Douglas > Douglas's Quotes

“Now the Apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge inflates: but love edifies." The only correct inerpretation of this saying is that knowledge is valuable when charity informs it. Without charity, knowledge inflates; that is, it exalts man to an arrogance which is nothing but a kind of windy emptiness.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“Men are so blind in their impiety that, as it were, they bump into mountains and refuse to see what hits them in the eye.”
― Saint Augustine

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“For the human race is, more than any other species, at once social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“To be a DJ was to be God. To be a DJ at an alternative public radio station ? That was being God with a mission. It was thinking you were the first person to discover The Clash and you had to spread the word.”
― Carrie Vaughn, Kitty and the Midnight Hour

“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”
― Jim Butcher, Changes

“I'm a werewolf trapped in a human body."
"Well, yeah, that's kind of the definition."
"No, really. I'm trapped."
"Oh? When was the last time you shape-shifted?"
"That's just it - I've never shape-shifted."
"So you're not really a werewolf."
"Not yet. But I was meant to be one, I just know it. How do I get a werewolf to attack me?"
Stand in the middle of a forest under a full moon with a raw steak tied to your face, holding a sign that says, 'Eat me; I'm stupid'?”
― Carrie Vaughn, Kitty and the Midnight Hour

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbor good must first study how not do do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.”
― George MacDonald

“I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Anyone who thought this would be a weak point in the manor's defenses would have a rude surprise, shortly before coming down with a serious case of death.”
― Mercedes Lackey, Owlsight

“It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Son of Tarzan

“... but life would be very miserable indeed were I to spend it in terror of the thing that has not yet happened.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Son of Tarzan

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“By doing one wrong thing, I thought I could make everything right.”
― Scott Smith, A Simple Plan

“I was not the equal of my cousins in athletic ability or good looks, but I'd like to think God evened the score by granting me a modicum of common sense, which sometimes seems to be sadly missing in most descendants of Walter Kaminski, who have shown a tendency to live for the moment and think with their peckers.”
― Robin Yocum, A Brilliant Death

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms