Ada Quotes

A constellation of Utopians is a group which only seems a group to us because we seek familiar institutions in their government, as we use the shapes of beasts and heroes to make false sense of the sea of stars. ~ Ada Palmer

She started to scream. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Her vision was numb. There was a window in front of her but it opened into a nothingness like the one yawning from her mouth. Somewhere she could hear a building sound, a wind, huge and wide, rushing out of the void, rushing toward her. The walls, the veils in her head, they tore, they ripped, they collapsed. The wind rushed over his empty voice and the Ada thought with a sudden final clarity--
She has come. She has come for me at last. ~ Akwaeke Emezi

Most people now seem to treasure anything they value in proportion to the extent that it's followed about and surrounded by the vulgar public. ~ Ada Leverson

Don't worry, even if I don't tell them, my little brother will. I'm pretty sure he was born for the sole purpose of making my life a living hell," Seth muttered, then noticing that his parents' friends were drawing near, rushed off to hide. ~ Ada Adams

Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Not until you eat."
"Oh, for God's sake, Aunt Ada-"
"None of that swearing, now. If you mean to be chosen as Chief Magistrate, you can't talk like a dockworker."
With a lift of his eyebrow, he held out his hand. "I won't be chosen as anything if I don't satisfy those who require my help."
"Humph. They can wait a few minutes." Her eyes glittered a warning. "I mean it. Don't make me throw these in the fire."
He flashed her his darkest scowl. "You wouldn't dare."
She set her shoulders. "Try me. And while those black looks of yours might intimidate criminals, they won't work on me. They didn't when you were ten, so they certainly won't now."
"Then I'll have to resort to force." He fought a smile as he stalked toward her. "I outweigh you by a good five stone. I could snatch those papers before you got anywhere near a fire."
"I could bash you over the head with a skillet, too."
The idea of his sweet-natured aunt bashing him over the head with anything made him laugh. He held up his hands. "Fine, I'll eat. But I must make it quick. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

A country is mostly the people in it," Maud said. "I don't love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I'm staying, to fight the Nazis. ~ Ken Follett

Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible
its multitudinous Charlatans
everything in short but
the Enchantress of Numbers. ~ Ada Lovelace

People were not charmed with Eglantine because she herself was charming, but because she was charmed. ~ Ada Leverson

Nothing under Providence is ever certain until an agent goes and tries and makes it so. ~ Ada Palmer

People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy - I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as "realists of a larger reality" because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

....

Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people ha ~ Ada Palmer

Once, when I tried to calculate the height of the balcony, I broke my arm. Another time, I wanted to see if water moves faster than kerosene. When my father came out to smoke, a fire broke out. ~ Ada Yonath

A good man would tell you to stop writing. A good man would say to you, "No, love, don't wait for me. Live your life." A good man would be happy that you were off somewhere in the world doing all the things you deserve. But, Miss Ada, I am no good man. I am, in fact, selfish, very bleeding selfish when it comes to you. Good man or no, I will tell you I believe a life lived without love is one not worthy of living a'tall. ~ Eden Butler

Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Not so much living, but a hovering without sense. ~ Ada Limon

You don't really know a woman until she writes you a letter. ~ Ada Leverson

Everything comes to the man who won't wait. ~ Ada Leverson

Problems should be solved by talking and not in an aggressive manner. ~ Ada Yonath

But the science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself, and has its own abstract truth and value; just as logic has its own peculiar truth and value, independently of the subjects to which we may apply its reasonings and processes. ~ Ada Lovelace

The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age ... Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Melancholia is the disease of the middle-class. The Workers don't know what it means. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I saw you fall. Are you okay?" he asked. "Yup, great," I said, forcing a smile. "Dancing One, Dawn Zero. ~ Ada Adams

Well, it's more like a sentence on life," he said, grinning. "I live by three rules: Don't dwell on the past, present, or future, party hard, and never fall in love. Easy. ~ Ada Adams

Even if I tried to fill up the stadium in Ramat Gan, I don't think I could. ~ Ada Yonath

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did. ~ Ada Leverson

What is imagination?...
It is a God-like, a noble faculty. It renders earth tolerable, it teaches us to live, in the tone of the eternal. ~ Ada Lovelace

I reached for her through the darkness, but she was gone. Like dominoes folding over, the rest of the mirrors collapsed down on top of me. The impact caused the world around me to vanish. ~ Ada Adams

I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I'm not home when people knock. There's daytime silent where I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's how this machine works. ~ Ada Limon

She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon and night. ~ Ada Leverson

It may be desirable to explain, that by the word operation, we mean any process which alters the mutual relation of two or more things, be this relation of what kind it may. This is the most general definition, and would include all subjects in the universe. ~ Ada Lovelace

Ada and Isabel had been unpopular in high school. They had talked incessantly of money and social position, making themselves very obnoxious to the other students. ~ Carolyn Keene

Natural selection has been described as an environment selectively screening for those who will have progeny. Where humans are concerned, though, this is an extremely limiting viewpoint. Reproduction by sex tends toward experiment and innovation. It raises many questions, including the ancient one about whether environment is a selective agent after the variation occurs, or whether environment plays a pre-selective role in determining the variations which it screens. Dune did not really answer those questions: it merely raised new questions which Leto and the Sisterhood may attempt to answer over the next five hundred generations. - THE DUNE CATASTROPHE AFTER HARQ AL-ADA ~ Frank Herbert

