Mignon Westman > Mignon's Quotes

“On the Acropolis, he’d thought she’d seen too much sun for a woman but in the courtyard, under the moon, her face, neck, and arms were as pale as the moon goddess. Allowing himself to imagine it was the moon goddess leading him upward was a way of climbing to the second story.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“Cognitive robotics can integrate information from pre-operation medical records with real-time operating metrics to guide and enhance the precision of physicians’ instruments. By processing data from genuine surgical experiences, they’re able to provide new and improved insights and techniques. These kinds of improvements can improve patient outcomes and boost trust in AI throughout the surgery. Robotics can lead to a 21% reduction in length of stay.”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“No one else can close the door that God has opened for you,” she quietly said under her breath. That was something that Grandma Alice had said to her many times before her death.

“I miss you, Alice,” she whispered, “and wish you were here with me now.”
― Diane Merrill Wigginton, A Compromising Position

“Mom, please don't use 'the happy voice.' It reminds me of the day Tinkles died."
"Who was Tinkles?" Sue asked around a mouthful of pancake.
"My cat. When I was five, Tinkles died choking on a mouse that was a bit ambitious for a kitten to eat."
"It was terribly traumatic for Aurelia because it was the first time she'd experienced loss." 
"What did you do to help her get through it?" 
Rosalind smiled at Mother Guardian. "Well, after a good cry, we performed an autopsy."
Aurelia reached for her mother's hand. "I never thanked you for that.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“If one does not react to gossip, the informer hushes more quickly.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Like water around rocks, people streamed around them as though this sort of interaction, noisy and involving foreigners, was nothing unusual.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“Cindy, have you heard of the second law of thermodynamics?”
“Yes. Something about heat energy can never be created or destroyed?”
“That’s the first law of thermodynamics. The second one is this…all organized systems tend to slide slowly into chaos and disorder. Energy tends to run down. The universe itself heads inevitably towards darkness and stasis. Our own star system eventually will die, the sun will become a red giant, and the earth will be swallowed by the red giant.”
“Cheery thought.”
“But mathematics has altered this concept; rather one particular mathematician. His name was Ilya Prigogine, a Belgian mathematician.”
“Who and what does that have to do with your being a PI and a great psychologist?”
“Are you being sarcastic? Of course you are. Anyway, what I was trying to say was that Prigogine used the analogy of a walled city and open city. The walled city is isolated from its surroundings and will run down, decay, and die. The open city will have an exchange of materials and energy with its surroundings and will become larger and more complex; capable of dissipating energy even as it grows. So my point is, this analogy very much pertains to a certain female. The walled person versus the open person. The walled person will eventually decline, fade, and decay.”
― Behcet Kaya, Appellate Judge

“The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

“Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger, and destroys the china shop. (p.21)”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“they think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another man’s pleasures from him; and, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own advantage for the good of others,”
― Thomas More, Utopia

“Man is the shepherd of Being.”
― Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism

“The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“The Greeks say it's a sin against the gods to love something beyond all reason. And do you remember that they say when someone is loved so, the gods become jealous, and strike the object down in the very fullness of its flower?”
― Coleen McCullough

“Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.'

...'Still,' he said slowly, almost to himself, 'I did like the light they made. And the warmth.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“In a rare flash of humor, she had replied: “Woody, a commander can be wrong, but never uncertain.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

“This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I soon found out that I wasn't the only magician to turn to cinema. Many of us recognized that a new kind of magic had been invented, and we wanted to be part of it.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“If this incomplete ayaan hirsi wants fame sooo much then she shouldn't use religion as a base to be known. Some people justify their in justifications by selling their souls to the devil, ayaan I'm sure u have taken the time to read the bible. Do tell me it's stance on woman comparing to men...”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“Yes, I do think William is serious. But you don’t need to be worried, dear. No one is going to hurry you, least of all William himself. He is a very fine young man. Of course you feel like strangers now. But I think you’ll find sufficient to talk about before long.”
― Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

“He showed me the rudiments of electronics, and I got very interested in that.” Even more interesting were the trips to scavenge for parts.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the earliest victims of that revolution.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

“It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“إن القصص تخبرنا كيف ينبغي لنا أن نعيش ..”
― Lisa See, Peony in Love

“I had all the characteristics of a human being-- flesh, blood, skin, hair-- but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn't figure out why-- I couldn't put my finger on it. The only thing that calmed me was the satisfying sound of ice being dropped into a glass of J&B.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

“wish that the great wilderness what still dominated up on mountains like the purple Catskills—standing in the distance to my left that afternoon—would”
― Caleb Carr, The Angel of Darkness

“Her mum thought gourmet cooking was putting a load of fish fingers under the grill instead of in the frying pan.”
― Irvine Welsh

“The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

“He may even have felt that God needed him more than Guenever did.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King