Prior Philip Quotes

He was only a boy from a Welsh hill village who had the good fortune to become a monk. Today he would speak to the king. What gave him the right? ~ Ken Follett

I empathise with the fact that people want to look their best. A hat is all about how it makes you feel - it's so much better than a nip and tuck, and a lot less painful. ~ Philip Treacy

Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire. ~ Philip Larkin

Oh, so it's not enough that I told you; it has to be in the right setting?" I raise my eyebrows. "Next time should I brew some tea and make sure the lighting is right too? ~ Veronica Roth

The preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewers read a preface. ~ Philip Guedalla

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible.
Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence mad ~ Philip Jenkins

After all, television is confined to a glass box. No matter how gruesome the scenes on the screen may be, no blood will spill on the carpet. No matter how close television seems to be bring the day's events, they always remain distant enough to be viewed with dispassion. The global village can be visited and abandoned at will. ~ Philip Seib

She might have wallowed a long while in the pleasures of resistance and the challenge of discovering how unrestrained she could be. But she would have been at home. At home you flip out a little and that's it. You do not have the pleasure of the unadulterated pleasure. You don't get to the point where you flip out a little so many times that you finally decide it's such a great, great kick, why not flip out a lot? At home there is no opportunity to douse yourself in this squalor. At home you can't live where the disorder is. At home you can't live where nothing is reined in. At home there is the tremendous discrepancy between the way she imagines the world to be and the way the world is for her. Well, no longer is there that dissonance to disturb her equilibrium. ~ Philip Roth

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable. ~ Philip Kerr

And I know that we won't be able to escape it in deep space, either. We might succeed in ignoring this doubt for a while - keep everyone so busy doing what it takes to build the ships to get us out there. But eventually the bustle ends, and then we're left with ourselves again. It'll be the loneliest revelation ever - half a million miles from home. ~ Philip Wyeth

After two years of undergraduate study, it was clear that I was bored by the regime of problem-solving required by the Cambridge mathematical tripos. A very sensitive mathematics don recommended that I talk to the historian of astronomy, Michael Hoskin, and the conversation led me to enroll in the History and Philosophy of Science for my final undergraduate year. ~ Philip Kitcher

Old English, the heart and soul of the old regime at Oxford, ceased to be a required course only as of 2002. ~ Philip Zaleski

... the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these black waters that contain the day that passed, the night to come.
- Excerpt from the poem The Mercy ~ Philip Levine

People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive. ~ Philip Yancey

One of our brainchildren is a still viable Science and Society course. ~ Philip Warren Anderson

Baron, Baroness
Originally, the term baron signified a person who owned land as a direct gift from the monarchy or as a descendant of a baron. Now it is an honorary title. The wife of a baron is a baroness.

Duke, Duchess, Duchy, Dukedom
Originally, a man could become a duke in one of two ways. He could be recognized for owning a lot of land. Or he could be a victorious military commander. Now a man can become a duke simply by being appointed by a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her husband Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and her son Charles the Duke of Wales. A duchess is the wife or widow of a duke. The territory ruled by a duke is a duchy or a dukedom.

Earl, Earldom
Earl is the oldest title in the English nobility. It originally signified a chieftan or leader of a tribe. Each earl is identified with a certain area called an earldom. Today the monarchy sometimes confers an earldom on a retiring prime minister. For example, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is the Earl of Stockton.

King
A king is a ruling monarch. He inherits this position and retains it until he abdicates or dies. Formerly, a king was an absolute ruler. Today the role of King of England is largely symbolic. The wife of a king is a queen.

