This Time Its Real Quotes & Sayings

Each thing, just by looking at it, aroused in me an irresistible longing to write so I would not die. I had suffered this on other occasions, but only on that morning did I recognize it as a crisis of inspiration, that word, abominable but so real, that demolishes everything in its path in order to reach its ashes in time. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In the ego's world, power means having the ability to control circumstances to your benefit, to manipulate or dominate people in order to get your own way. If what you want is the greatest good for everyone, ego has little to say. The kind of strength that is giving, selfless, devout, trusting, and patient is decidedly feminine. It belongs to saints and mothers. By affirming this kind of strength, you are demonstrating faith that there can be power without aggression, domination, and control. Is there real power in the feminine aspect? Certainly there is, and even though the ego has exercised control for a long time, spiritual power has always been in charge. Spiritual power pervades every aspect of life as the intelligence that nurtures and organizes all forms, atom to cosmos. This power is yours to tap into. It comes from inside, and nothing can stop it once you have found its source in the true self. — Deepak Chopra

Soul can't exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, 'Here's a value proposition that I believe in. Here's where I'm coming from. This is my point of view.' At first, it's a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation. Like breaking in a baseball glove. You can't will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it. Well, you have to use a new business, too. You have to break it in. If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul. Look what happens when a new restaurant opens. Everyone rushes in to see it, and it's invariably awkward because it hasn't yet developed soul. That takes time to emerge, and you have to work at it constantly. — Anonymous

I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know a period and reading its books and watching its films. I see it as a real treat. — Sarah Waters

The Christmas season is also that time of year when the business world implores us to consider the material as more important than the spiritual, all in the spirit of 'the holidays.' So we celebrate the arrival on Christmas Day of iPods and DVDs ... Then again, maybe this is precisely the kind of seasonal silliness that causes the Christian faithful to shut out the noise and contemplate the real nativity scene and its eternal promise. — L. Brent Bozell Jr.

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally found person to rediscover it, until some of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it. — John Stuart Mill

It isnt easy to put all of the ingredients together and one of the key things is this is the first time theres been a real, significant governmental body participation. In our case, its Collin County and the City of Frisco, the Frisco Economic Development group and the Frisco Independent School District. Those bodies, and Hunt Sports Group, obviously, put money into the project, and that has helped make it work. — Lamar Hunt

And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban. — G.K. Chesterton

... the matter was new to me, and I had no material for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly pointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been down in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs my lap full, and shred them green into the pot. — Charlotte Bronte

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question
not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Our existence in this place, this microscopic corner of the cosmos, is fleeting. With utter disregard for our wants and needs, nature plays out its grand acts on scales of space and time that are truly hard to grasp. Perhaps all we can look to for real solace is our endless capacity to ask questions and seek answers about the place we find ourselves in. — Caleb Scharf

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and infinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an effective balance. They did not realize that this age of relative good fortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no moral responsibility. They did not realize that this security of progress was a thing still to be won or lost, and that the time to win it was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough, and yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. — H.G.Wells

While we took the children off to Disneyland. A visit to this magical kingdom should be a compulsory part of being an American---who else on earth would put so much ingenuity into simply having fun? The rides were fabulous: a real life pirate ship with real life pirates; a roller coaster that tppk you inside the Matterhorn (that was my favourite); and the Haunted House, with its flickering lights and a moving floor. By the end of the day, our feet were aching and our voices were hoarse, but it was well worth it. We all had a tremendous time ! — Sallyann Murphey

In this world, this life, "flow" [the times when our work or play so absorbs and attunes our energies that we lose track of time] comes to an end. The canvas is dry, the fugue is complete, the band plays the tag one more time and then resolves on the final chord. And, too, the book is finished, the service is over, the lights go up in the darkened theater and we emerge blinking into the bright lights of the "real world." But what if the timeless, creative world we had glimpsed is really the real world -- and it is precisely its reality that gave it such power to captivate us for a while? What if our ultimate destiny is that moment of enjoyment and engagement we glimpse in the artist's studio? — Andy Crouch

Although we cannot attain Jesus in his fullness unless at the same time we also take into account his unique relationship with God which has a special nature of its own, this does not of itself mean that Jesus' unique way of life is the only way to God. For even Jesus not only reveals God but also conceals him, since he appeared among us in non-godlike, creaturely humanity. As man he is a historical, contingent being who in no way can represent the full riches of God... unless one denies the reality of his real humanity (and that runs counter to the consensus of the church). So the gospel itself forbids us to speak of a Christian religious imperialism and exclusivism. — Edward Schillebeeckx

