Christopher > Christopher's Quotes

“At this moment, many people have stopped living. They do not become angry, nor cry out; they merely wait for time to pass. They did not accept the challenges of life, so life no longer challenges them”
― Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain

“The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe’s Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain. . . .

I believe in what the Germans term Ehrfurcht: reverence for things one cannot understand. Faust’s error was an aspiration to understand, and therefore master, things which, by God or by nature, are set beyond the human compass. He could only achieve this at the cost of making the achievement pointless. Once again, it is exactly what modern man has done.”
― Robert Aickman, The Collected Strange Stories Of Robert Aickman: I

“I dream in fire but work in clay.”
― Arthur Machen

“And if I may pursue this subject farther I would suggest that the whole matter of imaginative literature depends upon this faculty of seeing the universe, from the aeonian pebble of the wayside to the raw suburban street as something new, unheard of, marvellous, finally, miraculous. The good people--amongst whom I naturally class myself--feel that everything is miraculous; they are continually amazed at the strangeness of the proportion of all things. The bad people, or scientists as they are sometimes called, maintain that nothing is properly an object of awe or wonder since everything can be explained. They are duly punished.”
― Arthur Machen, Far Off Things

“Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”
― Christopher Paolini

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life