not printed till 1582. It is likely enough that Spenser may have seen part of it in manuscript, which would account for the general resemblance of the Adonis passages, though the likeness is not close enough to make any debt certain. — Janet Spens

It is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it. — Soren Kierkegaard

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Each piano is unique. Each feels different beneath your hand and yields a new geography of sound. Each room or hall accepts that sound in a completely different way, and if, within that room or hall, the piano is moved, the sound will change, as it will if the hall is full of people in thick winter coats, or half full of people in light summer dresses. You must adjust your touch, your tone, your range; you must LISTEN, for even the most familiar passages can become unfamiliar, challenging, strange. — A. Manette Ansay

We'd need to leave fast. The biggest hurdle would be finding a ship. Passages across the Atlantic didn't always work out. The Black Sea wasn't easy to cross either. The ancient Greeks called it Pontos Axenos, the Hostile Sea. In our day and age, Greek myths were lifesaving required reading, and I'd read enough of them to know that the Black Sea wasn't a fun place.
"Where on the Black Sea?"
"Georgia."
Colchis. Bodyguard detail in the land of the Golden Fleece, dragons, and witches, where the Argonauts had sailed and nearly died. — Ilona Andrews

And this is Kimmie Elias."
Kimmie inhaled a loud breath. "I had a dream you were the
love child of Bugs Bunny and the abominable snowman, but in my dream that was a good thing, and you lived in a mushroom that had
secret passages into outer space," she said.
And here he thought he'd already heard it all. — Jamie Farrell

An Afternoon in the Stacks
Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move. — William Stafford

Tattered. Water or something more foul soaked both knees of the pants. But Thomas took all that in quickly. Most of his attention was drawn to the man's head. Thomas couldn't help but stare, mesmerized. It looked like hair had been ripped from his scalp, leaving bloody scabs in its place. His face was pallid and wet, with scars and sores everywhere. One eye was gone, a gummy red mass where it should have been. He also had no nose, and Thomas could actually see traces of the nasal passages in his skull underneath the terribly mangled skin. And his mouth. Lips drawn back in a snarl, gleaming white teeth exposed, clenched tightly together. His good eye glared, somehow vicious in the way it darted between Brenda and Thomas. Then the man said something in a wet and gurgly voice that made Thomas shiver. He spoke only a few words, but they were so absurd and out of place that it just made the whole thing that much more horrifying. Rose — James Dashner

Fifield's connection to his congregation extended to their views on religion and politics too. In the apt words of one observer, Fifield was "one of the most theologically liberal and at the same time politically conservative ministers" of his era. He had no patience for fundamentalists who insisted upon a literal reading of Scripture. "The men who chronicled and canonized the Bible were subject to human error and limitation," he believed, and therefore the text needed to be sifted and interpreted. Reading the holy book should be "like eating fish - we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value." Accordingly, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty and instead worked tirelessly to reconcile Christianity and capitalism. In his view, both systems rested on a basic belief that individuals would succeed or fail on their own merit. — Kevin M. Kruse

not the writings that come from prophets inspired by the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ, then why do we find those passages as proof of who Jesus is?" In other words, they turned the old argument that had been used in the context of Jewish evangelism around. It's not — Mark Dever

I began asking myself just what my high was about. What did I do when I was high that I didn't do when I was sober? What was wrong that heroin fixed? — Pax Prentiss

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one. — Hector Berlioz

The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers ... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds. — Thomas W. Higginson

In my experience when critics raise these objections, they invariably violate one of seventeen principles for interpreting the Scriptures ... For example, assuming the unexplained is unexplainable ... failing to understand the context of the passage ... assuming a partial report is a false report ... neglecting to interpret difficult passages in light of clear ones; basing a teaching on an obscure passage; forgetting that the Bible uses nontechnical, everyday language; failing to remember the Bible uses different literary devices ... — Norman Geisler

Many of the passages that describe the millennial kingdom also, in continuity, describe the new heaven and the new earth the eternal state. — Paul P. Enns

