Quotes & Sayings About Urgent

London had always had this trick of living in two time signatures at once - the urgent and the always - each in earshot of the other. — Chris Cleave

There is an Arabic proverb which says that "Peace comes from understanding, not agreement." Agreements are more easily broken than made; but understanding never. It is urgent, therefore, and in the interest of peace, that there be better understanding among nations. As people we are one, seeking the same goal. As nations, we lose each other down the different paths we choose to fulfill our national objectives. that is why we must understand each other better. — King Hussein I

She lost her grip and plummeted into the grass, landing on the ground so hard she was jarred all over. Before she could recover, she felt Ash's hands on her, urgent and ungentle, rolling her back and forth on the grass until her nose was as full of the smell of wet grass as of smoke.

She sat up spluttering.

"I'm so sorry, you were on fire," Ash blurted.

"Obviously, I didn't think you were rolling me around on the grass for fun," said Kami. "Um. Or something that sounds less saucy than that, sorry. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Revelation is a pastor's letter to his floundering flock, an urgent telegram bearing a brilliant battle plan for a people at war. — Billy Graham

Most people spend their time on the 'urgent' rather than on the 'important.' — Robert M. Hutchins

For us, the idea was not to get involved more than necessary in the fight against the Russians, which was the business of the Americans, but rather to show our solidarity with our Islamist brothers. I discovered that it was not enough to fight in Afghanistan, but that we had to fight on all fronts against communist or Western oppression. The urgent thing was communism, but the next target was America ... This is an open war up to the end, until victory. — Osama Bin Laden

He spoke on rising toes, on rolling ankles, he spoke with forward tilt, with lifted shoulders, with forefinger pointing and fist punching. He did verbal pirouettes, he did elongated sentences, he let clauses gather at the river and foam until they found spittle release. He spoke hushed, he spoke his big points in whispers, then drove them in with urgent balletic waves of arm and extended eyebrow as he said the same thing again only louder. He was not then a guns and bombs nationalist. He was the more dangerous kind. He was a poems and stories one. — Niall Williams

Outside the station of Santa Maria Novella Isabella has to stand aside while a line of prisoners are marched into the terminus by armed Fascist guards. They pass within touching distance of her, carrying bags and bundles. There are old people and some children too. They all seem swamped by their clothes, disembodied by them somehow. Then she catches the eye of Ezra, a young Jewish man who once worked in the arts material shop where she buys most of her pigments and brushes. He is almost at the back of the line. The veins are high and urgent on his hand. His trousers are held up with a dirty piece of string. His cobalt blue eyes hold hers for the barest beat of a moment but some essence of his being conveys itself to her and her blood quickens in sympathy for him. She has the feeling of looking into the eyes of a ghost. — Glenn Haybittle

The company's most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand - innovation from everyone. — Tom Peters

Urgency means paying the details the attention they deserve, with the respect they deserve, without delay. — Richie Norton

The tragic nuclear accident at Fukushima underscored the urgent need to enhance nuclear safety and the international emergency response framework. I commend the International Atomic Energy Agency for its work. — Ban Ki-moon

Nothing has emerged more clearly from the Everyday Sexism Project than the urgent need for far more comprehensive mandatory sex-and-relationships education in schools, to include issues such as consent and respect, domestic violence and rape. It's not just girls who need it so desperately. For boys porn provides some very scary, dictatorial lessons about what it means to be a man and how they are apparently expected to exert their male dominance over women. It is as unrealistic to expect them, unaided, to instinctively work out the difference between online porn and real, caring intimacy, as it is to demand the same intuition of young women. According — Laura Bates

Don't let the urgent take precedent over the important. — Michael Hyatt

To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent
that was NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being. — D.H. Lawrence

When the urgent crowds out the important, people urgently accomplish nothing of value. — Orrin Woodward

The very desire to preserve animals was a subjective sentiment of fail in the animal's intrinsic worth. It was a feeling possessed by most of the scientists there, who regarded the wildebeeste migration with the same awe that others feel for the Mona Lisa, but they would not admit this sentiment into their arguments because it could not be backed up by facts; the right and worng of aesthetics being imponderables not open to scientific analysis. At the end of the meeting there was a consensus of opinion on only one fact, that there was an urgent need for research before taking any hasty action. — Iain Douglas-Hamilton

The most urgent and demanding question for Christian believers is not whether "a supreme being of some kind" exists, but rather whether this incomparably good and powerful and compassionate source and end of all things truly is as revealed in Scripture — Thomas C. Oden

Green production is certainly an important topic for newspapers. Environmental considerations are part of every enquiry today and come into most aspects of equipment specification. On balance, however, cost-effectiveness is a more urgent requirement for most print organisations. — Eric Bell

