“To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“But only a fool sails into combat with nature”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it - whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Civilization was a relentless war that man was doomed to lose eventually. - Pg. 195”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“... Mother Nature is punishing us, ..., for our greed and selfishness. We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone. We dig her up and dump her in the sea. We sink mine shafts into her and drag out her entrails - and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finer. Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger?" - Pliny, Pg. 176”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason?”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Brave words. Easy to write when one was young and death was still skulking over a distant hill somewhere... - Pg. 82”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“A nothing that said everything. - Pg. 173”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“And the great thing about money is that it doesn’t matter when you harvest it. It’s an all-year crop.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“For them, it was just an ordinary miracle.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer—it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us—we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little—a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him—unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent—and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“La cenere s'indurì, cadde altra pomice. L'interno dei cadaveri marcì e insieme a loro, con il passare dei secoli, marcì anche il ricordo dell'esistenza in quel punto di una città. Pompei divenne una città di cittadini vuoti dai contorni perfetti, stretti l'uno all'altro o isolati, con gli abiti volati via o sollevati sul capo, che tentano disperatamente di afferrare i loro oggetti più adorati senza riuscire a stringere nulla tra le mani: vuote entità sospese a mezz'aria al livello dei tetti.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“[...] ma a Roma un uomo onesto era un uomo raro: cioè un cretino.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Con quale velocità, pensò l'ingegnere, la natura si riprende ciò che ha dovuto cedere: pioggia e gelo sbriciolano la muratura, le strade sono sepolte da strati verdi di erbaccia, gli acquedotti sono ostruiti dalla stessa acqua per portare la quale sono stati costruiti. Quella della civiltà è un'incessante guerra che l'uomo è destinato a perdere.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
“Perhaps Mother Nature is punishing us, he thought, for our greed and selfishness. We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone. We dig her up and dump her in the sea. We sink mineshafts into her and drag out her entrails - and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finger. Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger?”
― Robert Harris, quote from Pompeii
Robert Harris
Born place: in Nottingham, England, , The United Kingdom
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“To be a person of relative power and privilege viewing a person of less power and privilege is a political act. The gaze of the powerful is neither neutral nor benign; misrecognition hinders the ability of black people to act as citizens. Indeed, hooks asserts, challenging white people’s assumptions about what they see when they view black people is a critical step toward liberation and equality.21”
― Melissa V. Harris-Perry, quote from Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
“But if a role model in her seventies isn't layered with contradictions - as we all come to be - then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another's existence and place it against our own if it isn't as incongruous, ambiguous, inconsistent, and paradoxical as our own lives are?”
― Molly Peacock, quote from The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72
“Sometimes we must do things, plenty scared or not. To be able to say afterward,`I was plenty scared`makes a man a bigger man, not a smaller one.”
― LaVyrle Spencer, quote from The Endearment
“Then there were the scars and the fear he would reject her after he saw how much of her body was ruined. A tear dropped, forming a dent in the snow. She had spent the last couple of years living alone and coming to terms with the idea of never finding a mate. And she’d just run away from a potential mate. God, she was an idiot.”
― Lia Davis, quote from Winter Eve
“I wish I could hold the play (Romeo and Juliet) in my hands right now. I want to read it. I want to know that someone else has felt what I feel, even if that person never existed outside one man’s imagination.”
― Kitty Thomas, quote from The Last Girl
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