Amzie Adams Quotes

Time, we know, is relative. You can travel light years through the stars and back, and if you do it at the speed of light then, when you return, you may have aged mere seconds while your twin brother or sister will have aged twenty, thirty, forty or however many years it is, depending on how far you traveled. This will come to you as a profound shock, particularly if you didn't know you had a twin brother or sister. ~ Douglas Adams

Charles Sumner's mind had reached the calm of WATER which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contains nothing but itself. ~ Henry Adams

Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise - absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness - the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone - a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure. ~ Henry Adams

He sniggered.
He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now. ~ Douglas Adams

Men are always the last to ken what women know by sniffing the air. That's why God gave bodily might to Adam, to balance the inequities of strength. For if Eve had been given the power to serve her cunning and cruelty, there would have been a terrible reckoning for all mandkind, and the archangel would have trod on Adam's heels to escape paradise unsinged. ~ Kathleen Kent

One of the things that people who don't know anything about white rhinoceroses find most interesting about them is their colour.
It isn't white.
Not even remotely. It's a rather handsome dark grey. Not even a sort of pale grey that might arguably pass as an off-white, just plain dark grey. People therefore assume that zoologists are either perverse or colour-blind, but it's not that, it's that they are illiterate.
"White" is a mistranslation of the Afrikaans word "weit" meaning "wide", and it refers to the animal's mouth, which is wider than that of the black rhino. ~ Douglas Adams

In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing. ~ Douglas Adams

No truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well being of communities. ~ John Adams

The age difference never mattered to me. Age is something that only matters when you are a cheese. ~ Carina Adams

I wish that the founders had had the foresight to hang on to and enshrine another one of Independence Hall's chairs, the one that Benjamin Rush mentioned in a letter to John Adams about how Thomas Jefferson objected when his colleagues in the Continental Congress considered a fast day, which Jefferson pooh-poohed as too religious. Rush reminded Adams, 'You rose and defended the motion, and in reply to Mr. Jefferson's objections to Christianity you said you were sorry to hear such sentiments …. You suspected, you told me, that you had offended him, but that he soon convinced you to the contrary by crossing the room and taking a seat in the chair next to you.'

Who knows what happened to that particular chair. … But it might have been a more helpful, sobering symbolic object than that chair with the rising sun. Then perhaps citizens making pilgrimages to Independence Hall could file past the chair Jefferson walked across an aisle to sit in, and we could all ponder the amount of respect, affection, and wishy-washy give-and-take needed to keep a house divided in reasonable repair. ~ Sarah Vowell

Your shower is ready - I turned it on last night. ~ Scott Adams

I have two choices: attend my sister's dinner party or tie a plastic sack around my mother's head until she runs out of ngagging. I choose the evil that doesn't come witha felony conviction. ~ Alex Adams

Unhappiness that is caused by too much success is a high-class problem. That's the sort of unhappiness people work all of their lives to get. If you find yourself there, and I hope you do, you'll find your attention naturally turning outward. You'll seek happiness through service to others. I promise it will feel wonderful. ~ Scott Adams

He instituted this, er, Chair of Chronology to see if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it. Since the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe, I realized I could then take the rest of my career off. ~ Douglas Adams

Boredom and booze
cause and effect. ~ Samuel Hopkins Adams

So we're not home and dry," he said. "We could not even be said," replied Ford, "to be home and vigorously toweling ourselves off. ~ Douglas Adams

Justice should not be so fragile a commodity that it cannot be extended beyond the species barrier of Homo Sapiens. ~ Carol J. Adams

For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon - even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches. ~ Douglas Adams

The driver wound down the window and leaned out. "Had a crash then?" he shouted at them. "Yes." "Ha!" he said and drove on ~ Douglas Adams

We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society. ~ John Adams

If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve? ~ Abigail Adams

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. ~ Douglas Adams

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~ Scott Adams

Thayli, you are very brave. Are you cunning, too? ~ Richard Adams

Adam,' I say, 'had good times and he had bad times.' I pause here and glance at Nana, see that she is crying silently, the way I cried at the duck pond in the park. I was going to say something more about the bad times- how Adam's bad times were different from most people's, and that I'll never really understand them. But now that I see Nana's tears, see her start to reach for Papa's hand, then pull back and fold her hands in her lap again- now that I see Nana, I change my mind.
I think we should remember that Adam was one of those people who could lift the corners of our universe,' I say. I clear my throat. 'Thank you.'
As I slide into our pew I realize I feel older. I think of Janet and Nancy and find that nonw I can brush them away. And I understand that Adam and I are not as alike as I had thought. I remembered the tortured look on Adam's face the night of the Ferris wheel and the look of happiness, happiness, and realize that Adam's decision to take his life was not made easily. It took a certain kind of courage. Just not the kind of courage I chose.
I settle between Mom and Dad, and they take my hands and smmile at me. No tears. I squeeze their hands.
~pgs 177-178; Hattie on life ~ Ann M. Martin

L]iberalism holds that the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism ~ James Luther Adams

I've long seen failure as a tool, not an outcome. ~ Scott Adams

I must study politics and war," wrote John Adams, "that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics, and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children the right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." Adams saw clearly that politics is the indispensable foundation for things elegant and beautiful. First and above all else, you must secure life, liberty and the right to pursue your own happiness. ~ Charles Krauthamer John Adams

Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning.

The End is Nigh is about the match. ~ John Joseph Adams

My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone! ~ John Adams

Society asks of most men more than sheer intellect ability-it demands also moral hardiness, self-discipline, a competitive spirit and other qualities that in more old-fashioned terms we might simply call character. ~ Julius Adams Stratton

My first show at MoMA in New York was pictures of new developments along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. They were housing developments that were brutal in many ways, that cared almost not a thing for the human beings inside. They were just designed to make money. ~ Robert Adams

There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. ~ Douglas Adams

Such decisions will be far reaching and difficult. But you never lacked courage in the past. Your courage is now needed for the future. ~ Gerry Adams

I don't go to mythical places with strange men. ~ Douglas Adams

The further you get from nature, the less happy you are; and the nearer, the more exultant you become over the world and all that there is in it. ~ George Matthew Adams

If a man wants to leave you, wave goodbye and lock the doors. You've got better things to do than chase a lost cause. ~ Lyssa Kay Adams

If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action. ~ Douglas Adams

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. ~ Douglas Adams