We must be honest here, and not defensive; the issues are now too grave and too urgent. Our inability to see our personal failures is paralleled by our inability to see our institutional and national sins too. It is the identical and same pattern of addiction and denial. Thank God that Pope John Paul II introduced into our vocabulary words like "structural sin" and "institutional evil." It was not even part of the conversation in most of Christian history up to now, as we exclusively concentrated on "personal" sins. The three sources of evil were traditionally called "the world, the flesh, and the devil." We so concentrated on the flesh that we let the world and "the devil" get off scot-free.8 — Richard Rohr

Albert wiped sweat from his forehead. "Quinn, why do you think people work hard? Just to get by? You think your folks worked just to get by? Did they buy just enough food? Or did they get just barely enough house? Or a car that barely runs?" Albert's voice was urgent. "No, man, people like a good life. They want more. What's wrong with that? — Michael Grant

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy. — James Lovelock

Being a mother makes everything more urgent. — Marianne Williamson

The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Each generation searches their memories for time lost, feels the urgent exigencies of the present, and worries about the uncertainty of the future. Akin to preceding generations, how we live, the choices we make for surviving and loving, is our story. — Kilroy J. Oldster

She couldn't help thinking, even now about how handsome Damon looked, how wild and dark and ferocious and gorgeous. She could help thinking about the times he'd smiled at her, laughed at her, come to save her at her urgent call. She had honestly thought that someday ... But now she felt as if her heart were breaking in two. — L.J.Smith

The soul is one of the most venerable, enduring images of spiritual traditions worldwide. In The Great Field, John James brings new information to this ancient concept, and in so doing helps bridge the worlds of modern science and spirituality, which is one of the most urgent tasks of our time. — Larry Dossey

The greatest predictor of social pathology in children is fatherlessness, greater even than poverty. In his book Fatherless Generation (Zondervan) John Sowers claims, "The most reliable predictor for gang activity and youth violence is neither social class nor race or education but fatherlessness." In Fatherless America (Basic Books) David Blankenhorn says, "It is no exaggeration to say that fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the engine driving our most urgent social problems". I am convinced that the damage to humanity caused by the epidemic of unfathered men and women is far greater than the damage caused by war and disease combined. — Craig Wilkinson

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary." A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme - so whimsical, sensual, and urgent - that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn't had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco - glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls - was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term "flower children" would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam. — Sheila Weller

There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone. — David Foster Wallace

Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires. Doing the same thing in middle age just makes you nervous, not with vague puritan guilt but the more urgent worry that you're running out of time, a deadline you can feel in your cells. — Tim Kreider

I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder. — Thomas Chalmers

I am asserting that those who love the wilderness should not be wholly deprived of it, that while the reduction of the wilderness has been a good thing, its extermination would be a very bad one, and that the conservation of wilderness is the most urgent and difficult of all the tasks that confront us, because there are no economic laws to help and many to hinder its accomplishment. — Aldo Leopold

And of course there was Seamus, who could now come to work with me on most days. He had a bed and toys in one corner near my desk, although he preferred curling up in the guest chairs directly across from me, as though he had an appointment and urgent matters to howl about. (More fookin' food! Seriously, people. I need more foooooooooooood!!) — Teresa Rhyne

Truth has not such an urgent air. — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

We have to pray as the ancients prayed. We are women now, not children, and are expected to pray with maturity. The words most often used to describe urgent, prayerful labor are wrestle, plead, cry, and hunger...In some sense, prayer may be the hardest work we will ever be engaged in, and perhaps it should be. — Patricia T. Holland

Seth and Jenny after they've escaped Alexander in Mexico.
Seth: "Here's what we need to do. Find a flat area, like a farm, a little bit out of the way where we can spend a little time." Seth unbuttoned his black fatigues.
Jenny: "Seth, I think we have more urgent things to think about ... "
Seth: "I know." He pushed his pants down to his knees. "I want to show you something.
Jenny: "I've seen it before."
Seth: "Ha ha." Seth tugged back the leg of his boxer shorts to reveal a black band around one thigh with a circular device mounted on it. — J.L. Bryan

Think of a "discovery" as an act that moves the arrival of information from a later point in time to an earlier time. The discovery's value does not equal the value of the information discovered but rather the value of having the information available earlier than it otherwise would have been. A scientist or a mathematician may show great skill by being the first to find a solution that has eluded many others; yet if the problem would soon have been solved anyway, then the work probably has not much benefited the world [unless having a solution even slightly sooner is immensely valuable or enables further important and urgent work]. — Nick Bostrom

[T]he practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition — Carl Sagan

At a time when we need an urgent national conversation about how schools and curriculum should address the environmental crisis, we're being told that the problems we need to focus on are teacher incompetence, government monopoly, and market competition. The reform agenda reflects the same private interests that are moving to shrink public space-interests that have no desire to raise questions that might encourage students to think critically about the roots of the environmental crisis, or to examine society's unsustainable distribution of wealth and power. — Bill Bigelow

I have looked high." Her voice was an urgent whisper. "And I have fallen farther than you can imagine. So don't you lecture me. All I want is to pretend that this is enough - that I can be satisfied by the scraps that remain to me. " He had — Courtney Milan

The most urgent domestic challenge facing the United States at the close of the 20th century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a social role for men. — David Blankenhorn

This is a marvel of the universe:
To fling a thought across a stretch of sky
Some weighty message, or a yearning cry,
It matters not; the elements rehearse
Man's urgent utterance, and his words traverse
The spacious heav'ns like homing birds that fly
Unswervingly, until, upreached on high,
A quickened hand plucks off the message terse. — Josephine Preston Peabody

No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel. — Barbara Tuchman

Here, day was not the decorous successor to night known to us at home, lazily resuming sway over a drowsy world when the darkness thins and dies, bequeathing its lost kingdom to the unwilling light. This struggling, sun-born life in forest, swamp and teeming air was too urgent and too ephemeral to wait for the going of night before resuming its unchanging day-labor of growth, fruition and exhaustion once more. Day extended its reign into the darkness, stealing precious time from the night, and when the sky paled perceptibly at last the feeling of full day was already abroad on this impatient earth. — E. Arnot Robertson

Urgent necessity prompts many to do things. — Miguel De Cervantes

A world government with powers adequate to guarantee security is not a remote ideal for the distant future. It is an urgent necessity if our civilization is to survive. — Albert Einstein

Do you really want to waste your precious time doing things that are neither important nor urgent? — Eddie De Jong

Fourteenth-century men seemed to have regarded their doctor in rather the same way as the twentieth-century men are apt to regard their priest, with tolerance for someone who was doing his best and the respect due to a man of learning but also with a nagging and uncomfortable conviction that he was largely irrelevant to the real and urgent problems of their lives. — Philip Ziegler

Sex as desired by the class that dominates women is held by that class to be elemental, urgent, necessary, even if or even though it appears to require the repudiation of any claim women might have to full human standing. In the subordination of women, inequality itself is sexualized, made into the experience of sexual pleasure, essential to sexual desire. — Andrea Dworkin

The American family is not simply changing; it is getting weaker ... Family decline drives some of our most urgent social problems ... The heart of the family problem lies in the steady breakup of the two-parent home. — David Popenoe

No purchase is so urgent, no bargain so rare, that you don't have time to research it thoroughly, despite what they might have you believe. This applies, in particular, to infomercials that urge you to 'Call now, while supplies last,' or 'Call in the next 10 minutes for a free gift.' — Jean Chatzky

There was someplace urgent he needed to be, and he wasn't going to make it there on time. It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and irreversible and very soon forgotten. We needed more troubles like that. — Lyndsay Faye

As marriage and the family institution constitute the foundation and chief cornerstone of civil society, it is of the greatest moment that the marriage-tie should never be dissolved save for the most urgent reason. I cannot assent, however, to the doctrine that it should never be dissolved at all. — Joseph P. Bradley

She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience. — Stefan Zweig

But the ground rumbled with a growing, urgent thunder. — Steven Erikson

You cannot make your life move faster than it's moving. No matter how urgent your situation may seem to be, things are going to happen when they happen, not a minute sooner. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others. Be patient with life. Patience always pays off. — Iyanla Vanzant

I'd never made love with anyone but Nico. This thought occurred to me as we were lying in my bed, touching each other. Touching is the difference between making love and having sex. The physical act of making love expresses the desire to touch someone and to be touched in return. A hunger for your partner consumes you. It's an insatiable craving. It's a need for his skin, his hands, his mouth; it's a need to see his eyes. It must be fed every second or else it builds into something unmanageably urgent and ferocious. — Penny Reid

Of all the problems which were open to me for study, typhus was the most urgent and the most unexplored. We knew nothing of the way in which contagion spread. — Charles Jules Henry Nicole

I don't want to just add another DVD to the pile. So I think, 'Is this going to have an impact and some lasting value? Is it worth it for me to spend two years of my middle-aged life on this?' They're my criteria, and I think that's led me to more urgent projects. — Larry Charles

Because, as we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it's also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about. — John Cleese

That once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone. — Patricia A. McKillip

What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world. — Steven Van Zandt

Jesus teaches us to put the needs of the poor ahead of our own, our needs, even if legitimate, will never be so urgent as those of the poor, who lack the necessities of life, — Pope Francis

I am not facing the problem of emigration. I want my music to be acknowledged here first of all, in this country: after that, we shall see - perhaps the question will than become urgent. — Alfred Schnittke