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages. — John Donne

Great music stops the inner turmoil of thought and allows the mind to seek its natural state of joy. Music frees our minds and allows us to soar to heights where we can experience the celestial. Music opens our minds to allow the perception of new thoughts of a higher nature, which gives us a spiritual lift, which produces yet more joy. — Wu Wei

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter. — Nadine Gordimer

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. — Stanislaw Lem

Mood alteration is an ingredient of compulsive/addictive behavior. Addiction has been described as "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences." Toxic shame has been suggested as the core and fuel of all addiction. Religious addiction is rooted in toxic shame, which can be readily mood-altered through various religious behaviors. One can get feelings of righteousness through any form of worship. One can fast, pray, meditate, serve others, go through sacramental rituals, speak in tongues, be slain by the Holy Spirit, quote the Bible, read Bible passages, or say the name of Yahweh or Jesus. Any of these can be a mood-altering experience. If one is toxically shamed, such an experience can be immensely rewarding. — John Bradshaw

Bruce Friedman, who blogs about the use of computers in medicine, has also described how the Internet is altering his mental habits. "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print," he says.4 A pathologist on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a "staccato" quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. — Nicholas Carr

Adrian Rogers told us as often as he could he took the Bible literally. He illustrated by saying he believed the world was created in six 24-hour days. And he repeated this to make an impression upon us. In private (Jerry Vines was with us), I asked Rogers what he did with the slavery passages of the New Testament. Did he take them literally? He paused and said, 'Well, I believe slavery is a much-maligned institution. If we had slavery today, we would not have this welfare mess.' — Adrian Rogers

The street is still shut as we step into the molten-gold atmosphere of mid-afternoon. The houses face each other across the passages like armies of an ancient Arabian battlefield ... .We narrow our eyes against the glare. Beating their wings, the birds too are leaving the trees for the mosque. The leaves hang like limp hands from the branches. We try to think of the cool blue river and, turning around, glance towards where the river wets the horizon. But the river, too, seems helpless before the insanity of the sun, lying like an exhausted lizard at the end of the street — Nadeem Aslam

I randomly opened a Bible to the passages in Revelation about being lukewarm. I realized that I had been living lukewarm. I wanted the best of both worlds. I wanted to fit in. And there's nothing wrong with fitting in if it's within God's will, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice the things that I wanted. That's when my faith became real to me. — Matt Diaz

But it was not merely the pagans who made this connection of heavenly physical bodies with heavenly spiritual powers. The Old Testament itself equates the sun, moon, and stars with the angelic "sons of God" who surround God's throne, calling them both the "host of heaven" (Deut. 4:19; 32:8-9).[10] Jewish commentator Jeffrey Tigay writes, "[These passages] seem to reflect a Biblical view that ... as punishment for man's repeated spurning of His authority in primordial times (Gen. 3-11), God deprived mankind at large of true knowledge of Himself and ordained that it should worship idols and subordinate celestial beings."[11] — Brian Godawa

The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Winds sweep the passages of time
Forever more
Taking, leaving
Memories. — Tyler Colins

On most of the occasions when I visited the Ufford, halls and reception rooms were so utterly deserted that the interior might almost have been Uncle Giles's private residence. Had he been a rich bachelor, instead of a poor one, he would probably have lived in a house of just that sort: bare: anonymous: old-fashioned: draughty: with heavy mahogany cabinets and sideboards spaced out at intervals in passages and on landings; nothing that could possibly commit him to any specific opinion, beyond general disapproval of the way the world was run. — Anthony Powell

Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to. — Alice Weaver Flaherty

As if it were owing to the merit of our turning to God that His grace were given us, wherein He Himself even turns unto us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that, unless our turning to God were itself God's gift, it would not be said to Him in prayer, "Turn us again, O God of hosts;" and, "You, O God, wilt turn and quicken us;" and again, "Turn us, O God of our salvation," - with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. — Augustine Of Hippo

They say it's not the snoring itself but those anxiety-packed moments in between snorts. It's the waiting for the nasal passages of the person lying beside you to strike again. And strike it always does. In the dark, almost against your will, you produce that special glare reserved for people who cannot control their own behaviour. — Sloane Crosley

