C.D. Payne · 512 pages
Rating: (8.8K votes)
“I have found that people who can successfully resist temptation invariably lead depressingly stunted lives.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“Do you suppose the human race invented boredom to make the prospect of death more palatable?”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“Confession can be good for the soul, but it can exact a heavy toll on friendships.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“As much as I think about sex, I can only with extreme difficulty conceive of myself actually performing the act. And here's another thing I wonder about. How could you ever look a girl in the eye after you've had your winkie up her wendell? I mean, doesn't that render normal social conversation impossible? Apparently not.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“I take it, then, Vijay, you are still a virgin?'
Yes, and I find it extremely galling. When Gandhi was my age he had already been married three years.'
No wonder Gandhi turned out to be a great man. When you get your love life nailed down that early, think of all the time it frees up to devote to Great Ideas.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“Now I know why women get their ears pierced. Once they've survived this ordeal of mutilation, they can face the discomforts of childbirth with equanimity.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“I've decided Mom's boyfriends are a lot like U.S. Presidents. You keep thinking they can't get any worse. And then she comes up with a Lance Wescott.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“Dwayne! Don't be ridiculous. Guy's don't share their girlfriends.'
Why not?'
Because they don't. Men are instinctually competitive. It's so there'll be lots of wars to keep overpopulation in check.”
― C.D. Payne, quote from Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
“We are not ordered by God to judge each other. We are not even ordered by him to consider another person's sin. We are ordered by God to let Him consider it, to let Him be judge.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Virgin's Lover
“To be anorexic...she thought, amounted to wanting to shed yourself of some of the imperfect mosaic of pieces that made you who you were. She could understand that now for, maybe underneath that desquamated self you would locate a new version.”
― Meg Wolitzer, quote from The Ten-Year Nap
“You don't know where you are or where your dreams end and the world begins.”
― Rachel Klein, quote from The Moth Diaries
“There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn.”
― Henry George, quote from Progress and Poverty
“. Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"
Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, "That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?"
"Why, certainly," Miss Fox said. "Terribly--dreadfully--very."
"Yes," Stanhope said again. "Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness."
"I don't see how goodness can be dreadful," Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. "If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?"
"It was you who said 'terribly'," Stanhope reminded her with a smile, "I only agreed."
"And if things are terrifying," Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, "can they be good?"
He looked down on her. "Yes, surely," he said, with more energy. "Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?”
― Charles Williams, quote from Descent into Hell
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