Sheece > Sheece's Quotes

“We are a strange people, Howden thought: an unpredictable admixture of mediocrity and genius, with now and then a flash of greatness.”
― Arthur Hailey, In High Places

“But then I get to thinking of our mortality and human weakness, remembering there has never been power with purity—anywhere. If you want to be pure, you must stand alone. If you seek to do positive things, achieve something, leave the world a mite better than you found it, then you must choose power and throw some of your purity away. There’s no other choice.”
― Arthur Hailey, In High Places

“I learned a long time ago, though—you can’t live other people’s lives. We have to make our own decisions even if we’re wrong.”
― Arthur Hailey

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
O spite! too old to be engag’d to young.
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,
O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.”
― William Shakespeare

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”
― Willam Shakesphere, Macbeth

“Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without (15) The illness should attend it.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough;
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor;–
Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend
From jealousy!”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“I have only one prayer to offer to God, and it is that when I have been driven out of every society He will give me shelter at His own feet.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gora

“All right, I will. But I’ll make you a little pledge.” She asked, “What’s that?” “If ever, someplace down the road, you and I differ on a matter of judgment that’s important, you have my permission to remind me of this incident, and that your judgment was right and mine wrong.”
― Arthur Hailey, Strong Medicine

“an apple is an apple whoever bites it.”
― Jeffrey Archer, As the Crow Flies

“Then one morning she woke to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her. She blinked at him. ‘Is something wrong, darling?’ ‘No. I’m just looking at my greatest asset, and making sure I never take it for granted.”
― Jeffrey Archer, Kane and Abel

“but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise. Mrs”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“The reader will pardon a digression in which so invaluable a secret is communicated, since every gamester will agree how necessary it is to know exactly the play of another, in order to countermine him.”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“a proof that good books, no more than good men, do always survive the bad.”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“As there is no wholesomer, so perhaps there are few stronger, sleeping potions than fatigue.”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“I had rather enjoy my own mind than the fortune of another man. What is the poor pride arising from a magnificent house, a numerous equipage, a splendid table, and from all the other advantages or appearances of fortune, compared to the warm, solid content, the swelling satisfaction, the thrilling transports, and the exulting triumphs, which a good mind enjoys, in the contemplation of a generous, virtuous, noble, benevolent action?”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“The only defect in which excellent constitution seems to be, the difficulty of finding any man adequate to the office of an absolute monarch: for this indispensably requires three qualities very difficult, as it appears from history, to be found in princely natures: first, a sufficient quantity of moderation in the prince, to be contented with all the power which is possible for him to have. 2ndly, Enough of wisdom to know his own happiness. And, 3rdly, Goodness sufficient to support the happiness of others, when not only compatible with, but instrumental to his own. Now”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“It is certainly a vulgar error, that aversion in a woman may be conquered by perseverance. Indifference may, perhaps, sometimes yield to it; but the usual triumphs gained by perseverance in a lover are over caprice, prudence, affectation, and often an exorbitant degree of levity, which excites women not over-warm in their constitutions to indulge their vanity by prolonging the time of courtship, even when they are well enough pleased with the object, and resolve (if they ever resolve at all) to make him a very pitiful amends in the end. But a fixed dislike, as I am afraid this is, will rather gather strength than be conquered by time.”
― Henry Fielding, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel (145) And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, (150) Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, (155) Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide (160) For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, (165) Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. All”
― William Shakespeare

“I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these, but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. My”
― William Shakespeare

“It was so apparent that he loved her very much. Was that it? Maybe it was. It took a lot to accept the decision of a daughter and overrule everyone else. Nusrat”
― Saeed Mirza, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother

“NUSRAT: I don’t know . . . sometimes I feel ashamed . . . RASHEED: Of being a Muslim? Nusrat nods. RASHEED: Well son, let me tell you something that will cheer you up. We didn’t invent apartheid. We didn’t invent germ warfare. We didn’t start the world wars or the holocaust. We didn’t have gulags. We were not in Vietnam. Nor did we bomb Hiroshima. Does that make you feel better? Nusrat”
― Saeed Mirza, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother

“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men’s minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“THE BIBLE LEGEND tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class—the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and conservative. It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system was already founded; all that remained was to organize it. Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account to the peoples as clerk to master. Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards for the sovereigns. On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional reign would have begun. Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy of the nations! My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and everywhere. Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the peoples’ welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace