Bernard Wolfe Quotes

It then became intolerable that while I was not in any way interested in the world's affairs the world should have decided to interfere so spectacularly in mine. [ ... ] I am tired of offering my services as a smokescreen when there is a good chance of my being dismembered in the process and when I don't approve of what's being screened anyhow. ~ Bernard Wolfe

The human being must always be central, not the products and objects of his skill and energy. ~ Bernard Wolfe

Is deviation from the locally approved norms always and everywhere to be taken as disease? ~ Bernard Wolfe

Any ceremony performed in the absence of reasonable knowledge as to cause and effect is magic. ~ Bernard Wolfe

I look up to Bernard Hopkins as a fighter. I'm honored to be his co-main event and to be able to give a great performance. ~ Keith Thurman

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams. ~ Bernard Malamud

We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.
~ Bernard Meltzer

Look, have whatever in your collection at home, but everybody needs a little Friday night. And really, that is Chic. ~ Bernard Edwards

The General knew he would probably die, for infantry took pleasure in killing cavalry and he would be the leading horseman in the attack on the bridge, but the General was a soldier and he had long learned that a soldier's real enemy is the fear of death. Beat that fear and victory was certain, and victory brought glory and fame and medals and money and, best of all, sweetest of all, most glorious and wondrous of all, the modest teasing grin of a short black-haired Emperor who would pat the Dragoon General as though he was a faithful dog, and the thought of that Imperial favour made the General quicken his horse and raise his battered sword. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Courtesy is one's own affair, but decency is a debt to life ~ Rex Stout

The press in New York has tended to favor New Society in every period, and to take it seriously, if only because it provides news. ~ Tom Wolfe

The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I am going in there to win this fight. I don't think people are taking me seriously. I'm gonna surprise a lot of people. This guy helped two people make history. ~ Bernard Hopkins

Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. ~ Bernard Lonergan

The world began in chaos and it will end in chaos. The gods brought the world into existence, and they will end it when they fight among themselves, but in between the chaos of the world's birth and the chaos of the world's death is order, and order is made by oaths, and oaths bind us like the buckles of a harness. ~ Bernard Cornwell

We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain. ~ Claude Bernard

No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech. ~ Tom Wolfe

I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. ~ George Bernard Shaw

How beautiful then is modesty and what a gem among virtues it is. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

When I am no longer being copied, I shall know that I am a back number ... the fear of being copied is often the characteristic of the meager imagination. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope. ~ Edward Abbey

Didn't vet Bernard Kerik sufficiently for DHS recommendation. ~ Rudy Giuliani

You can't take it with you. There are no pockets in a shroud. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

Hypocrisy ... is only bad when it is improperly used. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out--through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it. And what had he learned? A philosopher would not think it much, perhaps, and yet in a simple human way it was a good deal. Just by living, my making the thousand little daily choices that his whole complex of heredity, environment, and conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make, and by taking the consequences, he had learned that he could not eat his cake and have it, too. He had learned that in spite of his strange body, so much off scale that it had often made him think himself a creature set apart, he was still the son and brother of all men living. He had learned that he could not devour the earth, that he must know and accept his limitations. He realized that much of his torment of the years past had been self-inflicted, and an inevitable part of growing up. And, most important of all for one who had taken so long to grow up, he thought he had learned not to be the slave of his emotions. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Do you ever read the scriptures?"
"Every day," I said enthusiastically, "not a moment passes that I don't have a quick read of Ieremias or dip into Ezekiel."
She smiled, amused. "What a barbarian you are! ~ Bernard Cornwell

Whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit he was a first-rate political economist. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas. ~ George Bernard Shaw

They're frightened that we'll make a sally and kill them all," Ragnar said, "so they're going to sit there and try to starve us out. ~ Bernard Cornwell

I had not yet learned that one cannot really be superior without humility and tolerance and human understanding. I did not yet know that in order to belong to a rare and higher breed one must first develop the true power and talent of selfless immolation. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing - a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces. ~ George Bernard Shaw

But you can see it, Harriet, a look in his eyes, an alertness, as if somewhere behind the disease, behind the scar tissue, behind the fog of disassociation, Bernard is all there, he's just lost his ability to communicate. Like somebody turned off his volume. You're certain he can see everything that is transpiring with crystal clarity, and he can't do a goddamn thing about it. ~ Jonathan Evison

I remember my first shield wall," I said, "and I was scared." It had been against cattle raiders from Wales and I had been terrified. Since then I had fought against the best that the Northmen could send against us, I had clashed shields and smelled my enemy's stinking breath as I killed him, and I still feared the shield wall. One day I would die in such a wall. I would go down, biting against the pain, and an enemy's blade would tear the life from me. Maybe today, I thought, probably today. I touched the hammer. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Do you know who wins battles, boy?"
"We do, Father."
"The side that is least drunk," he said, and then, after a pause, "but it helps to be drunk."
"Why?"
"Because a shield wall is an awful place." He gazed into the fire. "I have been in six shield walls," he went on, "and prayed every time it would be the last. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Every growing brand thrives on brand influencers and advocates ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand. ~ George Bernard Shaw