I love thee as I love all that we have fought for. I love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the rights of all men to work and not be hungry. I love thee as I love Madrid that we have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died. And many have died. Many. Many. Thou canst not think how many. But I love thee as I love what I love most in the world and I
love thee more. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

There are over 7,000 different types of proteins in typical eukaryotic cells; the total number depends on the cell class and function. ~ Ada Yonath

Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay! ~ Ada Cambridge

Here it is: the new way of living with the world inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost. You and me are us and then, and it and sky. ~ Ada Limon

Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married. ~ Ada Calhoun

I suspect few housing projects in the US were designed by architects who expected to live in them. You see the same thing in programming languages. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use. Cobol, Ada, and Javawere created for other people to use. If you think you're designing
something for idiots, odds are you're not designing something good, even for idiots. ~ Paul Graham

They didn't believe in interfering with the child's imagination, and so when the Ada finished one of her many books and decided that she could talk to animals, no one corrected her. 'It did no harm to let her believe that,' Saul said, and the Ada continued to believe wildly, in Yshwa and fairies and pixies living in the flame of the forest blossoms. ~ Akwaeke Emezi

The unspoken philosophy of all those in love with Ada was something like this: If I have to die to get that, then death it is. ~ John Corey Whaley

If I had to, I was going to rip every inch of me open, give him as much blood as he needed to survive. ~ Ada Adams

Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death. Waiting is a special kind of activity - if activity is the right word for it - because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

I am not obsessing.
I am just sitting here
perforating this post-it
with a push-pin. ~ Ada Limon

Don't think about Laika in orbit. Don't think about cringe and catastrophe. ~ Ada Limon

Is there anything I can say to convince you to stay out of this?" he pleaded, his voice taking on a softer tone.
I shook my head. "Of course not."
"I didn't think so," he said miserably. ~ Ada Adams

Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

I am in a charming state of confusion. ~ Ada Lovelace

Some of his transactions involved Ada policemen, specifically one Dennis Corvin, whom Gore described as a primary supplier ~ John Grisham

You're destined for something great, Ada, I know this. And it's an honor to help see you through it. ~ Karina Halle

You never heard ofplugging her in ? My God, Myrnin, you made a vampire computer? ~ Rachel Caine

One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation. ~ Ada Lovelace

And ... Dawn?"
"Yes?"
"Be careful."
"Be careful dancing?"
He smiled. "The way you dance, that wouldn't be bad advice." Then he lost the smile and his cool eyes blazed with a strange current I'd never seen. "Be careful ... always. ~ Ada Adams

No one comes to stone the servant when they could watch the execution of the king. ~ Ada Palmer

Making klv zdB AoyvBno wkh gwzxm dqg kzwAAqvo a gwttp vq wjfhm Ada in natural bower of aspens xliC mujzikml. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The Eastern allusion bit me again. "I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio," I said; "so don't consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here. ~ Charlotte Bronte

No one wants to be remembered for their death, or rather, I don't. So why do I remember hers and remember hers? I ~ Ada Limon

I'm truly glad I've managed to get the public interested in questions about basic research. ~ Ada Yonath

Go on from here, Ada, please. (She). Billions of boys. Take one fairly decent decade. A billion of Bills, good, gifted, tender and passionate, not only spiritually but physically well-meaning Billions, have bared the jillions of their no less tender and brilliant Jills during that decade, at stations and under conditions that have to be controlled and specified by the worker, lest the entire report be choked up by the weeds of statistics and waist-high generalizations. No point would there be, if we left out, for example, the little matter of prodigious individual awareness and young genius, which makes, in some cases, of this or that particular gasp an unprecedented and unrepeatable event in the continuum of life or at least a thematic anthemia of such events in a work of art, or a denouncer's article. The details that shine through or shade through: the local leaf through the hyaline skin, the green sun in the brown humid eye, tout ceci, vsyo eto, in tit and toto, must be taken into account, now prepare to take over (no, Ada, go on, ya zaslushalsya: I'm all enchantment and ears), if we wish to convey the fact, the fact, the fact - that among those billions of brilliant couples in one cross section of what you will allow me to call spacetime (for the convenience of reasoning), one couple is a unique super-imperial couple, sverhimperator-skaya cheta, in consequence of which (to be inquired into, to be painted, to be denounced, to be put to music, or to the question and death, ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well! ~ Ada Leverson

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups. ~ Ada Calhoun

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers. ~ Larry Wall

He smelled like a sultry summer storm - cool, refreshing rain, sweltering, hot wind, and charged, electric thunder - all rolled up into one extremely enticing vampire being. ~ Ada Adams

Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition. ~ Ada Calhoun

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature. ~ Ada Leverson

There is nothing so banal in the world,' said Ada 'than pitching stones at a hawfinch. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

What a ruler has to rely upon is only the human heart. Human hearts are to the ruler what roots are to a tree, what oil is to a lamp, water to fish, fields to a farmer, or money to a merchant. ~ Su Shi