As a physician, I see the earth as a patient in the intensive care unit. We have an acute clinical crisis on our hands and must take urgent action. My prescription for survival is that the American people rise up as they did in the 1980s, when 80 percent of Americans supported the nuclear weapons freeze. — Helen Caldicott

It is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent
prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls. — Stefan Zweig

The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response — Nicholas Stern

The days with the baby felt long but there was nothing expansive about them. Caring for her required me to repeat a series of tasks that had the peculiar quality of seeming both urgent and tedious. They cut the day up into little scraps. — Jenny Offill

The only urgent thing in life is the pursuit of love. You get that one right, and you've solved the mystery. — Adriana Trigiani

If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it. — Frederic Bastiat

The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond
myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You must distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. You could accomplish all of the urgent things that you desire without accomplishing anything that is important. — Gary Zukav

God's great love in Christ - Christians are compelled to willing, joyful, urgent, faith-driven, grace-saturated, God-glorifying work on behalf of the poor. — David Platt

Sidney had never been very good at differentiating between tasks that were urgent and those which were important, and often those tasks that seemed urgent, but were not important, took precedence over the duties that were important, but not urgent. — James Runcie

As we don't live in a perfect world, try to spend 80% of your time doing important but not urgent activities — Eddie De Jong

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

Pleasure is not diversion but urgent life, a social order perceived as temporary. — Don DeLillo

Kale's body was the warmest I'd ever felt it. Normally his hands were freezing, but as he caressed the hem of my shirt, his thumb grazed my skin, sending sparks of heat up and down my spine. I'd never felt this way before-so alive that every inch of my body was so sensitive the mere thought of Kale's touch excited me. My need for Kale was so urgent it slammed through me like a freight train. — Inger Iversen

The urgent necessity is to make a decision - whether or not it is right. — David S. Broder

A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past. — Kenneth Tynan

There is a code of behavior, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behooves the woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling. — Virginia Woolf

who always seem so fascinating on talk shows because the show's host is usually adept at reacting to whatever they say as if it's the most relevant, entertaining, urgent thing they've ever heard. — Matt Wallace

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering, ... According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is irresponsible at best. — Russ Feingold

This looks very much as if the integration of the day's experience into our memory, the forging of new neural links, is either an easier or a more urgent task. As the night wears on and this function is completed, the more affecting dreams, the more bizarre
material, the fears and lusts and other powerful emotions of the
dream material emerge. — Carl Sagan

Boosting mankind's capability for coping with complex, urgent problems — Douglas Engelbart

I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children's souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies. — Marianne Williamson

I have the distinct feeling that when I'm old, and I look back on my life, my thirties will be one huge blur. There's a lot that gets neglected: exercise, dishes, laundry, my poor garden. I try to prioritize the important but non-urgent things over the unimportant but urgent things. — Rebecca Makkai

During the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition that they called "soldier's heart."8 The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done: violence is done whenever we violate another's integrity. Thus we do violence in politics when we demonize the opposition or ignore urgent human needs in favor of politically expedient decisions. — Parker J. Palmer

I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails? — Tana French

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, 'here and now,' without any postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought. — Eckhart Tolle

The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world ... The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship. — N. T. Wright

To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 4:7). That is evangelical preaching. Is this ruthless speed? Nothing could be more ruthless than to make men think there is still plenty of time to mend their ways. To tell men that the cause is urgent, and that the kingdom of God is at hand is the most charitable and merciful act we can perform, the most joyous news we can bring. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I believe that peace with the Palestinians is most urgent - urgent than ever before. It is necessary. It is crucial. It is possible. A delay may worsen its chances. Israel and the Palestinians are, in my judgment, ripe today to restart the peace process. — Shimon Peres

The question of "canon and creed," which underlies quite a bit of this book, has become quite urgent and controversial and needs to be addressed from the point of view of those of us who are actually working with the biblical canon itself rather than using the word "canon" as shorthand for the systematic theology they already possess. — N. T. Wright

Rhyme as an echo not a closing off of sound. Love it. I don't know where the rhymes came from. Or the puns like "no/know" and so on. Just a way my mind start moving toward what seemed urgent to it. I'd like to claim complete rational intent for it all, but it wasn't that way. if you asked me about rhyme thirty years ago, I'd have said: not me, never. And now I done it. — Gregory Orr

Our generation grew up with the Review as a fact of life. It was America's literary magazine. To our minds, it still is. It has launched our favorite writers. It has made a special claim for the quarterly as such, being both timely and lasting, free of the news of the day or the pressure to please a crowd. Most of all, the Review has shown, repeatedly, that works of imagination can be as stylish and urgent as the flashiest feature reporting, and can do more to refocus our picture of the world. — Lorin Stein

The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant. — Edward Gibbon