“...the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone.”
“Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.”
“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
“Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.”
“Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’
‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)
‘And?’
‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.”
“We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.”
“Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that’s been in front of you all your life.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.”
“It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests.”
“That’s why it’s much better not to have friends if you have the strength of character to do without them. In the end friends always turn into a nuisance of one kind or another. But if you must have them let them alone and accept that you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be.”
“Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-delusion, many undiscovered regions remain to be explored.”
“Bůh není nějaký kriminálník, který podvádí v kartách. Chce, abychom se jeho zákony řídili svobodně, z vlastní vůle. Ani Bůh nedokáže nakreslit kulatý čtverec. Bůh je osamělý - chce, aby si lidé poslušnost sami zvolili, a ne aby k ní byli přinuceni strachem.”
“Lidské srdce je malé, touží ale po velkých věcech. Nestačí ani zasytit psa, ale celý svět pro něj není dost velký.”
“...and what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh?”
“It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.”
“The search for knowledge and the discovery of a great weapon are virtually one and the same. War is the father of everything.”
“Nikdy nepřerušuj nepřítele, když se dopouští omylu.”
“Nemá smysl zlobit se na někoho za to, že je sám sebou a stará se o vlastní zájmy.”
“You'll be my wife," he said inexorably.
"You want to own me!" she accused, trying to crawl away from him.
"Yes." He flung her down on the bed and flattened his weight on her. As he spoke, his hot breath fanned
her mouth and chin. "Yes. I want other people to look at you and know you're mine. I want you to take
my name and my money. I want you to
live with me. I want to be inside you . . . part of your thoughts . . . your body . . . all of you. I want you to
trust me. I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need in
order to be happy. Does that frighten
you? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don't you think I'd stop feeling this way if I could? It's not as if
you're the easiest woman in the world!!”
“the deaf man interrupted. “Let the boys”
“The facts are as follows. The total amount of DNA in different organisms is very variable, and the variation does not make obvious sense in terms of phylogeny. This is the so-called ‘C-value paradox’. ‘It seems totally implausible that the number of radically different genes needed in a salamander is 20 times that found in a man’ (Orgel & Crick 1980). It is equally implausible that salamanders on the West side of North America should need many times more DNA than congeneric salamanders on the East side.”
“But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army–Air Force Exchange Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they’d have proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.”
“My needs were simple I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn't mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say 'Marry me' by the end.”
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