There Once Was A Man Quotes & Sayings

The Principle of Uncertainty fixed once for all the realisation that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty. — Jacob Bronowski

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most basic rules of arithmetic no longer held true. — Geoff Dyer

Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a house cat, Mae had once thought privately, who discounted the rumor of tigers. — Kate Southwood

There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first. — Benjamin Wiker

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered. — Charles Dickens

Yes Siddhartha,' he said. 'Is this what you mean: that the river is in all places at once, at its source and where it flows into the sea, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the ocean, in the mountains, everywhere at once, so for the river there is only the present moment and not the shadow of the future?'
'It is,' Siddhartha said.'And once I learned this I considered my life, and it too was a river, and the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and the graybeard Siddhartha only by shadows, not by real things ... Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has being and presence. — Hermann Hesse

There was a man who I once knew,
for me there was no other.
The closer to loving me he grew,
the more he would grow further.
I tried to love him as his friend,
then to love him as his lover;
but he never loved me in the end
his heart was for another. — Lang Leav

I never met Barry Crump, but I was in an audience once for a play once. There was a drunken man at the back of the auditorium that was shouting during a performance of a one man play, and it turned out later on that was Barry Crump and he was in a state of inebriation. — Sam Neill

It was the uniform of a time and place, of a nearly extinct species - the belligerent middle-American redneck who had fought in Korea, come back with his faith unshaken, and then watched the 1960s unfold the way he might watch his house burn down. There had never been any Summer of Love for Arthur Schuler. He had no interest in Civil Rights, hippies or liberals - or Democrats for that matter. I heard him say once that it might have worked out very well if we had indeed brought all the planes back from Vietnam, just in time to napalm the Woodstock festival. But the man had lived. He had been an orphan of the Great Depression and seen the country and the world. He had made his way, been a barroom fighter and - he hinted - a womanizer at some distant point in the twentieth century, and had come away with an instinct for life, for the things that people do and their base and predictable motivations. We — Matthew Louis

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. — John Steinbeck

Alana,

You once told me there'd come a day when I would regret making you marry me. I do regret it now, Alana, with all my heart. For tonight I've seen the joy on a willing bride's face, and I regret that I was never able to see that on yours. I mourn the sorrow I now understand that I've brought to you, but if you leave me, I'll mourn my ow sorrow at losing you infinitely more. Let these words assure you that in this world of injustice, God's sword is ruthless upon the wicked. If I lose you, one man, THIS man, got what he deserved.

Trevor — Meagan McKinney

I once believed man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps, was not. — Kang Chol-Hwan

Cantor illustrated the concept of infinity for his students by telling them that there was once a man who had a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and the hotel was fully occupied. Then one more guest arrived. So the owner moved the guest in room number 1 into room number 2; the guest in room number 2 into number 3; the guest in 3 into room 4, and so on. In that way room number 1 became vacant for the new guest.
What delights me about this story is that everyone involved, the guests and the owner, accept it as perfectly natural to carry out an infinite number of operations so that one guest can have peace and quiet in a room of his own. That is a great tribute to solitude. — Peter Hoeg

Mike's statement that he wanted to get up early and have a ride had been received by Psmith, with whom early rising was not a hobby, with honest amazement and a flood of advice and warning on the subject.
"One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day - I cannot recall for the moment how many - made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. However, there you are. I've given you the main idea of the thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity. Still, if you're bent on it ... . — P.G. Wodehouse

what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an 'appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? — George Eliot

There is a marvelous story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. "Dear God." he cried out, "look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in your world. Why don't you send help?" God responded,"I did send help. I sent you." When we tell our children that story, we must tell them that each one of them was sent to help repair the broken world-and that it is not the task of an instant or of a year, but of a lifetime. — David Wolpe

There was once a man, Harry, called the steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a wolf of the steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good intelligence can, and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life. — Hermann Hesse

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire. — Neil Gaiman

Arriving on Bainbridge Island is the opposite of arriving in Seattle. When you got in your car and waited to unload off the ferry in Seattle, you saw the Space Needle, cars, and a mound of urban construction. Once you exit the ferry terminal on Bainbridge, however, it's mostly trees. Pine as far as the eye can see. Well, pines, firework and coffee stands, and eventually a casino. You drive through the Port Madison Indian Reservation when you leave the island. I couldn't help but smile as I went past the casino. I didn't really get gambling, since I'd never had money to throw away, but as I passed through all the beautiful countryside that I'm sure once belonged to the tribe, I sort of hoped they would rob the white man blind. Perhaps not politically correct, but the feeling was there all the same. — Lish McBride

