Ollie Broadaway > Ollie's Quotes

“Temples are for the gods,” Thucydides said. “No city has the hubris to put her own citizens on a temple.” Phidias promised, “The Athenians will look like gods.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“The Alchemy Scroll works on the heart,” he said. “It plants words as I plant stones. The Scroll-maker is my brother. He paints the mysteries of God while I, guided by the Mother, built the new Hall as a door to heaven,” he said.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could it not? Flaminius was utterly gorgeous. But once she fell in love with him, she became happily enslaved.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“The point is to be compassionately, not cruelly, honest. Tell the person what you have heard that worries you. Allow him to respond. You may be surprised at how much sense his answers make.”
― Nancy O'Meara, The Cult around the Corner: A Handbook on Dealing with Other People's Religions

“Ah! You speak Levitan,” the man smiled. “But you’re not from Levita I think.” Like
most Levitians he was a good looking man, if perhaps a bit effete for Brown’s tastes. 
“No, I lived there for a while.” 
“Did you enjoy your stay?”
“Up to a point. The Levitian women are very beautiful.”
“Yes of course. So are the men in Levita,” the man smiled. “We used to have a
cleansing programme to ensure a healthy population.”
“You mean a culling policy, where you killed all the weakest members of the
population.”
― Max Nowaz, The Arbitrator

“While they sat, random noises came from the electronic transmitter inside the office. They heard a door open, followed by footsteps on the wood floor.”
― Karl Braungart, Triple Deception

“They were holding their weapons but could not risk opening a window or exiting the vehicle to return fire. Then they saw one of their attackers pull out a grenade.”
― Jeffrey S. Stephens, Enemies Among Us

“Meanwhile, the British had announced that they would leave all British bases east of Suez. That cause great concern to the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, who immediately went into discussion about this with cabinet ministers.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“el nacimiento y la muerte son experiencias similares, cada una el inicio de un viaje.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, La rueda de la vida

“With tears of joy, I recalled Fat Mary’s role in my childhood. She had been my consoler and counselor since the day I understood I was alone in the world and had no one who loved me or wanted me. I had decided back then that I would love me, fat me, just as I was. Her role was also to safeguard the meaningful and happy moments of my childhood and bring them to me when I needed to remember life’s goodness.”
― Maria Nhambu, America's Daughter

“Carl Jung once wrote that it is not the young but people in middle age who need to have an “experience of the numinous” to help them negotiate the second half of their lives.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

“of toys—and St. Nicholas too.”
― Clement C. Moore, A Visit From Saint Nicholas

“Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Most craft give a nod, however brief and unfriendly, towards beauty. Vogon ships did not nod towards beauty. They pulled on ski masks and mugged beauty in a dark alley They spat in the eye of beauty and bludgeoned their wait through the notions of aesthetics and aerodynamics. Vogon cruisers did not so much travel through space as defile it and toss it aside.”
― Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing...