Second World Quotes & Sayings

If you look back at the history of creativity in clothes - the French Revolution, the First World War and the Second World War - they have all been creative reinventions, the moment new forms of luxury come into play. — Christian Lacroix

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. — Virginia Woolf

Dad entered the Second World War like any other man, trying to do the right thing. — Ridley Scott

India is the second biggest defence procurer in the world after the U.S. — Baba Kalyani

An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly. — Thomas Pynchon

The perceived failings of leaders of other neutral or occupied European countries, including France, Spain, Sweden or Norway, or of the countries that fought alongside the Nazis, have not caught the public imagination in the English-speaking world in anything like the same way. — Clare O'Dea

First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They're rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft. — Terry Pratchett

This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution
abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal ... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me. — Haruki Murakami

According to them, everyone wants to be English. Being English is the best thing in the world. (Far behind, the second best thing is being God himself.) — Angela Kiss

(I think, legally speaking, there's a very solid case for impeaching every American president since the Second World War. They've all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes.) The — Noam Chomsky

I'm a pretty wild guy and I live pretty close to nature - I've often lived in caves or on the edge of cliffs or in forests - so it's just second nature for me to tap into the movings of the weather and the world. — Dean Potter

If you get depressed about being the second-best team in the world, then you've got a problem. — Julius Erving

You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade. — J.M. Coetzee

I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go ... It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, 'Wait a second? Didn't we just get through with that?' — Clint Eastwood

The present: It is interesting that the "NOW" is called "the present." The present is the ultimate gift; it is the gift of truth and life. You are given the present every second, and you will receive it forever. The present is the only thing that exists, the only thing you are ever conscious of. Your life is a series of presents moving through time. The future does not exist until it becomes the present.

Life is one perpetual present.

Creation is happening now: Your body, mind, and the world around it are being created from microsecond to microsecond. Things may look the same, but they are not; everything is constantly changing and being recreated. Our life and our world is being created from moment to moment.

Life and everything in it is always new. — Michael Smith

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz. — Harold Pinter

I want to beat the world record for the number of beats per second on a drum pad. — Travis Barker

Critical art is an art that aims to produce a new perception of the world, and therefore to create a commitment to its transformation. This schema, very simple in appearance, is actually the conjunction of three processes: first, the production of a sensory form of 'strangeness'; second, the development of an awareness of the reason for that strangeness and third, a mobilization of individuals as a result of that awareness. — Jacques Ranciere

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

One day, you muster the courage and let go of the fear. In a brief moment of insanity, you give wings to the stories you had wanted to tell; some you didn't even know were in you. In that instant, something about you changes. You are born again.

That is not to say the fear and worry and second-guessing go away. They are there. But you learn to cope with them. You learn that they don't control you at all times. In those fleeting moments of freedom, you have the power. You know you are not perfect. You realize no one was born perfect. No one. Rome wasn't built in a day either.
A weird thing happens when you get a glimpse of that side of you. A child-like zeal possesses you. It is addictive. You discover your voice. You matter. Maybe not to the world, yet. You matter to yourself. You are worthy. You are alive. You can be. — K.J. Kilton

Sweetheart, I remember every second from the first moment I laid eyes on you and I've been trying to get my world upright ever since. — Tammy L. Gray

The second Cocoon questions that and deals much more directly with the value of living in the real world with its trials and tribulations. I would say it's about that and not about aging or death. — Daniel Petrie

By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin. — Augustus Y. Napier

Ukippers are the kinds of fools who haven't noticed they're sleep-walking towards fascism. Many UKIP candidates are of the age when their parents fought in the Second World War. — Robert Webb

Times like this, with the wind moving the grass and curling around her like a huge cool hand, Tess felt the world as a second presence, as another person, as if the wind and the grass had voices of their own and she could hear them talking. — Robert Charles Wilson

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. — Fredrik Backman

I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before. — Isabel Allende

I knew trucking was growing. It grew from the Second World War to the time that I bought the bridge. There were interstate highways being built. I thought there was opportunity. — Manuel Moroun