In the end, there is cruelty and death alone over the land. Not in a single ray of light or grain of sand will you find solace, for all is dark, and the cold gaze of God's indifferent, heavy-lidded eyes falls on all with equal disdain. Only in your inner strength is there salvation; you must live just as a tree must live, or the cockroaches and fleas that flourish in the land and ruin of Earth. And so you live, and feel the sting of knowing you live. You eat whatever comes to hand, and if what you eat was once a brother or sister, so be it; God does not care. Nobody cares. You whore, and if you whore with man or woman, nobody cares; for when all are hungry, all are whores, even those who use the whores. And disease flourishes when all are whores, for germs must live, and spread across the land and ruin of Earth. — Greg Bear

To reach the farthest chamber of Lascaux, it's likely a man had to snuff out his light, lower himself down a shaft with a rope made of twisted fibers, and then rekindle his lamp in the dark so as to draw the woolly rhinoceros, the half horse, and the raging bison there. A long spear transfixes that bison, and entrails pour from its side. Beneath its front hooves lies the one painted man in all of Lascaux: prone, spindly wounded, disguised behind a bird mask. And below him, until its discovery in 196o, lay a spoon-shaped lamp carved of red sandstone ... Hold it again as it once was held, and the animals will emerge out of darkness as you pass. Nothing stays still. Shadows nestle in the cavities; a flicker of light across pale protruding rock turns a hoof or raises a head. One shape recedes as another emerges, and everything lingers in the imagination. — Jane Brox

There will come a time when man is no longer concerned only with survival, when he will once more be curious as to who came before him, what life was like a thousand years ago, and he will seek out answers for a hundred years or so, but humans' curiosity has always driven them to find answers. — Julie Kagawa

There was once a man who lost his shadow. I forget what happened to him, but it was dreadful. As for me, I've lost my own image. I did not look at it often; but it was there, in the background, just as Maurice had drawn it for me. A straightforward, genuine, "authentic" woman, with out mean-mindedness, uncompromising, but at the same time understanding, indulgent, sensitive, deeply feeling, intensely aware of things and of people, passionately devoted to those she loved and creating happiness for them. A fine life, serene, full, "harmonious." It is dark: I cannot see myself anymore. And what do the others see? Maybe something hideous. — Simone De Beauvoir

I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was, and I be durn if he didn't act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself. — William Faulkner

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by. — Aminatta Forna

I shall be as willing as the next man to fall down in worship before the System, if only I can manage to set eyes on it. Hitherto I have had no success; and though I have young legs, I am almost weary from running back and forth ...
Once or twice I have been on the verge of bending the knee. But at the last moment, when I already had my handkerchief spread on the ground, to avoid soiling my trousers, and I made a trusting appeal to one of the initiated who stood by: "Tell me now sincerely, is it entirely finished; for if so I will kneel down before it, even at the risk of ruining a pair of trousers (for on account of the heavy traffic to and from the system, the road has become quite muddy)," - I always receive the same answer: "No, it is not yet quite finished." And so there was another postponement - of the system, and of my homage.
System and finality are pretty much one and the same, so much so that if the system is not finished, there is no system. — Soren Kierkegaard

I remember watching Mel Gibson on some show once, and he was being asked about his belief in the afterlife. Gibson said: 'Well, I can't believe this is all there is'. And I thought: 'Wait a minute. You're Mel Gibson. You have millions of dollars. You're a great-looking chap with every conceivable blessing that could be bestowed upon a man. And that's not good enough ?' — Hugh Laurie

Chapter 1

I was sitting in Tina's Sunset Restaurant, watching the outriggers shuffle lazily through the clear waters of Sabang Bay, when Tomboy took a seat opposite me, ordered a San Miguel from Tina's daughter, and told me someone else had to die. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and up until that point I'd been in a good mood.

