Lilian Jackson Braun · 256 pages
Rating: (25.7K votes)
“Are those cat hairs on your lapel, or have you been dating a blonde with a crew cut?”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“The dance of life should be created from moment to moment with individuality and spontaneity.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“Cats have many gifts that are denied humans, and yet we tend to rate them by human standards. To understand a cat, you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality. A cat’s lack of speech does not make him a lower animal. Cats have a contempt of speech. Why should they talk when they can communicate without words? They manage very well among themselves, and they patiently try to make their thoughts known to humans. But in order to read a cat, you must be relaxed and receptive.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“We designed the house to go with her looks.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“the canvas had disfigured it. Koko squirmed and squealed and made himself”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“The men who began their life's work on [the cathedrals], they never lived to see the completion of their work.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral
“Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes of beer and grime, yet smiling, because my briefcase is full of books and that very night I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from Too Loud a Solitude
“What alternative is there to the media’s “Us” versus “Them”? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this “righteous” position of “ours” all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the “dirty” distortions in “their” thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we’ll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
“The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, quote from The Law
“By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
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