The guiding factor for the development of Christian doctrine is the Bible itself! The text of Scripture provides the grounds and, most important, the limits for this development over time. Rather than bringing in outside influences (such as tradition), we recognize that no one has ever plumbed the depths of God's revelation contained in Scripture; no one has ever come close to exhausting what is to be found in its pages. Therefore, real development of Christian doctrine is simply our ever-increasing understanding of the Word. It is a delving deeper and deeper into the truths of the Word. — James R. White

That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation. Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians- even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children. — Hunter S. Thompson

...[I]f at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment; and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy - if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated? — Socrates

I feel like a pink worm in the core of this green room, as though I have eaten my way in and should be working on becoming a butterfly, or something. I'm not real awake, here, at the moment. I hear somebody coughing. I hear my heart beating and the high-pitched sound which is my nervous system doing its thing. Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let me be normally befuddled, normally nervous; get me to the church on time, in time. Let me not startle anyone, especially myself. Let me get through our wedding day as best I can, with no special effects. Deliver Clare from unpleasant scenes. Amen. — Audrey Niffenegger

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is, I think, this glamour, this magic, this incomparable keying up of the spirit in a time of mortal conflict, which constitute the pacifist's real problem--a problem still incompletely imagined and still quite unsolved. The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour is dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time. The glamour may be the mere delirium of fever, which as soon as war is over dies out and shows itself for the will-o'-the-wisp that it is, but while it lasts, no emotion known to man seems as yet to have quite the compelling power of this enlarged vitality. — Vera Brittain

In these countries today no one believed in God anymore, or took account of him, or even remembered that they had once believed; and this had been achieved without difficulty, without conflict, without any kind of violence or protest, without even a real discussion, as easily as a heavy object, held back for some time by an external obstacle, returns as soon as you release it, to its position of equilibrium. Human spiritual beliefs were perhaps far from being the massive, solid irrefutable block we usually imagined; on the contrary, perhaps they were what was most fleeting and fragile in man, the thing most ready to be born and to die. — Michel Houellebecq

Was a mirror that existed only in a mirror not just as real as its original? It fulfilled its role just as well as its counterpart - it reflected. Merle couldn't think of anything else that was able to do this: to do something without itself being. For the first time, she asked herself whether all mirrors were not always magic mirrors. "Mirrors can see," Arcimboldo had said. Now she believed him. — Kai Meyer

Peace in its real sense can never be achieved by military measures or technical fixes ... It is high time for us to focus our attention on the real problems which are threatening all of us - in fact, life on this planet. — Hans-Peter Durr

The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution - not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions - in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment - often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured - that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don't want you to be a victim. — Joseph Conrad

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life. — Richard Ford

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness. — Thomas Merton

This time could be different. This time it could last. Maybe it would be a longer, deeper love: a real and solid entity that lived in the house, used the bathroom, ate their food, mussed up the linens in sleep. A love that pulled her close when she cried, that slept with its chest pressed against her back. — Leslye Walton

In these days [1908], when all things and memories of the past are at length become not only subservient to, but submerged by, the matters and needs of the immediate present, those paths of knowledge that lead into regions seemingly remote from such needs are somewhat discredited; and the aims of those that follow them whither they lead are regarded as quite out of touch with the real interests of life. Very greatly is this so with archaeology, and the study of ancient and curious tongues, and searchings into old thoughts on high and ever-insistent questions; a public which has hardly time to read more than its daily newspaper and its weekly novel has denounced - almost dismissed - them, with many other noble and wonderful things, as 'unpractical,' whatever that vague and hollow word may mean. — Battiscombe G. Gunn

In all the time I'd known her, I'd hardly touched her. But her hand on mine felt so right and real, so powerful in its own weird way. It didn't make sense to me why this one girl affected me like that. — Sibylla Matilde

Comedy, when it works, is light on its feet and has the illusion of complete spontaneity: as if there is no film, no camera. You are standing there experiencing it all in real time. This illusion, I believe, is why so many people think comedy is easy. — David Dobkin

With these new techniques, a new breed of evolutionist is emerging, able to capture the workings of evolution in real time. The picture so painted is breathtaking in its wealth of detail and its compass, ranging from the subatomic to the planetary scale. And that is why I said that, for the first time in history, we know. Much of our growing body of knowledge is provisional, to be sure, but it is vibrant and meaningful. It is a joy to be alive at this time, when we know so much, and yet can still look forward to so much more. — Nick Lane

Pay close attention. Listen carefully. Let's look at what happens when fear is in charge.

With fear in charge, you can never fully relax, let your guard down, be your true self. You can't open up because you are afraid of how people will respond if they were to meet the real you. When fear is in charge, you simply cannot take that chance. Fear will not allow honesty, fear despises spontaneity, and fear refuses to believe in you. Fear may mean well, but it ruins everything by overprotecting you, insisting that you stay hidden and keep a low profile, that your time is coming....sometime later.