I told him I didn't want to kill people anymore, that it was a part of my past I didn't want to be reminded of, and he replied that he understood all that, but once again we needed the money. 'It's just the way the cookie crumbles.' he added, with the sort of bullshit 'I share your suffering' expression an undertaker might give to one of his customer's relatives. Tomboy Darke was my business partner and a man with a cliche for every occasion, including murder. — Simon Kernick

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech - and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives - he called them enemies! - hidden out of sight somewhere. — Joseph Conrad

If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. — G.K. Chesterton

Lord, why was it his child you gave to me? Why did you send me here to this man so that I remember the things done to me? Shimei interceded and brought me to you, and you healed me. Now, I see Atretes and feel the old wounds reopened. Hold me fast, Father. Don't let me slip; don't let me fall. Don't let me think as I used to think or live as I used to live. "Life is cruel, Atretes, but you have a choice. Choose forgiveness and be free." "Forgiveness!" The word came out of the dark shadows like a curse. "There are some things in this world that can never be forgiven." Her eyes burned with tears. "I once felt the same way, but it turns back on you and eats you alive. When Christ saved me, everything changed. The world didn't look the same." "The world doesn't change." "No. The world didn't. I did." He — Francine Rivers

Revenge is never what you think it's going to be. There's no pleasure and glory, and when it's done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you're talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When it becomes too easy to kill, it never ends. — Richard Kadrey

C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But when the moment came to act upon these convictions, he discovered that his knowledge of self was faulty. Had his lack of killer instinct been a momentary lapse, first time jitters? Or was there more to it than that? If not the fearless, remorseless man he supposed himself to be, then just who was he? — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I was a little too antsy, I was jumping around, wanting to go here, wanting to be there. Once I started smoking weed, I just wanted to stay and play the video game and rap. You spend good time with your daughter, man, after you go smoke, chill with your daughter. You're willing to do whatever she want to do. — Schoolboy Q

Someone once defined a theologian as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that was not there. — Darius Brasher

Lee Duffy was a man apart and someone who only comes around once in a lifetime, a total one off. There have been a lot of things written about him in the press and it's always been from the other side of the coin. There are always two sides to every story and Lee's family have never fully told us their side. They are very distrustful of the press after Lee was made out to be some kind of monster.
If Lee had been born and bred in London, he would have been an icon.
He was Robin Hood, Dick Turpin and Muhammad Ali rolled into one. — Stephen Richards

In the music industry I get a lot of public judgement. Any time the topic of my religion surfaces, there are always people who react negatively, telling me to leave my crazy beliefs out of it. The problem is, I can't. My beliefs are as much a part of my being as my music, or my family, or my obsession with earthy-tasting cereal. Luckily, after all the rejection I faced on my mission, I'm no longer afraid of negative reactions. I've already heard it all--- face-to-face. Hateful comments still hurt, but they don't hold the same weight they once did. Besides, say what you want, but I'm a short-haired angel. (Or at least I was to one man on a subway.) — Lindsey Stirling

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue.
"Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!"
Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am not going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!"
A colored yeti in a clip-on uniform swooped. "Wassa bovver?"
"This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," said the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window."
I couldn't believe I was hearing this. — David Mitchell

Ink black hair, dark smoldering eyes with eyelashes so enviably long they cast shadows upon his cheekbones, a dimpled smile and broad shoulders and a height a little over six feet was all that comprised of Logan Jackson. Basically, he looked like he had just stepped out of the cover of GQ magazine and belonged in Milan and not Haven Falls.
He looked the same but completely different all at once. His pretty boyish features had hardened. He was still handsome but in a rougher more masculine way. Gone was the slightly mischievous innocent child. Now there only remained a devilishly handsome young man — Ali Harper

There once was a Bald Man who sat down after work on a hot summer's day. A Fly came up and kept buzzing about his bald pate, and stinging him from time to time. The Man aimed a blow at his little enemy, but - whack - his palm come on his own head instead; again the Fly tormented him, but this time the Man was wiser and said: YOU WILL ONLY INJURE YOURSELF IF YOU TAKE NOTICE OF DISPICABLE ENEMIES. — Aesop

He built the Empire, yet he was also the principal in its destruction. A great man, in so many ways, but great men have great faults ... One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once ... Unless there are no other choices. — Joe Abercrombie

