“There’s an Oriental saying I like: “If aggression meets empty space it tends to defeat itself.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“I snorted. ‘For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can’t even spell England properly.’
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. ‘Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?’
‘You know that I do not.’
‘Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“So it is with Moslem women and their veils,’ Michelangelo said. ‘When they saw Muhammad’s wives wearing veils, they sought to imitate them, and so now nearly all Islamic women wear veils even though there is no stipulation in their Holy Koran that they do so.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“The Church’s war against women occurred not under Christ—who by all accounts held women as equals to men—but through the writings of St Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that most cruel woman-hater of them all, St Paul, whose hostile views on women were unfortunately included in the Bible. But let me be clear, it is not only a Catholic problem; it is a Christian one: Martin Luther, the scourge of the old Church, shares its views on women. He once wrote: “Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops.” Weeds! Weeds!”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
“What people do in the name of religion is not necessarily religious. It often has baser reasons behind it.”
― Matthew Reilly, quote from The Tournament
Matthew Reilly
Born place: in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Born date July 2, 1974
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“don’t start dieting until you’re psychologically ready, which might not be until two weeks from today.”
― Judith S. Beck, quote from The Beck Diet Solution
“...he said almost nothing, and ground his teeth against his desire to tell them the truth: God is helpless. We are at the mercy of our own radical freedom, and all God can do is take into God's self the grief, the violence, the sublime acts of kindness, the good sex. God comes to us from the future, and has only one godlike gift: the lure. We are lured toward truth, beauty, and goodness...the lure is pulling at our hearts like some lucid joy inside every actual occasion and all we have to do is...Say yes.”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“Jag försökte lära honom det enkla knepet att tänka på döden när man stötte på brudar. Det har hjälp mig själv många gånger genom åren och är förvånansvärt effektivt. Jag kommer alltså att dö om några futtiga årtionden. Min lekamen ska utplånas för tid och evighet. Samma sak kommer att hände med tjejen, vi ska alla stampas ut och försvinna. Om tusen år är våra liv, alla våra ljuvaste drömmar och värsta rädslor upplösta i jord och aska. Vad spelar det då för roll om hon nobbar eller är snorkig och skrattar en rakt i ansiktet? Tack vare denna krassa inställning har jag emellanåt uträttat märkliga ting på kärlekens område, vågat stöta på livsfarligt vackra kvinnor till exempel, och ibland också faktiskt fått leka med dem.
Det här var det enda rådet som Niila verkligen lyssnade på. Han började tänka på döden oftare än på tjejer. Grabben blev kort sagt riktigt outhärdlig.”
― Mikael Niemi, quote from Popular Music from Vittula
“I have always been dismayed by the West’s failure—or unwillingness—to recognize that establishing secular schools that offer children a balanced and nonextremist form of education is probably the cheapest and most effective way of combating this kind of indoctrination.”
― Greg Mortenson, quote from Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
“I like the way he danced. And then I like the way we danced together.”
― Anita Diamant, quote from Good Harbor
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An Abundance of Kath...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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