Some general principles in the holy books of all religions that teach love, charity, liberty, justice and equality for all the human family, there are many grand and beautiful passages, the golden rule has been echoed and re-echoed around the world. There are lofty examples of good and true men and women, all worthy our acceptance and imitation whose lustre cannot be dimmed by the false sentiments and vicious characters bound up in the same volume. The Bible cannot be accepted or rejected as a whole, its teachings are varied and its lessons differ widely from each other. In criticising the peccadilloes of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, we would not shadow the virtues of Deborah, Huldah and Vashti. In criticising the Mosaic code, we would not question — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

He knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, — Thomas Wolfe

The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.) — E.B. White

My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine. — Oscar Wilde

Life is a passage through a museum of beauty. — Robert Genn

Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts - eighteenth-century Reader's Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for "delicious morsels," one that spits out "every thing which is plain." Good books, in contrast, require good readers: "In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them. — Karen Swallow Prior

Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails. — Dave Pelzer

Pound was silly, bumptious, extravagantly generous, annoying, exhibitionistic; Eliot was sensible, cautious, retiring, soothing, shy. Though Pound wrote some brilliant passages, on the whole he was a failure as a poet (sometimes even in his own estimation); Eliot went from success to success and is still quoted
and misquoted
by thousands of people who have never read him. Both men were expatriates by choice, but Eliot renounced his American citizenship and did his best to become assimilated with his fellow British subjects, while Pound always remained an American in exile. — T.S. Mathews

A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember. — Maria Reeves

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books. — Laini Taylor

Charmaine swallowed nervously as she hesitated for a moment, her throat dry, arid and parched like the sands of the desert under the burning sun, grated painfully inside her body as her glands struggled to lubricate her air passages sufficiently. — Jill Thrussell

When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. — Matt Taibbi

How big a war?"
"A worse one than the one fifty years ago, I expect," said Cheery.
"I don't recall people talking about that one," said Vimes.
"Most humans didn't know about it," said Cheery. "It mostly took place underground. Undermining passages and digging invasion tunnels and so on. Perhaps a few houses fell into mysterious holes and people didn't get their coal, but that was about it."
"You mean dwarfs just try to collapse mines on other dwarfs?"
"Oh, yes."
"I thought you were all law-abiding?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Very law-abiding. Just not very merciful. — Terry Pratchett

In Proverbs, a wisdom book of the Hebrew Scriptures, a cat would find a few "wisdom" passages as noxious as the Garden of Eden passages. Again the symbology of fruit being eaten — Leviak B. Kelly

But there are forces that don't let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don't own. — Salvador Plascencia

There is no "good," just passages and pathways to greater depths of pain brought to bear as markets diversify and specialise. In thinking he is winning - be it through miraculous medical advancements, enlightened self-interest which fosters a degree of social stability, or a planet wide agricultural revolution - man is in fact throwing himself into heightened states of artfully dressed turmoil: mayhem which could only thrill a Creator disposed to being thrilled at such sweet turbulences. — John Zande

The music of the supreme architect, Bach, is filled with pages of discursive argument and rumination, glorifying the nameless whole by a rich embroidery of passages which lead everywhere and nowhere. The ideas are presented, stood on their head, dissolved into fragments, until the ultimate message becomes the connections of all things great and small, a chain of being which cannot be secured until the last note is in place. — Russell Sherman

After travelling a few miles, he fell asleep; and Emily, who had put two or three books into the carriage, on leaving La Vallee, had now the leisure for looking into them. She sought for one, in which Valancourt had been reading the day before, and hoped for the pleasure of re-tracing a page, over which the eyes of a beloved friend had lately passed, of dwelling on the passages, which he had admired, and of permitting them to speak to her in the language of his own mind, and to bring himself to her presence. — Eliza Parsons

The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal endings. — Anthony Powell

If you like poetry let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Camp[b]ell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't
be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good and avoid the evil; the finest
passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting, you will never wish to read them over twice. — Charlotte Bronte