World class is a phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment events, as well as a wide variety of insecure individuals, to assert that they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are. — John Ralston Saul

Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God. — Winkie Pratney

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings. — Quentin Crisp

I think the terminology I would use is 'a continuous process of reflection'. I've always thought of only two questions that have mattered to me personally. One is what is really needed in the world and the second is what's really important to me and how these two intersect. It's always been a reflective process - spiraling around these two poles. — Peter Senge

It's true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person's heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con. — Donald Miller

My mother was the perfect Spartan mother. I have always been able to imagine her telling her sons to return from battle 'with their shields, or on them'. She did actually try it on my father at the start of the Second World War. He didn't take it kindly, and confided to me ruefully that he thought she rather fancied herself a Hero's Widow. — Rosemary Sutcliff

NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to
mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even
if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot
of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing
generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment,
that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly
stuck to its work through the course of a long life.
preface to the second edition of the world as will and representation — Arthur Schopenhauer

It takes a very very strong individual not to be corrupt in any of those things as time moves on. Myself and other people who went that road and experienced that world, some got a second birth of life and some is in the dirt. — Bernard Hopkins

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?
not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. — C.P. Snow

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured
especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised. — E. O. Wilson

All the wealth in this sinful world, cannot buy one second of life in God's Paradise. — Felix Wantang

You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me? — Elena Ferrante

She looked at me.
There was a second
the kind that holds the whole world ... — Jeanette Winterson

I loved him, more than anything else in the world and that when he was away it was hard to breath and that I couldn't go through a single second without thinking about him. — Heather James

The music of a popular song now came from the radio as Hawksmoor gazed out of the window; and he saw a door closing, a boy dropping a coin in the street, a woman turning her head, a man calling. For a moment he wondered why such things were occurring now: could it be that the world sprang up around him only as he invented it second by second and that, like a dream, it faded into the darkness from which it had come as soon as he moved forward? But then he understood that these things were real: they would never cease to occur and they would always be the same, as familiar and as ever-renewed as the tears which he had just seen on the woman's face. — Peter Ackroyd

More and more we're negating the validity of first-hand experience of people from other countries and other cultures ... whether it's on TV, the Internet, mobile phones or whatever - the world system we live in so values second-hand information. — Nitin Sawhney

If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail. — Jean-Marie Le Pen

Not everybody's the perfect person in the world. I mean everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me, whatever. I think that people need a second chance, and I've always looked up to Mike Vick, and I always will. — Terrelle Pryor

Yeah. I guess we were both willing to do that, Gavin. I was ready to take that plunge and never look back. Never. I was ready to risk everything for you, to push away the overwhelming fear I had because I knew you and I are worth it. We fell in love in a second. I was barely able to blink, and you had my entire world upside-down. I was scared you weren't ... real. I was scared no one could be as magnetic as you are to me. It still scares me. You still scare me." Pausing, Emily shook her head.
"Then I saw Gina, and all my fears came back. My heart wanted to believe you, but my head wouldn't allow it after I'd already taken that risk on us. I'm so sorry, Gavin. I don't know what else to say other than I love you and need you with everything inside me — Gail McHugh

The thing about her is, she's good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they're a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature. — John Updike

Sweet girl, maybe close the world off and look at him for an hour
or two.
This is your fairy.
It ain't perfect and it ain't honey sweet with roses on the bed.
It's real and raw and ugly at times. But this is your love.
Don't throw it away searching for someone else's love. Don't be greedy. Instead, shelter it. Protect it. Capture every second of easy, pull through every storm of hardship. And when you can, look at him, lying next to you, trusting you not to harm him. Trusting you not to go.
Be someone's someone for someone.
Be that someone for him. — Charlotte Eriksson

When I'm inside you, buried so deep I'm the only thing that exists in your world, that's when I'm not going to go slow. It's going to be fast and hard because I'm going to lose my mind. — Robin Bielman

Qualifying for the second stage would be a successful World Cup for us. I think we can do it. — Robbie Keane

All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world. — John Piper

I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen. — Joseph Chamberlain

Since the end of the Second World War, our population has more than doubled to 27 million people. — Kim Campbell

