Douglas Preston · 629 pages
Rating: (34.3K votes)
“The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“One can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“I’m afraid I don’t suffer petty bureaucrats gladly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nevertheless, you will find, Dr. Kelly, that humiliation and blackmail, when used judiciously, can be marvelously effective”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“PEE-WEE BOXER SURVEYED THE JOBSITE WITH DISGUST. THE FOREMAN was a scumbag. The crew were a bunch of losers. Worst of all, the guy handling the Cat didn't know jack about hydraulic excavators. Maybe it was a union thing; maybe he was friends with somebody; either way, he was jerking the machine around like it was his first day at Queens Vo-Tech”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“Boxer altered his course subtly, as if that was the way he'd already been going, not looking up to acknowledge he had heard, letting his attitude convey the contempt he felt for the scrawny foreman. He stopped in front of the guy, staring at the man's dusty little workboots. Small feet, small dick. Slowly, he glanced up. "Welcome to the world, Pee-Wee. Take a look at this.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“If you’re honest with yourself, you can still feel the terrible weight of time pressing on you; that awful, relentless, bodily corruption that is happening constantly to us all.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“There is an old French curse: may your fondest wish come true. If this treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth through overpopulation. If it is dear and available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the social contract. Either way, it will lead directly to human misery. What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and unhappiness?”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Cabinet of Curiosities
“Henry looked up and down the empty avenue—no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty—the way he felt inside. There was no one left.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from The Second Sex
“The eternally sleeping princess, thinks Cam. But I shall free you from those poisoned brambles that surround your heart. And then you will have no choice but to love me.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from UnWholly
“This one isn’t just any old horse. There’s a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be? I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.”
― Michael Morpurgo, quote from War Horse
“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, quote from Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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