“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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“Sitting with her on Sunday evening — a wet Sunday evening — the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must be opened, and every thing told…”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn.”
― Natalie Babbitt, quote from Tuck Everlasting
“We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise, in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world.”
― Nicholas Sparks, quote from Dear John
“His dreams had always been Houdiniesque: they were the dreams of a pupa struggling in its blind cocoon, mad for a taste of light and air.”
― Michael Chabon, quote from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.”
― Willa Cather, quote from My Ántonia
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