Fear is bold, but insists that you be timid. Take a chance and there will be hell to pay: fear will call on its dear friend, shame, to meet you on the other side of your risk taking, to tell you what you should not have done. Fear will trip you, tackle you, smother you, do whatever it takes to cause you to hesitate, to stop you. In this way fear is fearless. — Thom Rutledge

Reality is incredibly larger, infinitely more exciting, than the flesh and blood vehicle we travel in here. If you read science fiction, the more you read it the more you realize that you and the universe are part of the same thing. Science knows still practically nothing about the real nature of matter, energy, dimension, or time; and even less about those remarkable things called life and thought. But whatever the meaning and purpose of this universe, you are a legitimate part of it. And since you are part of the all that is, part of its purpose, there is more to you than just this brief speck of existence. You
are just a visitor here in this time and this place, a traveler through it. — Gene Roddenberry

One of the great arts in living is to learn the art of accurately appraising values. Everything that we think, that we earn, that we have given to us, that in any way touches our consciousness, has its own value. These values are apt to change with the mood, with time, or because of circumstances. We cannot safely tie to any material value. The values of all material possessions change continually, sometimes over night. Nothing of this nature has any permanent set value. The real values are those that stay by you, give you happiness and enrich you. They are the human values. — George Matthew Adams

I have found that hesitation, more than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy. I've found that the moment with all its meaning
often moves on by the time I've reconsidered whether or not to enter it. I am not saying we should always be impulsive. More to the point, I have discovered, again and again, that I
usually know what I need to do but just deny it, and it is this small hesitation, this small resistance to enter what is real, that makes life feel neutral or out of reach. — Mark Nepo

We can, and must, develop dialogue and relatedness with our body because it's talking to us all the time. And please remember, your body loves you. It does everything it can to keep you alive and functioning. You can feed it garbage, and it will take it and digest it for you. You can deprive it of sleep, but still it gets you up and running next morning. You can drink too much alcohol, and it will eliminate it from your system. It loves you unconditionally and does its best to allow you to live the life you came here for. The real issue in this relationship is not whether your body loves you, but whether you love your body. In any relationship, if one partner is loving, faithful and supportive, it's easy for the other to take that person for granted. That's what most of us do with our bodies. It is time for you to shift this, and working to understand your cravings is one of the best places to begin. Then you can build a mutually loving relationship with your own body. — Joshua Rosenthal

Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change. — Terry Tempest Williams

Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

This, Tony, is a living land, not a construction site. This is
real and breathing, not a fabrication that can be bullied into
being. When you choose technique over relationship and
process, when you try and shortcut the speed of growing
awareness and force understanding and maturity before its time,
this - he pointed down and over the length — Wm. Paul Young

This [oatmeal] represents your soul in its pure state. Your soul on the day you were born. You were perfect. You were happy. You were good.
Now, enter Concept Number Two: crap. Don't worry, folks. I don't use actual crap up here. Only imaginary crap. You'll have to supply the crap, using your mind. Now, if someone came up and crapped in your nice warm oatmeal, what would you say? Would you say: 'Wow, super, thanks, please continue crapping in my oatmeal'? Am I being silly? I'm being a little silly. But guess what, in real life people come up and crap in your oatmeal all the time
friends, co-workers, loved ones, even you kids, especially your kids!
and that's exactly what you do. You say, 'Thanks so much!' You say, 'Crap away!' You say, and here the metaphor breaks down a bit, 'Is there some way I can help you crap in my oatmeal? — George Saunders

Time changes its nature in prisons and hospitals. In this cosmogony it both races and drags itself. For anyone who hasn't been a long-term patient or prisoner - or both, like Sharmila - there is no way to imagine what evenings are like when you are locked in - the indeterminate hour when the sun has gone down but night hasn't fully set in. It haunts you. In a hospital, especially one where air-conditioning and double-glass windows don't shield you from the real world, there are mixed sounds that rise up from every floor; murmurs, shallow breaths, the sounds of pain and healing. Once the final inspections are done and the trays and bowls carried away, a shroud of silence falls over everything. It can be strangely tranquil, or eerily desolate. — Anubha Bhonsle

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that's its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn't like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right. — Alberto Caeiro

The information superhighways will have the same effect as our present superhighways or motorways. They will cancel out the landscape, lay waste to the territory and abolish real distances. What is merely physical and geographical in the case of our motorways will assume its full dimensions in the electronic field with the abolition of mental distances and the absolute shrinkage of time. All short circuits (and the establishment of this planetary hyper-space is tantamount to one immense short circuit) produce electric shocks. What we see emerging here is no longer merely territorial desert, but social desert, employment desert, the body itself being laid waste by the very concentration of information. A kind of Big Crunch, contemporaneous with the Big Bang of the financial markets and the information networks. We are merely at the dawning of the process, but the waste and the wastelands are already growing much faster than the computerization process itself. — Jean Baudrillard