You will never know just how thrilled my heart is to behold such a throng of people; especially as they have gathered to pay tribute and love's greatest honor to loved ones who, today, are basking in the sunshine of God's heaven. ~ Reverend Ada Slaton Bonds

The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring. ~ Ada Calhoun

This one fact implies everything; and it is scarcely necessary to point out, for instance, that while the Difference Engine can merely tabulate, and is incapable of developing, the Analytical Engine can either tabulate or develope. ~ Ada Lovelace

Oh, alright," I conceded. "But if you try something, I swear I'll use my pet dagger to cut off - "
"I said I'd behave! Though, you're making it kinda hard to be good with all that talk of wanting to have your way with me."
I released my grip on his neck and smacked the top of his head. ~ Ada Adams

If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science? ~ Ada Lovelace

Strategy was physics.
Every action had a reaction. ~ Ada Harper

I consider it a mutual duty, that we owe to each other, to communicate in a spirit of the utmost frankness and candor. Let it ever be done with unlocked hearts. ~ Charles Frazier

They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he "ladored,"he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from "lass." "No, no, don't," she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the hushed avenue, enjoying as they had never enjoyed before, the "happy-forever" feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales. ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Futurists? ... Well, of course, they are already past. ~ Ada Leverson

How do you know what a rock star feels like, Ada May? Have you ever been a rock star? I don't think so,' Beth Ann said.
'I was just guessing.'
'Well, not me. I'm not saying I feel like something when I don't have any idea what that feels like and neither do you. ~ Jodi Thomas

When it is good, this is a city of fantastic strength, sophistication and beauty. It is like no other city in time or place. Visitors and even natives rarely use the words urban character or environmental style, but that is what they are reacting to with awe in the presence of massed, concentrated, steel, stone, power and life. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

The New York Hilton is laid out with a competence that would make a computer blush. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Her grandfather's books [ ... ] opened before Ada, a world whose colours were so dazzling that reality paled in comparison and faded away. Boris Godunov, Satan, Athalia, King Lear: they all spoke words charged with meaning; every syllable was inexpressively precious ~ Irene Nemirovsky

I was born in Jerusalem with a religious background and a rabbi as a father ... it was rather poor, but what we did have, we did have books. ~ Ada Yonath

Golden Ages always end with Dark ones. ~ Ada Palmer

Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Complacency is the enemy, Mycroft, not xenophobia. An old phoenix needs burning ~ Ada Palmer

And now, said Ada, Van is going to stop being vulgar - I
mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always
have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

It's always something to get one's wish, even if the wish is a failure. ~ Ada Leverson

Between the tragedies and heroics there are the everyday banalities of war. ~ Ada Maria Soto

But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years - problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space - and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Break a promise to the dead and they'll haunt you, Ada says. Keep the promise and they'll haunt you just the same. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Humility is not a matter of self-effacement and self-negation but of being open always to new ways of being responsible. ~ Ada María Isasi-Díaz

Waiting for me in Stockholm will be a personal assistant - Katrina from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - as well the secretary of the Swedish Academy. They'll help us with our things and take us to our hotel. From the moment I arrive, I'll always be together with the other two laureates. ~ Ada Yonath

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

This was when she asked him whether it was true that love conquered all, as the songs said. 'It is true', he replied, 'but you would do well not to believe it. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The world is witnessing first hand, live on television, the hearts ofAmerican warriors - and the spirit and pride only displayed by magnificent young men and women who are volunteers in the fight for the cause of freedom. Its all about heart. ~ Ada F Kay

This Theresa maddened with her messages a scientist on our easily maddened planet; his anagram looking name, Sig Lemanski, had been partly derived by Van from that of Aqua's last doctor. When Leymanski's obsession turned into love, and one's sympathy got focused on his enchanting, melancholy, betrayed wife (nee Antilia Glems), our author found himself confronted with the distressful task of now stamping out in Antilia, a born brunette, all traces of Ada, thus reducing yet another character to a dummy with bleached hair.
After beaming Sig a dozen communications from her planet, Theresa flies over to him, and he, in his laboratory, has to place her on a slide under a powerful microscope in order to make out the tiny, though otherwise perfect, shape of his minikin sweetheart, a graceful microorganism extending transparent appendages toward his huge humid eye. Alas, the testibulus (test tube - never to be confused with testiculus, orchid), with Theresa swimming inside like a micromermaid, is "accidentally" thrown away by Professor Leyman's (he had trimmed his name by that time) assistant, Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun. ~ Vladimimir Nabokov

The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women. ~ Ada Leverson

Have you come to help Me?"

The sensayer waited, uncertain whether the words were meant for her. "Help you how?" she asked.

The stone-still Speaker did not turn. "To understand the God Who made this portrait of Himself."

Carlyle looked to the altarpiece, the choirs of Heaven shimmering in their concentric circles of cracking paint and gold. "People made that, human beings searching for their own understanding."

"If God made Man and Man made this, it is still a Self-portrait. ~ Ada Palmer

From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn't think about science too much. ~ Ada Yonath

All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable