“We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“I never wanted to safe... I wanted to be good.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“I have crossed over, and that childhood is as far away and strange as something that happened to someone else in a land beyond the sea. That boy is not me, though I am what he became.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“I feel an emptiness open in my chest, coupled with a strange downward pull in my throat. I think, this is my heart sinking.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“There is no suspension, no whispered prayer for silk to stop my fall. There is only the falling, and it goes on and on, in fierce silence and sharp bursts of breath.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“I never wanted to be safe, I wanted to be good.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“But for a moment I stay there, suspended above the green swell of the land as though thrown up onto the crest of a wave, seeing for the first time a break in the at horizon. For this the boats crossed the ocean, the wagons climbed the mountain pass. For this the songs were sung with desert all around. This is what is given: the promise there is still a way, if we can find it, the promise we can always be renewed.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“I never wanted to be safe... I wanted to be good.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“This is what happens to people who aren’t like you,” Clara continues. “When you get scared, of course they’re the first to feel it.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“The social contract imposes obligations on citizens, but it does so in exchange for rights, and the government may not deny the rights while it insists on the obligations.”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“ ‘A republic, if you can keep it,”
― Kermit Roosevelt III, quote from Allegiance
“Libraries are packed with biographies of movie stars and politicians, most of them not capable of as much meaningful self-analysis as you’d get from a toad. We don’t need to know more about celebrities’ lives, Obadiah. What might help us, what might even save us, is knowing more about the lives of real people who’ve never made it even medium but who know where they came from and why.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from From the Corner of His Eye
“Every day, people engaged in the clever defiance of their own intuition become, in mid-thought, victims of violence and accidents. So when we wonder why we are victims so often, the answer is clear: It is because we are so good at it. A woman could offer no greater cooperation to her soon-to-be attacker than to spend her time telling herself, “But he seems like such a nice man.” Yet this is exactly what many people do. A woman is waiting for an elevator, and when the doors open she sees a man inside who causes her apprehension. Since she is not usually afraid, it may be the late hour, his size, the way he looks at her, the rate of attacks in the neighborhood, an article she read a year ago—it doesn’t matter why. The point is, she gets a feeling of fear. How does she respond to nature’s strongest survival signal? She suppresses it, telling herself: “I’m not going to live like that, I’m not going to insult this guy by letting the door close in his face.” When the fear doesn’t go away, she tells herself not to be so silly, and she gets into the elevator. Now, which is sillier: waiting a moment for the next elevator, or getting into a soundproofed steel chamber with a stranger she is afraid of? The inner voice is wise, and part of my purpose in writing this book is to give people permission to listen to it.”
― Gavin de Becker, quote from The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
“What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?”
― Frederik Pohl, quote from Gateway
“Yakında kendi kişiliklerimizden ve kişiselliklerimizden korkmaya başlayacağız, çünkü onların hiç de sonuna kadar bizim olmadıkları, bizler için apaçık olacak. Ve “Ben buna inanıyorum – ben bunu hissediyorum – ben böyleyim – ben bunu savunuyorum,” diye bağırıp çağırmak yerine, yumuşak başlıkla “Beni buna inandırıyor ki – bana bunu hissettiriyor ki – bana bunu söyletti, yaptırdı, düşündürdü ki,” diyeceğiz. Ozan kendi şarkısını hor görecek. Önder kendi buyruğu karşısında zangır zangır zangırdayacak. Rahip sunaktan ürkecek ve anne de oğluna sadece ilkeleri değil, fakat onu boğmasınlar diye onları atlatabilme becerisini de aşılayacak.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, quote from Ferdydurke
“It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they’re disappointed if we can’t share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. There’s a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it’s not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one’s best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It’s not very easy to give up one’s ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Theatre
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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