Sirpina Quotes & Sayings

The medieval mind, which saw only continuity, seemed so unassailable. It existed in a world which, with all its ups and downs, remained harmoniously ordered and could be taken for granted. It had not developed a sense of history, which is a sense of loss; it had developed no true sense of beauty, which is a gift of assessment. While it was enclosed, this made it secure. Exposed, its world became a fairyland, exceedingly fragile. It was one step from the Kashmiri devotional songs to the commercial jingles of Radio Ceylon; it was one step from the roses of Kashmir to a potful of plasticdaisies. — V.S. Naipaul

In The Pickwick Papers, a man is said to have read up in the Britannica on Chinese metaphysics. There was, however, no such article: He read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C, and combined his information. — James Gleick

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo. — Dick Cavett

Greed is costly. Assembled fortunes are lost. — Laozi

It's a privilege to do what I do for a living - to take people out of their miserable day, or to educate somebody, or make somebody laugh, or fall in love with an idea. How good is that? And I get paid to do it! — Anne-Marie Duff

We're not going to deputize a whole bunch of American citizens to start grabbing people or turning them in, in part because the ordinary American citizen may not know whether or not this person is illegal or not. But, you know, the notion that we're going to criminalize priests, for example, or doctors who are providing services to individuals, and throw them in jail for doing what their calling asks them to do, which is to provide help and service to people in need, I think that is a mistake. I think that's out of America's character. — Barack Obama

Dwelling in the shit of life wasn't productive. Either you checked out or you checked in.
This life isn't for the weak, — Nina Levine