David Putnam > David's Quotes

“Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E. B. White

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
― Dr. Seuss

“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.”
― Groucho Marx

“No one can live without delight,” writes Peter Kreeft, “and that is why a man, deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures.”
― Dan Schaeffer, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven

“He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.”
― Salman Rushdie, Quichotte

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
― Mark Twain

“She danced the way she always did, holding her body and arms still while her legs and feet sprang across the floor. When she was sober, her head remained stationary; when she was drunk, it nodded in time to the music. She always closed her eyes. She always wore the same, ecstatic smile. And I, always, watched in wonder.”
― Andy Marr, Hunger for Life

“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“Stephen Brant, the most wonderful person in the world! Always, through life, Peter must have his most wonderful person, and sometimes those Heroes knew of it and lived up to his worshipping and sometimes they knew of it and could not live up to it, but most frequently they never knew because Peter did not let them see. This Hero worship is at the back of a great deal that happened to Peter, of a great deal of his sorrow, and of all of his joy, and he would not have been Peter without it; very often these Heroes, poor things, came tumbling from their pedestals, often they came, in very shame, down of their own accord, and perhaps of them all Stephen only was worthy of his elevation, and he never knew that he was elevated.”
― Hugh Walpole, Fortitude

“Peter never cared anything for the words or the deeds of old Parlow…. But Frosted Moses! … he had lived for ever, and people said that he could never die. Peter had heard that he had been in the Ark with Noah, and he had often wished to ask him questions about that interesting period, about Ham, Shem and Japheth, and about the animals. Of course, therefore, he knew everything about Life, and this remark of his about Courage was worth considering. Peter watched him very solemnly and noticed how his white beard shone in the fire-light, how there was a red handkerchief falling out of one enormous pocket, and how there was a big silver ring on one brown and bony finger …”
― Hugh Walpole, Fortitude

“Virtue was no longer sought in temple or market place but in the home—one’s own home, and then the homes of one’s friends.”
― John Updike, Couples

“Having suffered under their parents’ rigid marriages and formalized evasions, they sought to substitute an essential fidelity set in a matrix of easy and open companionship among couples. For the forms of the country club they substituted informal membership in a circle of friends and participation in a cycle of parties and games.”
― John Updike, Couples

“Kathryn, Shannon's letters are her perception of reality. Whether or not the events happened exactly as she described them or not is actually irrelevant. I am interested in how she thinks these events happened or what she believes was going through her mind even more than I am of what really happened. As well as your perception of what happened. Would you share with me, please?"
 ​I recoiled in my chair, slightly indignant.”
― Heather Balog, Letters To My Sister's Shrink

“He was mayor and assemblyman, but had died tragically in a plane crash during his campaign for senator. I think fulfilling his father's dreams was part of Brad's drive into politics. So needless to say, I was representing his family, and it was imperative to be presentable at all times in public. No more running to the store in pajamas and hair curlers. Oh, wait, I never did that. That was Shannon, I thought smugly.
 ​"Dr. Wallace," I repeated, my train of thought having completely derailed. "I'm sure you are aware that my sister is not only suffering from a deluded sense of present reality, her memory of past events is also incredibly warped. This.." I lightly touched the notebook paper on which Shannon had written her letter. "Is nothing more than a pack of lies."
 ​Sitting back in the comfortable chair, I crossed my arms over my chest. I was a little sore,”
― Heather Balog, Letters To My Sister's Shrink

“For three decades, Einstein sought a unified theory of physics, one that would interweave all of nature's forces and material constituents within a single theoretical tapestry. He failed. Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, proponents of string theory claim that the threads of this elusive unified tapestry finally have been revealed. String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe—from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars, from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies—are reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.”
― Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe

“I move in slow motion to roll out of bed, arrange clothing under the covers, and silently remove the screen from my window. Smoothly and soundlessly, I slip out and lower myself to the ground, reaching high above my head to replace the screen. I crouch and skim across the lawn to the street, moving quickly from tree shadow to tree shadow until I reach his car, the passenger door already open and waiting. “Ready?” Steve asks as we synchronize the closing of the door with the starting of the engine. Within moments, we’re on our way to our favorite spot. “You’re awfully quiet tonight, baby.” He parks the car and we both peer out at the lights of the town displayed below us. “Your father get after you again?” It’s a peculiar way to word it, but even my father won’t use words like beat or hit to describe his actions. He’ll use a quote like, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Or declare that he is saving my soul. But my silence tonight isn’t about my father’s form of discipline, nor my mother’s sharp tongue. I take a long, slow breath before speaking the words that I’ve rehearsed for over a month. “I’m pregnant.” My voice comes out soft and raspy.”
― Diane Winger, The Abandoned Girl

“There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“There is a long time in me between knowing and telling.”
― Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories

“The oppression we all face is guarded by what we are unwilling to question.”
― Graeme Rodaughan, The Dragon's Den

“George Bernard Shaw: “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”
― Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy

“The state of California itself was now just like me - a free-spirited liberal with a mostly sunny disposition teetering on the edge of financial ruin. (Natalie Teeger)”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change that badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions, and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don’t spend my life in the company of crowds but individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I’d be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to sent it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
― Ernest Benn

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West