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
“Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Prelude to Foundation
“No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiently so to make plausible the oft-repeated tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way, adding a statue of the Emperor toppling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precinct and an oak tree split asunder just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Sailing to Sarantium
“Once born into child like faith, brimming with belief, typical people began to lose their faith. Society mocks them. Their friends smirk. They come to change the world, but over time the world changes them. Soon they forget the faith they once had. Then one day someone tells them the truth, but they don't want to go back, because they're comfortable in their new skin. Being a stranger in this world is never easy.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from Saint
“When girls walk home we put on lippy and makeup. We chat. Sometimes we pretend to be hunchbacks. But that is it. Perfectly normal behavior.”
― Louise Rennison, quote from On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
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