This is a massive world, I think, and in each centimeter of it, a different drama unfolds every second of the day. But we live on as if the next moment in our lives will be no different than the last. How foolish we all are. — Mahbod Seraji

We will never get great art from women if their education exposes them only to the second-rate and if the idea of greatness itself is denied. Greatness is not a white male trick. Every important world civilization has defined its artistic tradition in elitist terms of distinction and excellence. — Camille Paglia

Princeton has made an enormous difference in my life, and I am delighted to be able to express my gratitude in such a tangible way. The generosity of earlier generations of donors made it possible for me to attend Princeton as a young student from Hong Kong, and I have always wanted to do all I could to assure that students in the future.. from the United States and around the world.. will have the same kinds of opportunities I had to learn from faculty members who are leaders in their fields at a university that remains second to none in its commitment to teaching. — Gordon Wu

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in. I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death. I did fiddle with lots of maps for 'Glass Sword,' as the second installment sees Mare, Cal and company traveling throughout their country, and that's always fun for me. — Victoria Aveyard

This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution. — David W. Blight

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet - apparently he had a spare - in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum- Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World War when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap. — Bill Bryson

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you. — Timothy Garton Ash

For all armies are the finest in the world. The second finest army, if one could exist, would be in a notoriously inferior position; it would be certain to be beaten. It ought to be disbanded at once. Therefore, all armies are the finest in the world. — Anatole France

Victoria was just as much in love with me as I was with her. We could not bear to be apart for a single second. We were like two lovers shipwrecked on a desert island. There was no world outside our love. — Andy Gibb

The kiss was everything she hadn't dared let herself think about. Slow. Hot. Hungry. His lips molded to hers, drinking up her small, breathless exhale before his tongue skimmed across hers. Bree reached out and gripped his shirt, tugging him until he was flush against her. The man knew how to kiss, and she felt her mind emptying of everything but how incredible his mouth felt working deeper into hers. Every nip, every silky stroke of his tongue, every breath dragged between their mouths made her hold on tighter. The second he stopped, the real world would slide back into place, and more than anything, she wanted this. Wanted Finn with an unexpected yearning that burrowed deeper with each second he continued to kiss her. He cupped the nape of her neck, tipping her head back as he deepened the kiss. She whimpered, catching his bottom lip between hers. His thumb trailed along her jawline, and she shuddered in its wake, wanting his mouth there. Wanting — Sydney Somers

I think we should probably get Vanessa out of the Quiet Box to help us. What do you guys say?'
'Absolutely,' Newel affirmed. 'Best idea I've heard all day.'
'I'll second that,' Doren said gladly.
Seth gave the satyrs a doubtful scowl. 'Wait a minute. You guys just think she's pretty.'
'I've been around a long time,' Newel said. 'Vanessa Santoro is not jut pretty.'
'He's right,' Doren agreed. 'She's walking dynamite. My pulse is rising just talking about her.'
'She also might be a traitor,' Seth stressed.
'The lethal temptress,' Newel said with relish. 'Even better.'
'It will definitely spice up the adventure,' Doren encouraged.
'I'm obviously talking to wrong guys,' Seth sighed.
'Believe me,' Newel said cockily. 'you're talking to the right guys. We've been chasing babes since the world was flat.'
Seth rolled his eyes. — Brandon Mull

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

the story of these men of the Second World War is another — Nathan M. Greenfield

You might be the smartest person in the world, but the second-smartest person will just need a little more time to do it. — Robert Ferrigno

Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century. — Tariq Ali

To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe. — Thomas Browne

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. — Alain De Botton

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure. — H.G.Wells

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. — Anais Nin

"Motherboard," for me, has four different levels: the bottom part is the water, vegetation, and growth. The second part is the world with figures and animals; there's chaos and civilization. The third part is the digital zone - these red things are turning into really loud digital sounds. Then the fourth level is like ether and things turning into air. This idea of how we're becoming partly digitalized is really interesting to me. — Ali Banisadr