There was once a people in some land - and they may be still there for what I know - who thought it sacrilegious to stay the course of a raging fire. If a house were being burned, burn it must, even though there were facilities for saving it. For who would dare to interfere with the course of the god? Our idea of sorrow is much the same. We think it wicked, or at any rate heartless, to put it out. If a man's wife be dead, he should go about lugubrious, with long face, for at least two years, or perhaps with full length for eighteen months, decreasing gradually during the other six. If he be a man who can quench his sorrow - put out his fire as it were - in less time than that, let him at any rate not show his power! — Anthony Trollope

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann ... It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe. — Vladimir Nabokov

Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. — Woodrow Wilson

You're telling me you've never wanted to fuck a man? Not even felt curious? Not even found a bloke slightly attractive when you were absolutely hammered?"
"Never. Not once."
Toreth tried to imagine it, and failed miserably. Individual people, that was easy - there were plenty of people he'd never want to fuck, although Chevril wasn't one of them. But writing off a whole fifty percent of the planet because of one chromosome? "Strange. — Manna Francis

There was once a merchant. An eager, industrious young man. His business ... required him to rise early and thus to bed early. But one evening ... he stayed awake past his usual hour ... and in so doing he heard the wondrous singing of something he'd never heard before: a nightbird. The next night, he managed to stay awake later ... to hear more of the bird's song. And the following night. He became so ... so intoxicated with the nightbird's voice that he thought only of it during the day. Came the time when he spent all the night listening to that song. Could not carry out his business during the sunlit hours. Soon he turned his back altogether on the day, and gave himself over to the nightbird's beautiful voice ... much to the sad end of his career, his health ... eventually his life. — Anonymous

Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths whereby we might get there. — Jose Saramago

Heaven help me, I wanted another taste, acknowledging that once was definitely not enough. All of a sudden there was an ache low in my belly, followed by a trickle of moisture between my legs. I would never survive this powerful and dangerous man. Yet, like Phaethon, I begged for the reins to the sun chariot. Idiotic. — Lora Ann

She's a cautious one, he observed. Kiss her once, and she seemed to question it all. But allow her to lead, and the caution seemed to fade. He knew she was trying to figure him out, trying to match his story to the man she saw sitting across from her. But there was no mistaking the sympathy on her face the moment she realized how similar they were. — Nicholas Sparks

Why do you give a damn?"
"I was a runner for ten years, and I've seen many men die in the course of their duties. I myself came close to it more than once. There comes a time when a man has tweaked the devil's nose once too often, and if he's too stubborn or slow-witted to realize it, he'll pay with his own blood. I knew when to stop. And so must you."
"Because of your famous instincts?" Nick mocked angrily. "Damn it, Morgan, you stayed a runner until you were thirty-five! By that count, I still have seven years to go."
"You've tempted fate many more times in the last three years than I did in ten," the magistrate countered.
-Nick & Morgan — Lisa Kleypas

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conduction frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans. — Douglas Adams

For by giving it some hard thought, by considering the whole thing calmly, I could see that the trouble with the guillotine was that you had no chance at all, absolutely none. The fact was that it had been decided once and for all that the patient was to die. It was an open-and-shut case, a fixed arrangement, a tacit agreement that there was no question of going back on. If by some extraordinary chance the blade failed, they would just start over. So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that's wrong. And in a way I was right. But in another way I was forced to admit that that was the whole secret of good organization. In other words, the condemned man was forced into a kind of moral collaboration. It was in his interest that everything go off without a hitch. — Albert Camus

What's happening here?" This last bit was hissed to Ronan and Noah.
"Noah took a personal day."
"I lost..." Noah struggled for words. "There wasn't air. It went away. The - the line!"
"The ley line?" Gansey asked.
Noah nodded once, a sloppy thing that was sort of a shrug at the same time. "There was nothing ... left for me." Releasing Ronan, he shook out his hands.
"You're welcome, man," Ronan snarled. He still couldn't feel his toes.
"Thanks. I didn't mean to ... you were there. Oh, the glitter."
"Yes," Ronan replied crossly. "The glitter. — Maggie Stiefvater

Holding his breath, swaying drunkenly beneath a bulb which illumined little more than grime and moisture, Moon stared awhile at the cement wall; it took just such a hopeless international latrine in the early hours of a morning, when a man was weak in the knees, short in the breath, numb in the forehead and rotten in the gut, to make him wonder where he was, how he got there, where he was going; he realized that he did not know and never would. He had confronted this same latrine on every continent and not once had it come up with an answer; or rather, it always came up with the same answer, a suck and gurgle of unspeakable vileness, a sort of self-satisfied low chuckling: Go to it, man, you're pissing your life away. — Peter Matthiessen

Jean Valjean, who was listening attentively, heard something like the sould of retreating footsteps.
"They are going away," he thought. "I am alone." All at once he heard over his head a noise which appeared to him like a thunder-clap; it was a spadeful of earth falling on the coffin; a second spadeful fell, and one of the holes by which he breather was stopped; a third spadeful fell, and then a forth. "There are somethings stronger than the the strongest man, and Jean Val Jean lost his senses. — Victor Hugo

He married and made a home. He went endlessly from house to house and spoke the mission and the truth. The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. At times he drank strong liquor and beat his head against the floor. In his heart there was a savage violence, and once he grasped the poker from the hearth and struck down his wife. She took Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia with her to her father's home. He wrestled in his spirit and fought down the evil blackness. But Daisy did not come back. And eight years later when she died his sons were not children anymore and they did not return to him. He was left an old man in an empty house. — Carson McCullers

He said:To love, we need passion, but also respect. Once, someone told me that all you needed to build lasting happiness was a woman who admired and respected her man. But now, I know that's wrong. Happiness is much more difficult to attain. It's like crossing a suspension bridge; it's fragile, shaky, and there's no guardrail. You have to find your own equilibrium. And for that to happen, it has to rest on two centers of gravity, on both partners. — Duong Thu Huong

There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life:
1. He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
2. He would make himself a small, strange mustache.
3. He would one day rule the world.
... Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. — Markus Zusak

To-day well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if every one was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property. — Edward Verrall Lucas

Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other's learning. For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer.
One day the two met in the market-place, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods. And after hours of contention they parted.
That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past.
And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books. For he had become an unbeliever. — Kahlil Gibran

Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: "After this," he promised, "there will be only patriots left. — Hilary Mantel

Me and my old man went on a coach trip to Switzerland and Italy once and it was a whole hour further on there. Must be something to do with this Common Market. I don't hold with the Common Market and nor does Mr. Curtain. England's good enough for me. — Agatha Christie

It reminds him of a tale the elder monks told him once, when he was a youngster: the Last Ride of the Tiger Tickler. There was, according to fiction, a man who came upon an untended tiger cub. He took it home and raised it, and, when it was fully grown, he took to riding into town on its back. He steered the beast with a silk handkerchief: he'd lean forward and flick the tiger's left or right ear to make it turn, or brush its nose to make it start or stop. Of course, the tiger, brought up on milk and honey lapped from a bowl held in the kind man's hands, didn't know any better, so he went along with it. Disregarding the tiresome details of the tale, when the Tiger Tickler mistakenly rides into town on a different tiger, who despite similar build and markings has a radically different opinion as to the rightful place of mankind (namely in, not on), everybody gets eaten up. — David Whiteland

Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it. He — Clifford D. Simak

Very softly, but very swiftly, Last, the man with the grey face and the staring eyes, bolted for his life, down and away from the White House. Once in the road, free from the fields and brakes, he changed his run into a walk, and he never paused or stopped, till he came with a gulp of relief into the ugly streets of the big industrial town. He made hi way to the station at once, and found that he was an hour too soon for the London express. So, there was plenty of time for breakfast; which consisted of brandy. — Arthur Machen

Once upon a time, there was a man who was convinced that he possessed a Great Idea. Indeed, as the man thought upon the Great Idea more and more, he realized that it was not just a great idea, but the most wonderful idea ever. The Great Idea would unravel the mysteries of the universe, supersede the authority of the corrupt and error-ridden Establishment, confer nigh-magical powers upon its wielders, feed the hungry, heal the sick, make the whole world a better place, etc. etc. etc.
The man was Francis Bacon, his Great Idea was the scientific method, and he was the only crackpot in all history to claim that level of benefit to humanity and turn out to be completely right. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her! — Sydney Smith

But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's being, in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer time; and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are ... and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once, and that you'd find a stone coffin or two, now, under that chapel, he'd be bound, if you was to dig for it. — Charles Dickens

