Schemed Through The Book Quotes & Sayings

The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current - part of a continuum. — Sara Sheridan

Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature. — Jerome K. Jerome

The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prize fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking.
Why, good evening, Brother Bains - Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant surprise. I was, uh - Did you ever see this horrible rag? About actoresses. An invention of the devil himself. I was thinking of denouncing it next Sunday. I hope you never read it - won't you sit down, gentlemen? - take this chair - I hope you never read it, Brother Floyd, because the footsteps of - — Sinclair Lewis

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block. — Tennessee Williams

People are like water: Many rush pass you, as some will over-flood. Some will drown you, or force you to go their current ways. Some will be cold or hot-tempered, but try to say with the warm ones. Some will come as a raging wave and cause a ripple, or a calm sea, supporting you, quenching your thirst, and flow by your side to where kisses will always stay wet. — Anthony Liccione

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees. — Katy Lederer

I'm clearly not frightened of flying because I fly all the time, but every once in a while I do, as we all do, think, What if this plane goes down? And I think, Well, if I'm holding the hand of the person sitting next to me, then I'm holding everyone's hand. — Gloria Steinem

I think the main reason a lot of child stars don't make it is that it's hard to see someone as cute and then all of a sudden see them as having more depth. — Christina Ricci

Love teaches you to love your own mortality, just as we love the flowers that bloom for a short time and pass on. — Frederick Lenz

Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country ... But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers. — Ralph Nader

Complaining is good for you as long as you're not complaining to the person you're complaining about. — Lynn Johnston

When I was a child, the lessons my father taught me had been about perseverance, never to accept limitations that stood in my way. As an adult, watching him in his final years, I also saw how to come to terms with limits that couldn't simply be wished away. When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value. Helping my father through the struggle to define that moment was simultaneously among the most painful and most privileged experiences of my life. Part of the way my father handled the limits he faced was by looking at them without illusion. Though his circumstances sometimes got him down, he never pretended they were better than they were. He always understood that life is short and one's place in the world is small. But he also saw himself as a link in a chain of history. — Atul Gawande

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian. — Chris Rock

Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience. — Hans Hofmann