Christopher Sheets > Christopher's Quotes

“We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.”
― David McCullough, John Adams

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts. They just don't realize that everyone's good depends on everyone's cooperation.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“I said that any individual who learned to do something better than anybody else—learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner—had solved his problem, regardless of the colour of his skin, and that in proportion as the Negro learned to produce what other people wanted and must have, in the same proportion would he be respected.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: an autobiography

“Among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery - An Autobiography

“Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery - An Autobiography

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“...library terror - that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of available books...”
― Owen Barfield, Night Operation