Yet Malone, remarkably, was a model of restraint compared with others, such as John Payne Collier, who was also a scholar of great gifts, but grew so frustrated at the difficulty of finding physical evidence concerning Shakespeare's life that he began to create his own, forging documents to bolster his arguments if not, ultimately, his reputation. He was eventually exposed when the keeper of mineralogy at the British Museum proved with a series of ingenious chemical tests that several of Collier's "discoveries" had been written in pencil and then traced over and that the ink in the forged passages was demonstrably not ancient. It was essentially the birth of forensic science. This was in 1859. — Bill Bryson

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. — Augustine Of Hippo

You have enough courage to face even your greatest fear. — Chris Prentiss

[During] the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter [Fair Pay Act], equal pay for equal work, the women led that fight. — Barbara Mikulski

He handed Mae a piece of paper, on which he'd written, in crude all capitals, a list of assertions under the headline "The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age." Mae scanned it, catching passages: "We must all have the right to anonymity." "Not every human activity can be measured." "The ceaseless pursuit of data to quantify the value of any endeavour is catastrophic to true understanding." "The barrier between public and private must remain unbreachable." At the end she found one line, written in red ink: "We must all have the right to disappear. — Dave Eggers

There is no cell culture for depression. You can't see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms. — Chris Prentiss

the chambers and passages of the cave system. A track led past both entrances, and round up onto the hill-top, up which sloping trail Yana now wearily pulled herself. Some huts were private dwelling places while others were the domain of certain crafts. Community meetings were held either outside in a large space deliberately left clear in the centre of the huts, or during cold or inclement weather, in the larger of the two entrance chambers of the cave system. Yana moved aside the leather windbreak sheltering the entrance to the hut which was her family's home and walked down the four stone-flagged steps to the floor of the sunken hut. A strong herbal odour hung in the air. Ignoring it, Yana dropped her kill by the fire, and made her way to the occupied sleeping platform at — Julie Reilly

I always get lost in the library,' he said, 'no matter how many times I go. In fact, I think I get lost there more, the more that I go. Like it's getting to know me and revealing new passages. — Rainbow Rowell

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

Cave is a good word ... The memory of a cave I used to know was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its fleeting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations ... — Mark Twain

He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments. — Neal Shusterman

With apologies to Austin Ruse and the National Review, it's passages like this, not any endorsement of the drug-fueled, last-minute allnighter, that explain why Hunter Thompson will always be celebrated by young people. It had nothing to do with drugs, the F word, or being cool, and everything to do with the fact that Thompson never lost his sense of appropriate outrage, never fell into the trap of accepting that moral compromise was somehow a sign of growth and adulthood. Both — Hunter S. Thompson

Negative emotions, like depression or anxiety, have been shown to affect our immune system. Stress impedes wound healing. — Chris Prentiss

We should be familiar with the great histories, the great biographies. We should be familiar with the great success stories, the great love stories, the great philosophies. It would also be a good idea to memorize potent passages from great poetry and other literary works. Our literature also may give us extra, pleasant hours as well as furnish contrasts and comparisons which may help us to evaluate and direct our own lives. — Sterling W. Sill

Matthew and I used to read Dickens together. Oh my god, it was so great. We would sit in the bathtub and pass the book back and forth reading passages out loud. — Sarah Jessica Parker

Who was this Abraham, and where did he come from? The Book of Genesis and related Biblical passages are the only evidence that he existed and these were compiled in written form perhaps a thousand years after his supposed lifetime. — Paul Johnson

The shock was akin to that of buying, out of duty, a novel written by a dull and uninspired acquaintance and finding there passages of heartrending beauty and rapture that one could never imagine coming from such a tedious person. — Andrew Sean Greer

My wife is my first reader, my first line of defence I suppose. So she says, "Oh well, oh yes, it's all true." At the same time, I could have written much more about us, but I didn't want to go any further. I did cut things out. There are certain things that I wrote about her that are so gushing with praise and admiration that when I looked at those passages I realised they would be ridiculous to anybody else. — Paul Auster

I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment. — John Newton

Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? — Barack Obama

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out. — Gail Sheehy