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man." The — David Eagleman

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?") — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Luther was an extraordinary man of prayer himself. Veit Dietrich, one of Luther's friends, wrote: "There is not a day on which he does not devote at least three hours, the very ones most suitable for [work], to prayer. Once I was fortunate to overhear his prayer. Good God, what faith in his words! He speaks with the great reverence of one who speaks to his God, and with the trust and hope of one who speaks with his father and friend."163 Peter — Timothy Keller

She remembered Fiona saying something once, there was nothing more attractive than a competent man. At the time she'd been a young girl, without true understanding, but now she agreed. — Lily Blackwood

In better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust. — Victor Hugo

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing "classical" music; that two, he was doing it "softly"; and that three, "there were not many readers around in summer." I was there, a one-man multitude. — Vladimir Nabokov

Murder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster. — Louise Penny

the former; "our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me." He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done? "Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once." Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. "It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it. — Charles Dickens

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. — Cormac McCarthy

I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance. — Shannon Hale

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible. — Alex Tizon

It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognised for such. Soon, imperceptibly, it changes its character, and becomes the chair which is always left in the corner, the door which does not shut. A pin, fastening a torn valance, rusts itself into the texture of the stuff, is irremovable; the cracked dessert place and the stewpan with a hole in it, set aside until the man who rivets and solders should chance to come that way, become part of the dresser, are taken down and dusted and put back, and when the man arrives no one remembers them as things in need of repair. Five large keys rest inside the best soup-tureen, scrupulously preserved though no one knows what it was they once opened, and the pastry-cutter is there too, little missed, for the teacup without a handle has taken its place. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea. — Loren Eiseley

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation./He went flying down the river in his boat/with his video camera to his eye, making/a moving picture of the moving river/ ... [At the end of his vacation,]/With a flick of the switch, there it would be./But he would not be in it. He would never be in it. — Wendell Berry

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did. — Elizabeth Kolbert

There once was a lady most beautiful
Spirited, if a little unusual
Her friends were few
But how did the man queue
But to all she gave a refusal — Sarah J. Maas

Generations of British writers would look up to Roget as a kindred soul who could offer both emotional as well as intellectual sustenance. In the stage directions to Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie includes an homage to Roget: The night nursery of the Darling family, which is the scene of our opening Act, is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury. We might have a right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is chosen is that Mr. Roget once lived there. So did we in the days when his Thesaurus was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little compliment. For Barrie, Roget's masterpiece was synonymous with virtue itself. To describe the one saving grace of the play's villain, Captain Hook, Barrie adds, "The man is not wholly evil--he has a Thesaurus in his cabin. — Joshua Kendall

Once, in ancient China, there was a serious drought when the grain died and did not grow back. People starved, until an old man came from the foot of Mount Hakusan, the White Mountain, and said to the emperor that he had invented a wonder medicine, or food supplement, that had made seventy members of his family live at ease. If this medicine is used, your complexion or ability will not decline even a bit, and you will feel even better than normal. He then said to the emperor, 'If this medicine is false, the entire family of seventy people I saved can be put to death. — Antony Cummins

The Army had your soul, once you'd been in it all those years - there were things you couldn't shake off so easy, because they'd gone deep into you, and it was painful when they came out, because of the roots they'd grown, right deep down in your guts.
Name and number? Watson, 606. Smarten up there, Private Watson! You're a soldier now, you know, not a bloody jelly fish! Get that salute right, private! Sir! Sir! Sir! Corporal, what's your unit? Corporal Watson, dress that man! You are in charge of this rabble, Corp'l Watson? Sir! Report to my quarters, Sarnt Watson, oh six hundred hours! You should know better than that, Sergeant - now get those men in order! Sir! Sir! Sir!
Hold, Watty. — Elleston Trevor

Call down to the desk to ask about the room?" "No phone," Cisco said. "Just watch." Once back on the ground floor, Gloria stepped out of the elevator and went to a house phone that was on a table against the wall. She made a call and soon was speaking to someone. "This is her asking to be connected to the room," Cisco said. "She is told by the operator that there is no Daniel Price registered in the hotel and no one in eight thirty-seven." Gloria hung up the phone, and I could tell by her body language that she was annoyed, frustrated. Her trip had been wasted. She headed back through the lobby, moving at a faster clip than when she had arrived. "Now watch this," Cisco said. Gloria was halfway across the lobby when a man entered the screen thirty feet behind her. He was wearing a fedora and had his — Michael Connelly

I assure you, I am taking an inordinate amount of pleasure from this ball, but none of it has to do with any of these bumblers."
"I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic. — Shannon Hale

It was so completely obvious, and yet what proof was there? It was, Martin thought, like the rabbit which the Hindus see in the moon. It is next to impossible to make people see it; but once they have recognized it, they will never see a face or a man or a woman there again. It is obvious that there is a rabbit in the moon; but obviousness seems too often unsusceptible of proof.
The Case of the Seven of Calvary — Anthony Boucher

Betsy Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion, but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He was a fine-looking man when I married him", said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone. "I was a fool; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was. There, my dear. Now, you know the beginning, middle, and end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot! — Charles Dickens

Once I had her clean, I wrapped her in a towel and carried her back to the bed. A small red bloodstain was on the sheets, and again the possessive monster inside me threw back his head and roared his pleasure. I stood there holding her and letting the proof I was the only man to be inside her wash over me.
Blythe turned her head, and I felt her stiffen in my arms. "Oh, I can clean that up," she said, starting to wiggle.
I pulled her tighter to my chest. "No. I'm going to dry you off and hold you some more. I like seeing that blood. I did that," The pleasure in my voice made Blythe smile. — Abbi Glines

There was once a strange small man but there was a word shaker too. — Markus Zusak

As she felt his fangs against her neck, she was in another world.
There was screaming. A woman was somewhere in agony. Everything was black, and the tormented scream was overwhelming, echoing through the emptiness. After the screaming subsided, there was panting, loud and steady, and it wasn't as dark anymore. There was a room visible now, in a reddish light. A pale man with black hair hovered over a woman dressed in white. She lay on a bed, looking disheveled and sweaty. Her brown-black hair clung to her wet forehead and shoulders. She was covered in blood. The man sat next to her, and held her close to him. He stroked her hair as her chest heaved desperately.
"I love you, my dearest Katerina," he said, cradling her in his strong arms. "Soon, we'll be together forever." Everything faded to black once more, and the woman stopped breathing. All was silent and still. — Dawn Bonney

And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." "Snap ending." Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. — Ray Bradbury

A present," he said, then winced. The presents he'd bought for Portia usually included ropes of pearls or gemstones the size of robin's eggs. A man of his wealth ought to provide something much nicer than a sack of strange-looking pods. Sophie peeked inside the bag, her face screwing up in confusion. "What are they?" she asked, lifting the odd vegetable from the bag. It was a ruddy orange shade, larger than her hand, and looked like an oblong pumpkin. There were four of them in the bag. "You once said the cocoa powder in this village was bad, and you wanted to make your own. These are cocoa pods, shipped directly from Brazil. If you split it open, you will find fresh cocoa beans inside. Then you can begin your culinary adventure of making chocolate from scratch." "You remembered!" she exclaimed. Her eyes widened in delight as she held the pod to her nose for a sniff and then ran her fingers along its waxy skin. "It's fabulous. Thank you! — Elizabeth Camden

Once before, my daughter,' she said, ignoring Ahmed's continuing ravings, 'your father and I,
whatsitsname, said there was no shame in leaving an inadequate husband. Now I say again: you have, whatsitsname, a man of unspeakable vileness. Go from him; go today, and take your children, whatsitsname, away from these oaths which he spews from his lips like an animal, whatsitsname, of the gutter. Take your children, I say, whatsitsname-both your children,' she said, clutching me to her bosom. — Salman Rushdie

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. — Thomas Paine

In the summers we swam in the river and caught minnows with jam pots; on Sunday evenings my father fished in it, bringing home each time a bag of trout. In winter salmon came up to this quiet backwater to spawn and, of course, there was a certain amount of poaching, to which my father objected strongly. Once, when a generous neighbour gave us a present of a poached salmon, he lined us all up around the kitchen table and proceeded to open up the fish. As the eggs poured out he explained about the huge loss of fish life due to the poaching of this one salmon. In my father's world nature possessed a balance and man had no right to upset that balance to satisfy his own greed; killing this fish was going against the laws of nature. — Alice Taylor

Disaster followed disaster ... the hero stuck in there, though. Macon had long ago noticed that all adventure movies had the same moral: Perseverance pays. Just once he'd like to see a hero like himself
not a quitter, but a man who did face facts and give up gracefully when pushing on was foolish. — Anne Tyler