Knight
Originally a knight was a man who performed devoted military service. The title is not hereditary. A king or queen may award a citizen with knighthood. The criterion for the award is devoted ~ Nancy Whitelaw

Some of my anger has faded, but it isn't hard to call back. All I have to do is think about how cold the air was and how loud the laughter was. Look at her. She's a child. ~ Veronica Roth

We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted. ~ Philip Greenspun

Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life. Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy. ~ Alan Bennett

Such ordeals always strike one with their strangeness, their digression from the normal flow of events, and often provoke a universal protest: "Why me?" Be sure that this is not a question but an outcry. The person who screams it has been instilled with an astonishing suspicion that he, in fact, has been the perfect subject for a very specific "weird," a tailor-made fate, and that a prior engagement, in all its weirdness, was fulfilled at the appointed time and place. ~ Thomas Ligotti

We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different world, and then we'll build ... ~ Philip Pullman

There are things we see with our eyes, sitting high and looking out. And there are things we see with our hearts, sitting still and looking in. ~ Philip Gulley

Sex means nothing
just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes. ~ Philip Larkin

Human free will implies God's prior decision not to tamper with the metaphysical base of that free will. It also implies man's ability to reject the persuasion God uses to influence that free will while leaving its metaphysical base intact! Persuasion, not compulsion, is what even He must rely upon! And persuasion, by its very definition, must be resistible! ~ Don Richardson

The apostolic writings are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic. ~ Philip Schaff

Resurrection means bodily resurrection or it means nothing at all. ~ Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else. ~ Philip Yancey

Oh, Will," she said, "what can we do? Whatever can we do? I want to live with you forever. I want to kiss you and lie down with you and wake up with you every day of my life till I die, years and years and years away. I don't want a memory, just a memory…"

"No," he said, "memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didn't know I could ever love anything so much. Oh, Lyra, I wish this night would never end! If only we could stay here like this, and the world could stop turning, and everyone else could fall into a sleep… ~ Philip Pullman

As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago. ~ Harriet Martineau

We become willing servants to the good by the bonds their virtues lay upon us. ~ Philip Sidney

Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission. ~ Philip Zaleski

People who think they are free eventually end up slaves to their own desires, and those who give their freedom away to the only One you can trust with that freedom eventually get it back. ~ Philip Yancey

What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we'll take the murder, we'll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we'll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you're a bloody poof? That's beyond our sense of decorum! I've bloody well had it. I've sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I'm finished. I don't care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I'm done. ~ Casey McQuiston

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us. ~ Philip Gilbert Hamerton

When I believe, I am crazy. When I don't believe, I suffer psychotic depression. ~ Philip K. Dick

Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined. ~ James Rozoff

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. ~ Philip Roth

Ignoring the vices of our friends and the virtues of our enemies sets us up for nasty surprises. ~ Philip E. Tetlock

All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as "the sum of the world's suffering," an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it. ~ Philip Yancey

I get my share of mud flung my way, but the secret is to dance in the rain and the mud will wash away. ~ Philip Catshill

Caroline said, "She's terribly, terribly disruptive." "So is reality," Hawthorne said. ~ Philip K. Dick

Great artists, as history reveals, have been harshly persecuted time and again by the frightened and ill-educated, ~ Philip Roth

Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary. ~ Philip Pullman

One day I hoped some thoughtful historian would point out the close connection between the Mercedes-Benz motor car and Germany's favorite dictator and that the Lord would find a way to pay these bastards back for their help in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there. ~ Philip Kerr

Real photography is a wonderfully inclusive, democratic medium, whereas art photography is more often a private pursuit by conmen. ~ Philip Jones Griffiths

I know it sounds strange to say, but the very technologies that have made traveling easier for most people - GPS, automated ticket machines, online schedules and ticketing, boarding passes you can print out at home - have actually made things harder for me. ~ Philip Schultz

He was interested in the human side of that struggle to express something which was so obscure in the man's mind that he was become morbid and querulous. Philip felt vaguely that he himself was himself in the same case, but with him it was the conduct of his life as a whole that perplexed him. That was his means of self-expression, and what he must do with it was not clear. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. ~ Aristotle.

If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others. ~ Philip K. Dick

Damn her he said to himself. What good does it do my risking my life? She doesn't care whether we own an ostrich or not. Nothing penetrates. ~ Philip K. Dick