Bryan > Bryan's Quotes

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The universe is wider than our views of it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience

“I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope-- an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford's greatest gift to civilized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to revolt against one's past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just because I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less under his influence. The truth was I was not a cynic by nature, only by revolt. I had got away from what I hated, but I hadn't found where I loved, and so I pretended that there was nowhere to love. Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

“Oh, no," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. "Not that. That's meddling with things you don't understand."
"Well, we are wizards," said Ridcully. "We're supposed to meddle in things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood things we'd never get anything done.”
― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

“Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police. Truth, beauty and goodness are not mysterious, they are the commonest, most obvious, most essential facts of life, like sunlight, air and bread. Only folk whose heads are muddled by expensive educations think truth, beauty, goodness are rare private properties. Nature is more liberal. The universe keeps nothing essential from us — it is all present, all gift. God is the universe plus mind. Those who say God, or the universe, or nature is mysterious, are like those who call these things jealous or angry. They are announcing the state of their lonely, muddled minds.”
― Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

“Lancre's only other singer of note was Nanny Ogg, whose attitude to songs was purely ballistic. You just pointed your voice at the end of the verse and went for it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

“The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell".”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Religion knew the truth of metaphor and symbol for almost all of history until the past few hundred years, and especially until the wrongly named Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. Then we started confusing rational and provable with real. We actually regressed and went backward. In trying to defend its ground in the face of rationalism and scientism, religion tried to become "rational" itself and lost its alternative consciousness, which many of us call contemplation. It's as though we tried to deal with Mystery with the entirely wrong "software". We lost access to the higher levels of consciousness, the transrational, the transpersonal, the transcendent itself. Most tragic, we lost most inner experience of our own outer belief systems. That is the heart of religion's problem today, and it is indeed a deep and serious problem for upcoming generations. My generation took the symbols to literally, and now the following generation is just throwing them all out as useless. We are both losing. It might surprise you, but both religious fundamentalism and atheism are similar in that they are self-contained rational systems. Such a system works if you stay inside its chosen logic and territory.”
― Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

“Jesus never said, “Worship me,” but he often said, “Follow me.” We have wasted a lot of good energy on “vicarious substitutionary atonement theories” and created a punitive and petty God in the process—a “Father God” who was incapable of forgiving “without blood.”6 Is God that unfree? Remember, the ego likes contests of win and lose and cannot even comprehend anything like win-win. Jesus became our substitute in losing, hoping it would let us off the hook, I guess.”
― Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“What does a research witch do?’ Tiffany asked.
‘Oh, it’s a very ancient craft. She tries to find new spells by learning how old ones were really done. You know all that stuff about “ear of bat and toe of frog”? They never work, but Miss Level thinks it’s because we don’t know exactly what kind of frog, or which toe—’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to help anyone chop up innocent frogs and bats,’ said Tiffany firmly.
‘Oh, no, she never kills any!’ said Miss Tick hurriedly. ‘She only uses creatures that have died naturally or been run over or committed suicide. Frogs can get quite depressed at times.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“Strange how the signs always fall in the favor of he who reads them.”
― Nikki Marmery, Lilith

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion