Shibaura Engine Quotes & Sayings

To insult someone we call him 'bestial'. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult. — Isaac Asimov

she answered with an impatient scowl. — James A. West

I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of "Ironia, which we call the drye mock." And I cannot think of a better term for it: The drye mock. Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is so often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate casting of cool and illuminating light on life, and thus an enlargement. The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement. — Robertson Davies

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next? — Alma Guillermoprieto

Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear. — Aldo Leopold

Is it?" he insisted. "Is this it? This time I die?" COULD BE. "Could be? What sort of answer is that?" said Vimes. A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. Vimes — Terry Pratchett

How Time doth lash us with sharp pains,
Set loose our teeth, snatch wisps of hair, dim eyes
And finally bend our backs toward earth
To find the fittest place for burial. — William Batchelder Greene