I had been a writer all of my life, every waking second, and now that part of my life was over. I suppose the truth was that I had never put myself forward as a writer, I didn't like the idea of the 'professional writer'; I just wanted to write. But that was not how the world worked... — Bonnie Greer

Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame. — Bernhard Schlink

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

At some second transcendent moment in evolution, Edelman proposed, the development of "higher-order consciousness" was made possible in humans (and perhaps a few other species including apes and dolphins) by a higher level of reentrant signaling. Higher-order consciousness brings an unprecedented power of generalization and reflection, of recognizing past and future, so that finally self-consciousness, the awareness of being a self in the world, is achieved. — Oliver Sacks

I think people are naturally good, I see it every day. Look at this restaurant. No one's causing anybody any trouble in here. We're all sitting, respecting each other's space, we're keeping our voices down, we're saying "please" and "thank you" - those are acts of generosity that we commit on a second by second basis that we don't give ourselves enough credit for. There's a lot of kindness in this world, we're just such vain creatures; our vanity can be used against us so easily. We're like dogs, hairless dogs. — Torquil Campbell

The '54 World Cup was the first time the people got the recognition back after the second World War and felt like they are proud of something you know it brought people back together and you know now we can keep our heads up again. — Jurgen Klinsmann

Carrying The Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or The Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion. — John Lennon

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience. — Erma Bombeck

For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. — Herman Melville

We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating ... second, that however bizarre and arcane our world might be, nature remains potentially comprehensible to the human mind. — Stephen Jay Gould

Most of the things that I remember from childhood wouldn't make a particularly good story: rescuing worms during rainstorms, our schnauzer attacking a wheel of cheese when someone dropped it during dinner, my parents tricking us into riding Space Mountain at Disney World (we thought it was an educational people-mover kind of ride), playing Star Wars (I got to marry Harrison Ford and my sister married Luke Skywalker) in first and second grade. On the other hand, we always had lots of interesting babysitters
seminary students and friends of my parents
who told really good ghost stories. — Kelly Link

The Philippines and the U.S. have had a strong relationship with each other for a very long time now. We have a shared history. We have shared values, democracy, freedom, and we have been in all the wars together in modern history, the World War, Second World War, Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, now the war on terrorism. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking. — Meg Wolitzer

The first and second commandments are the only therapy the world has ever needed. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind ... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" [Matthew 22:37, 39 KJV]. — Billy Graham

Open, oh coloured world, without weight, without shore. You are second and better; this was first and feeble. — C.S. Lewis

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. — Ben Hecht

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,
to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second. — Jonathan Swift

There are three starting points of contemplation about God; three trails that lead to Him. The first is the way of sensing the presence of God in the world, in things;9 the second is the way of sensing His presence in the Bible; the third is the way of sensing His presence in sacred deeds. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Before the Second World War, more than nine million Jews were living in Europe, most of them in lands that were or had been part of the Russian Empire. — Masha Gessen

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble.
Zhou Yijun — Judy Polumbaum

You didn't like him, did you, Dad?"
"It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else."
God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive..
"You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work. — Jane Green

A love revolution is forming far out to sea like a series of waves that build on one another until the whole earth is consumed. The first set of waves releases a quickening anointing. The second set of waves, a love revolution. The third set of waves will sweep across the world and release a worldwide revival. I believe that we can position ourselves to catch this incoming set of waves that will release to you a "quickening spirit" or "quickening anointing." It is being released - now. Catch the wave! — Julia Loren

When a German soldier is running at you, there's no point quoting Virgil at him, you're better off kicking a football in his face. — Cesca Major

The first discipline is the realization that there is a discipline - -that all art begins and ends with discipline, that any art is first and foremost a craft. We have gone far enough on the road to self-indulgence now to know that. The man who announces to the world that he is going to "do his thing" is like the amateur on the high-diving platform who flings himself into the void shouting at the judges that he is going to do whatever comes naturally. He will land on his ass. Naturally. You'd think, to listen to the loudspeakers that surround us, that no man had ever tried to "do his thing" before. Every poet worth reading has, but those really worth reading have understood that to do your thing you have to learn first what your thing is and second how to go about doing it. — Archibald MacLeish