“We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skill...we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“How old are you Johnny" she asked.
Sixteen."
And what's that-a boy or a man?"
He laughed. "A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“If you can't do, you'd best shut up about it.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“If you can't do, you had best shut up. He started to slam the door, thought better of it. If you can't do, you'd best not slam doors.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“saying. ‘I want it as a birthday present to my venerable”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“It was sink or swim for him—and happens he’s swimming.”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“down Cambridge road through the bushes on Charlestown Common a scurry of red ants. Had he really seen them or imagined them? But all about him people were exclaiming, ‘Look, there they are!’ Those red ants were British soldiers. To his left the last moment of sunset light was dying. The day had been amazingly warm, but with night a fresh breeze came up off the ocean. Lights began to glimmer in Charlestown and on warships. Seemingly there was nothing more to be seen from Beacon Hill. Silently people turned to go to their houses. ‘Look!’ Johnny cried. You could see the flash of musket fire, too far away to be heard. Fireflies swarming, hardly more than that. –4– Getting”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
“The first of the tea ships, the Dartmouth,”
― Esther Forbes, quote from Johnny Tremain
Esther Forbes
Born place: in Westborough, Massachusetts , The United States
Born date June 28, 1891
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“As he was about to leave, she said, "Murtagh."
He paused and turned to regard her.
She hesitated for a moment, then mustered her courage and said, "Why?" She though he understood her meaning: Why her? Why save her, and now why try to rescue her? She had guessed at the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it.
He stared at her for the longest while, and then, in a low, hard voice, he said, "You know why.”
― Christopher Paolini, quote from Inheritance
“Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.”
― David McCullough, quote from John Adams
“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
“And that's what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.”
― Andre Dubus III, quote from House of Sand and Fog
“We'll have to see," Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. "Potio-section..." He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. "Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no," he said to Diotallevi. "It's not the department, it's a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all under the same heading of Tetrapyloctomy."
"What's tetra...?" I asked.
"The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless."
"All right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?"
"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's main is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.”
― Umberto Eco, quote from Foucault's Pendulum
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A Little Princess
The Sun Also Rises (...
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Spirit Bound
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