“If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“The map? I will first make it.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest. ”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“I am compelled into this country.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“To kiss and to kill are similar words to eyes that focus with difficulty.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“Such was the texture of her marble.
[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.]”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“—Los ateos, por lo general, lo son por razones mezquinas —aseveró Voss—. La más mezquina de todas ellas estriba en su propia falta de grandeza espiritual, que les impide concebir la idea de un Poder Divino. Al”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“You have taken the important, essential core of the apple, including (one must not forget) the nasty pips, and scales (I do not know what you call those little things) which must be spat out.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
“Voss could always, if necessary, fail to understand. But wounds will wince, especially in the salt air. He was smiling and screwing up his eyes at the great theatre of light and water. Some pitied him. Some despised him for his funny appearance of a foreigner. None, he realized with a tremor of anger, was conscious of his strength. Mediocre, animal men never do guess at the power of rock or fire, until the last moment before those elements reduce them to - nothing. This, the palest, the most transparent of words, yet comes closest to being complete.”
― Patrick White, quote from Voss
Patrick White
Born place: in Knightsbridge, London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date May 28, 1912
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“There was a time when slavery was good. It did its work, and when it finished creating capital it withered and died a natural death. Colonialism was good. It spread industrial culture of shared resources and markets. But to revive colonialism now would be an error. There was a time when the cold war dicated our every calculation in domestic and international relations. It is over. We are in the post-cold war era, and our calculations are affected by the laws and needs of globalization. The history of capital can be summed up in one phrase: in search of freedom. Freedom to expand, and now it has the chance at the entire globe for its theater. It needs a democratic space to move as its own logic demands.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, quote from Wizard of the Crow
“Some say an army of horsemen
some an army on foot
others say ships laden for war
are the fairest things on earth.
But I say the fairest sight
on this dark earth
is the face of the one you love.
Nor is it hard to understand:
love has humbled the hearts
of the proudest queens.
And I would rather see you now
stepping over my threshold
than any soldier greaved in gold
or any iron-beaked ship.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Singing
“I'd worked my share of serial killer cases, but none of the killers had ever mailed me a human head. That was new.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Skin Trade
“Lovers' language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn't offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Undertow. That's the notion that the new expression put in my head. They held some kind of mysterious, active fluid, a force that dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave retreating from the shore on stormy days. So as not to be dragged in, I held onto anything around them, her ears, her arms, her hair spread about her shoulders; but as soon as I returned to the pupils of her eyes again, the wave emerging from them grew towards me, deep and dark, threatening to envelop me, draw me in and swallow me up.”
― Machado de Assis, quote from Dom Casmurro
“For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid . . . but that doesn’t make for a good movie.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
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The RedbreastBookQuoters 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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