China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia. — Milton Friedman

Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy; it meant exceptionally bad, deplorable, shameful; it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant falling heavily; and it meant of a color: dark. It meant dark in color, to darken. It meant me. I felt sad. — Claudia Rankine

In this stillness that is at the same time movement, in this darkness that is at the same time light, change is found not in the realm of ideas but in the energizing desire that is realized through precipitation. Desire tends towards its own realization and change takes place when the desire for it shatters the bounds of the possible, breaking the dialectical equilibrium holding together the framework of what is existent. It is at such moments that the imaginary flows into the real and overwhelms it, inundating it until it has been absorbed. — Michael Richardson

What if she were simply to open her bedroom window and throw herself out, head first? Would she really be able to come back and start again? Or was it, as everyone told her, and as she must believe, all in her head? And so what if it was - wasn't everything in her head real too? What if there was no demonstrable reality? What if there was nothing beyond the mind? Philosophers "came to grips" with this problem a long time ago, Dr. Kellet had told her, rather wearily, it was one of the very first questions they addressed, so there was really no point in her fretting over it. But surely, by its very nature, everyone wrestled with this dilemma anew every time? — Kate Atkinson

Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion-one of loyalty and divine friendship. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time- while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing. — Richard Paul Evans

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

Why am I telling you this?" he went on. "A secret's only a secret as long as you keep it. Once you tell someone it loses all its power--for good or for ill--like that, it's just another piece of information. But a real mystery can't be solved, not completely. It's always just out of reach, like a light around the corner; you might catch a glimpse of what it reveals, feel its warmth, but you can't know the heart of it, not really. That's what gives it value: It can't be cracked, it's bigger than you and me, bigger than everything we know. Those tight-ass suits can keep their secrets, they don't add up to anything. This deep in the game, pal, I'll take mystery every time. — Mark Frost

By the time I was eighteen, she had sat me down and detailed her alcoholism, its onset and aftermath. She believed that by sharing such things I might be able to avoid them or, if need be, recognize them when they occurred. By talking about them to her children, she was also acknowledging that they were real and that they had an effect on us too, that things like this shaped a family, not just the person they happened to. — Alice Sebold

Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image. The social practice confronted by an autonomous spectacle is at the same time the real totality which contains that spectacle. But the split within this totality mutilates it to the point that the spectacle seems to be its goal. — Guy Debord

The traumatic event, although real, took place outside the parameters of "normal" reality, such as causality, sequence, place, and time. The trauma is thus an event that has no beginning, no ending, no before, no during and no after. This absence of categories that define it lends it to a quality of "otherness", a salience, a timelessness and a ubiquity that puts it outside the range of associatively linked experiences, outside the range of comprehension, of recounting and of mastery. Trauma survivors live not with memories of the past, but with an event that could not and did not proceed through to its completion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as its survivors are concerned, continues into the present and is current in every respect. — Dori Laub

Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger
reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous
thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind
amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its
forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life. — Loren Eiseley

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association.
I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter. — Alexis De Tocqueville

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation
the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered
is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture. — Marjorie Garber

Because bread was so important, the laws governing its purity were strict and the punishment severe. A baker who cheated his customers could be fined £10 per loaf sold, or made to do a month's hard labor in prison. For a time, transportation to Australia was seriously considered for malfeasant bakers. This was a matter of real concern for bakers because every loaf of bread loses weight in baking through evaporation, so it is easy to blunder accidentally. For that reason, bakers sometimes provided a little extra- the famous baker's dozen. — Bill Bryson

Dickens defends what he has written in terms of its truth. This is not the last time that the 'true' and the 'real' were to be opposed unfruitfully. The same terminological mismatch was to feature throughout the rest of the century in debate about the nature of literary realism and the moral function of realist art. — Charles Dickens

Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during that span. Consequently it has, I think, greater emotional power than a novel because of this real-time effect. Stories can stun you. — Adam Ross

My first motion capture game was with Sony - 'NBA: The Life.' It was very ahead of its time. Brandon Akiaten, he was the writer and director. He had a real vision of what this game was meant to be; it was a basketball game where I was the Jerry Maguire sports agent type guy. And it was great! — Nolan North

There's a patter in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor, but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing. Believe me, I know this can be a hard Commandment to keep. But I believe also that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. — Marilynne Robinson

The breaking point isn't the time to give up, it's the time to dig in. Pressure is being put on your seed. It's breaking forth and working to take root. Its creating an environment that will sustain it long term because the breaking point means harvest time is near and victory is imminent. Nevertheless, the pressure is real. This is the stage where many of us breakdown instead of breaking out. — Lynn R. Davis