Logan > Logan's Quotes

“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage

“Okay, this is the wisdom: First, time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on earth that can’t be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“You know what my boss says? He says that skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off.”
― Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

“To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.”
― Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

“The war went from bad to worse and the Government was universally detested. As each fresh catastrophe came to the public’s notice some small share of blame might attach itself to this or that person, but in general everyone united in blaming the Ministers, and they, poor things, had no one to blame but each other – which they did more and more frequently.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“It is the right of a traveller to vent their frustration at every minor inconvenience by writing of it to their friends.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Foster never did anything that was not absolutely correct; this, perhaps, was his real weakness, for it meant that he lacked imagination, both in his work and in handling the men under him.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention Faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. (Galatians 5:6; Romans 3:22.) It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light. Wherefore we do not separate the whole grace of regeneration from faith, but claim the power and faculty of justifying entirely for faith, as we ought.”
― Anonymous

“A hypocrite always reserves one nest-egg or another in his heart or life, for Satan to sit and brood on.”
― Anonymous

“Truth can well out of a man like blood from a wound, and it can be just as disconcerting to look at.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes. Inscrutable because he had gone to his grave without divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“This also is the account to give of the vogue which destructive criticism of the Biblical books has gained in our time; and it is also the reason why detailed refutations of the numerous critical theories of the origin of the Biblical writings, though so repeatedly complete and logically final, have so little effect in abolishing destructive criticism. Its roots are not set in its detailed accounts of the origin of the Biblical writings, but in its anti-supernaturalistic bias: and so long as its two fixed points remain to it - its starting point in unbelief in the supernatural and its goal in a naturalistic development of the religion of Israel and its record - it easily shifts the pathway by which it proceeds from one to the other, according to its varying needs. It is of as little moment to it how it passes from one point to the other, as it is to the electrician what course his wire shall follow after he has secured its end attachments. Therefore theory follows theory with bewildering rapidity and - shall we not say it? - with equally bewildering levity, while the conclusion remains the same.”
― Anonymous

“Secretly, deep down, everybody on Earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets' Guild, who know they can't.”
― K.J. Parker, Devices and Desires

“Satan is never better pleased, than when he sees Christians puzzled and perplexed about those things in religion, which are of no great consequence or importance.”
― Thomas Brooks, The Privy Key of Heaven

“…if medical science is geography, then mankind as a species has a map with three towns marked on it and a lot of blank space with drawings of sea serpents.”
― K. J. Parker, Sharps

“In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be all that can be hoped for. A later and second perusal may recoil from a surface already hardened by premature contact. Young people should be careful in their reading, as old people in eating their food. They should not eat too much. They should chew it well.”
― Winston Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures