Abigail > Abigail's Quotes

“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Dad himself used to tell a story about one time when Mother went off to fill a lecture engagement and left him in charge at home. When Mother returned, she asked him if everything had run smoothly.
Didn't have any trouble except with that one over there,' he replied. 'But a spanking brought him into line.'
Mother could handle any crisis without losing her composure.
That's not one of ours, dear,' she said. 'He belongs next door.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., Cheaper by the Dozen

“Dad, who knew that Mother’s favorite poet was Browning and suspected where the Robert came from, nevertheless bunched the fingers of his right hand, kissed their tips, and threw his hand into the air. “Ah, Robert,” he intoned, “if I could but taste the nectar of thy lips.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., Cheaper by the Dozen

“Some simpleton with pimples in his voice wants to speak to Ernestine," he grumbled to Mother when he answered the phone.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., Cheaper by the Dozen

“Jesus Christ," he screamed, as if he had been saving this oath since his wedding day for just such an occasion. "Holy Jesus Christ. Who did that?"
"Mercy Maud," said Mother, which was the closest she ever came to swearing, too.
Bill, who was six and always in trouble anyway, was the only one with nerve enough to laugh. But it was a nervous laugh at that.
"Did you see the birdie, Daddy?”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

“I forgot to take off the inside lens cap cap... P.S. I quit."
Dad threw off the covers and reached for his bathrobe. For the first time in two weeks he spoke:
"I'll track him down to the ends of the earth," he croaked. "I'll take a blunt hook and pull his tonsils out by the byjingoed roots, just like I promised him. He doesn't quit. He's fired.”
― Frank Gilbreth Jr.

“Jesus Christ," he screamed, as if he had been saving this oath since his wedding day for just such an occasion. "Holy Jesus Christ. Who did that?”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

“He took Mother for a ride in his first automobile, some early ancestor of Foolish Carriage. As Dad and Mother, dressed in dusters and wearing goggles, went scorching through the streets of Boston, bystanders tossed insults and ridicule in their direction...
..."Say, Noah, what are you doing with that Ark?"
That did it. Dad slowed the car and cocked his checkered cap belligerently over one eye.
"Collecting animals like the good Lord told me," he screamed back. "All I need is a jackass. Hop in.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
― J.G. Ballard

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
― Lewis Carroll

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”
― Pablo Picasso

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey