Rarer Quotes

Love is Not an illusion. It's a Rarer Find & Harder to Cultivate. ~ Matthew Edward Hall

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rarer is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it rarer;
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. ~ Richard Realf

Comedians are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. ~ Groucho Marx

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight. ~ Walter Savage Landor

I am trying to imagine under what novel features despotism may appear in the world. In the first place, I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest….

Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare charges for a man's life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasure, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?

Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepare ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Yes, there's a higher rate of people living below the poverty line who aren't vaccinated. But it's much rarer for that to be a product of choice than a product of circumstance. ~ Eula Biss

If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings ~ Fernando Pessoa

[1.] And first I suppose that there is diffused through all places an aethereal substance capable of contraction & dilatation, strongly elastick, & in a word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtile. 2. I suppose this aether pervades all gross bodies, but yet so as to stand rarer in their pores then in free spaces, & so much ye rarer as their pores are less ... 3. I suppose ye rarer aether within bodies & ye denser without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical superficies, but to grow gradually into one another. ~ Isaac Newton

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

The lift of her heart she'd felt on the outcrop she now felt again, and it wasn't just love. She'd felt love before, known its depths when her mother died.
This was something rarer. Happiness, Laurel thought, that must be what this is. ~ Ron Rash

I have been given the rare opportunity to teach Jiu Jitsu for a living. This is a privilege that I wake up everyday grateful for, and a responsibility that I hold dearly. I understand how rare it is to be employed through a labor you genuinely love, and one which can be used as a vehicle for positive change in the lives of others. Even rarer still, I am often reminded of the quality of Jiu Jitsu I have learned, and the opportunity to have learned it. ~ Chris Matakas

Early SETI efforts were marked by overly optimistic estimates of the probable number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest and to take a more down-to-earth view. Earth may be more special, and intelligence much rarer, in the universe than previously thought.

Skeptical Inquirer Volume 30.3, May / June 2006 ~ Peter Schenkel

I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing - not just from the wild, but from people's everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss? ~ Helen Macdonald

Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

A rarer spirit never Did steer humanity; but you gods will give us Some faults to make us men. ~ William Shakespeare

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer and precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsbility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. ~ Friedrich Hayek

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still. ~ Frederick William Faber

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. ~ Rupert Brooke

Selfishness is easy to find. Selflessness is a much rarer beast. ~ Stewart Stafford

Feelings are just a fire in a field of stubble: it burns for a moment, and then all that's left is soot and ashes. Do you know what the main thing is - the thing a woman should look for in her man? She should look for a quality that's not at all exciting but that's rarer than gold: decency. ~ Amos Oz

Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Error regarding life necessary to life. - Every belief in the value and dignity of life rests on false thinking; it is possible only through the fact that empathy with the universal life and suffering of mankind is very feebly developed in the individual. Even those rarer men who think beyond themselves at all have an eye, not for this universal life, but for fenced-off portions of it. If one knows how to keep the exceptions principally in view, I mean the greatly gifted and pure of soul, takes their production for the goal of world-evolution and rejoices in the effects they in turn produce, one may believe in the value of life, because the one is overlooking all other men: thinking falsely, that is to say. And likewise if, though one does keep in view all mankind, one accords validity only to one species of drives, the less egoistical, and justifies them in face of all the others, then again one can hope for something of mankind as a whole and to this extent believe in the value of life: thus, in this case too, through falsity of thinking. Whichever of these attitudes one adopts, however, one is by adopting in an exception among men. The great majority endure life without complaining overmuch; they believe in the value of existence, but they do so precisely because each of them exists for himself alone, refusing to step out of himself as those exceptions do: everything outside themselves they notice not at all or at most as a dim shadow. Thus for the ordinary, everyday man t ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I would never diminish the quality of Hermes. Hermes can be an even rarer and greater quality business, if they ever wanted to work with us. ~ Bernard Arnault

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation. ~ Andre Gide

You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor, nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people. ~ Archibald Rutledge

Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place. ~ Johannes Kepler

You had the physical bullies and the emotional bullies and they both revelled in destroying lives.
No, she had no time for them. But there were others whose strength was of a much rarer kind. Not easy to find, because they revealed nothing. They were quiet. They often believed themselves to be much weaker than they were. But when pushed too hard, they surprised themselves, finding they would not back away another step, that a wall had risen in their souls, unyielding, a barrier that could not be passed. To find one such as this was the most precious of discoveries. ~ Steven Erikson

Only today I really don't think that elevated feelings and suchlike are the main thing in life. Definitely not. Feelings are just a fire in a field of stubble: it burns for a moment, and then all that's left is soot and ashes. Do you know what the main thing is – the thing a woman should look for in her man? She should look for a quality that's not at all exciting but that's rarer than gold: decency. And maybe kindness too. Today, you should know this, I rate decency more highly than kindness. Decency is the bread, kindness is the butter. Or the honey. ~ Amos Oz

[The Internet] affects democracy ... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Love now–a good, solid love is something infinitely rarer and more difficult to maintain, because you don't know everything your partner is feeling. Love takes work. Love means being able to apologize and mean it when you blunder. Love is worth fighting for! ~ Mercedes Lackey

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. ~ Erica Jong

How do I look in the dark?"
Startled, Arin glanced at him. The question had had no edges. It wasn't sleek, either. Its soft, uncertain shape suggested that Roshar truly wanted to know. In the fired red shadows, his limbs looked lax and his mutilated face met Arin's squarely. The heavy feeling that Arin carried - that specific sadness, nestled just below his collar bone, like a pendant - lessened. He said, "Like my friend."
Roshar didn't smile. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression, which was rare for him. Rarer still: his tone. Quiet and true. "You do, too. ~ Marie Rutkoski

Cruelty is older than the Bible. Savagery beat its chest in the first human summer and has kept beating it every day since. The worst in men is commonplace. The best is a far rarer thing. ~ Dennis Lehane

I have limited experience, but I know this: moments of connection with another human being are patently rare. But rarer still are those who can recognize such a connection when they see one. ~ David Arnold

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. ~ Arthur Helps

In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I wouldn't," said the Luidaeg. "Love is love. It's rarer in Faerie than it used to be - rarer than it should be, if you ask me. If you can find it, you should cling to it, and never let anything interfere. Besides, he has a nice ass." Her lips quirked in a weirdly mischievous smile. "I mean, damn. Some people shouldn't be allowed to wear leather pants. He's one of them. He's a clear and present danger when he puts those things on. Or takes them off. ~ Seanan McGuire

To sleep and being able to. Rare
To sleep and deserve it. Rarer. ~ Saleem Sharma

Love is love. It's rarer in Faerie than it used to be - rarer than it should be, if you ask me. If you can find it, you should cling to it, and never let anything interfere. Besides, he has a nice ass. ~ Seanan McGuire

Someday
When we are wiser
When the world's older
When we have learned
I pray
Someday we may yet
Live
To live and let live
Someday
Life will be fairer
Need will be rarer
Greed will not pay
Godspeed
This bright millennium
On its way
Let it come
Someday ~ Alan Menken

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause ... True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one's purpose, and the sufficiency of one's own approval as a justification for one's own acts. ~ Clarence Darrow

That's the thing about friendship, it's a lot rarer than love, because there is nothing in it for any body. ~ Owen Wilson

For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. ~ Alan Moore

You could chat with anyone; being silent together without it becoming embarrassing was a lot rarer. ~ Harry Mulisch

Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer. ~ Josh Billings

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events. ~ John Drinkwater

I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Pasenow, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the sur-real sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera.

Man is a child wandering lost - to cite Baudelaire`s poem again - in the "forests of symbols."

(The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.) ~ Milan Kundera

There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom. ~ Rebecca West

It is nice enough to be a child, but it is far rarer, and much more precious, to no longer be young, and to truly feel young again. ~ Dexter Palmer

It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

A brick could be used as a cuddle partner. Just glue some fur on it and voila! It's as good as snuggling with any dead animal you find on the side of the highway. (Which is getting rarer to find in this depression where everyone's going hungry.) ~ Jarod Kintz

The only one of the early investigators who carried the exploration of hysteria to its logical conclusion was Breuer's patient Anna O. After Breuer abandoned her, she apparently remained ill for several years. And then she recovered. The mute hysteric who had invented the "talking cure" found her voice and her sanity, in the women's liberation movement. Under a pseudonym, Paul Berthold, she translated into German the classic treatise by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and authored a play, Women's Rights. Under her own name, Bertha Papenheim became a prominent feminist social worker, intellectual, and organizer. In the course of a long and fruitful career she directed an orphanage for girls, founded a feminist organization for Jewish women and traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children. Her dedication, energy and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, 'A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.' At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: 'I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Our Lord reserved to Himself certain things which He would do in due time in a manner outside the course and order of nature, so that they would wonder and be astonished at seeing not great but unusual things, who are unmoved by things daily seen. For the government of the world is a greater miracle than feeding five thousand men from five loaves; yet at the former no one wonders, the latter astonishes all men: not as a greater wonder, but as a rarer. ~ Saint Augustine

The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. The natural history of animals furnishes grounds in support of this theory. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover; it's more unselfish anyhow. My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. ~ Bram Stoker

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score ... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.' ~ Gordon Allport

Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.

In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. T ~ Benedict XVI

Come, dry your eyes, for you are LIFE, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.
Dry your eyes, and let's go home. ~ Alan Moore

Why risk the rare happy marriage-rarer still, a love marriage that endures-for something as common and toxic as complete, unthinking, transparent honesty? Who would be helped by my telling? Me? not at all. I was made of steel, I promise you. ~ William Landay

The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying. ~ Gilles Deleuze

I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of being in love, which they regard as most particular, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, item, one graceful attitude of body or mind, item, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say, 1821-1844
I have always believed this in love to be something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet, who assumes and informs both. I wd have told you
no, I do tell you
friendship is rarer, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love. ~ A.S. Byatt

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage. ~ William Slim

In an area so reliant on opinion there is also the matter of received opinion to consider. The old turkey of the innate beauty of left handers is probably a result of the rarer days for 'cack-handers' when Frank Woolley bestrode the shires on both sides of World War I. After a long gap, his mantle was languidly accepted in England by David Gower. But for every Woolley there was a Mead and for every Gower a Trescothick as if to balance the equation and bury the turkey. ~ Patrick Ferriday

Raquel? You coming?"
"I honestly never thought I would see the light of day again."
"Aww, come on. With me on your side? Of course things worked out."
She tried to smile, but her eyes filled with tears. Thank you, Evie."
I threw my arms around her in a hug. "You don't have to thank me."
"I really do. You wonderful girl. I've missed you so much."
"Well, now that we're both unemployed fugitives, think of how much time we'll have to hang out!"
She laughed drily, and we walked with our arms around each other to the house. I opened the door and yelled, "Evie alert! Coming into the family room!"
"You made it!" Lend shouted back. "Just a sex, I'll go to the kitchen. Raquel's with you?"
"Yup!"
"Good job! Jack and Arianna got back a couple of minutes ago."
I walked into the family room to find Arianna and Jack sitting on the couch, arguing. "But here would have been no point to you being there if it hadn't been for my computer prowess."
"But your computer prowess wouldn't have mattered if you couldn't have gotten into the Center in the first place."
"Being a glorified taxi does not make you the bigger hero."
"Being a nerd who can tap on a keyboard or being able to navigate the dark eternities of the Faerie Paths . . . hmmm . . . which is a rarer and more valuable skill . . ."
I put my hands on my hips. "Okay, kids, take it elsewhere. Raquel and I have work to do."
"Evie," Raquel said. She was staring at Ja ~ Kiersten White

One cannot walk in such regions, consciously
without enlargement of thought. There are
heights and valleys which, to those who seek
them in a sympathetic spirit, are better
" seats of learning " than any school or university in the land ; there are days when the climber seems to rise into a rarer mental as well as visual atmosphere, and to leave far below him the crass cares and prejudices of commonplace life. ~ Henry Stephens Salt

It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so. ~ Ayn Rand

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it. ~ Robertson Davies

This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. ~ Walter Benjamin

... the loneliness ... the "inexpressibly delicious" sensation of this memory - for as memories are older they're like wine rarer, till if you find a real old memory, one of infancy, not an established often tasted one but a brand new one, it would taste better than the Napoleon brandy Stendhal himself must have stared at ... ~ Jack Kerouac

The first set make the underlying body one - either one of the three5 or something else which is denser than fire and rarer than air - then generate everything else from this, (15) and obtain multiplicity by condensation and rarefaction. Now these are contraries, which may be generalized into 'excess and defect'. ~ Aristotle.

There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. ~ Robert Half

Opportunities are rare in this life, and fairness, rarer still. So, when you discover a fair opportunity, go after as if it were your last because it very well might be. ~ Joel T. McGrath

Nothing seems to me to be rarer today then genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that this plant finds the mild atmosphere of our culture unendurable. Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief one already has. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When they reached her house all its lights were blazing.
What's going on? Montag had rarely seen that many house lights.
Oh, just my mother father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time--did I tell you?--for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're MOST peculiar. ~ Ray Bradbury

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other...Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. no two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here - " he tapped his white skull with a thick finger - "and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men. Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think. ~ Michael Shaara

The key to helping our rarer species to thrive is probably simply to add more flower patches to the landscape, making it a little easier for them to find food and keep their nests well provisioned. ~ Dave Goulson

Yesterday Leonas was telling me that he has never seen me in love yet. "Fall in love", he said.
I think I am always in love. Falling in and out of love, constantly. That's my trouble. Everytime I see a girl, my heart goes tuk-tuk-tuk.
Leonas says, that it is not normal. What kind of love is this! Nothing really!
Eh, what do we know about love? It's more difficult to love a woman like a flower than to love a woman like a woman, and rarer, too...
The love of flowers is the love of children and poets... Poets can love unseen subtleties that they glimpse here and there, that are missing in the world but which they want to bring back into the world...
One such quality is innocence.
Eh, they are like dreams, the young girls, they come and they go... ~ Jonas Mekas

I think sunrises are rarer for me, but sunset is my favourite time of day. ~ Jon Foreman

Wickedness is too common in the world
for us to think much of why and wherefore.
It is more natural to ask about the rarer thing
and wonder why people sometimes do good. ~ Barry Unsworth

Sometimes I suspect that good readers are even blacker and rarer swans than good writers. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I do not tell you often enough, dear Mother, how very grateful I am that I am yours. It is a rare parent
who would offer a child such latitude and understanding. It is an even rarer one who calls a daughter
friend. I do love you, dear Mama. ~ Julia Quinn

For example, grown men who sneer at the idea of unicorns will tearfully testify to the existence of an even rarer, more mythical species. Found only in remote ports of call and the darkest, deepest reaches of the most insalubrious taverns, this is the prostitute in whose chest beats the proverbial heart of gold. Let me assure you, if there is one part of a prostitute that is made of gold, it is not her heart. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

I will have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted upon a pole,and underwrit: Here you may see the tyrant, Macbeth ~ William Shakespeare

[Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual courage is even rarer than physical courage. ~ John Charles Polanyi

At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owing to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mating and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet ... He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom. ~ Barry Unsworth

Grey Nights
A while we wandered (thus it is I dream!) Through a long, sandy track of No Man's Land, Where only poppies grew among the sand, The which we, plucking, cast with scant esteem, And ever sadlier, into the sad stream, Which followed us, as we went, hand in hand, Under the estranged stars, a road unplanned, Seeing all things in the shadow of a dream.
And ever sadlier, as the stars expired, We found the poppies rarer, till thine eyes Grown all my light, to light me were too tired, And at their darkening, that no surmise Might haunt me of the lost days we desired, After them all I flung those memories! ~ Ernest Dowson

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that. ~ A.A. Gill

Adherents of homeopathy claim that the greater the dilution, the more effective the drug, particle physics say the rarer the event, the more important it is. It is an ideology, nothing else than a steady transition to nontestability: while scrutinizing this almost-nothing they head for knowing everything on nothing. ~ Alexander Unzicker

As you know, there are several classes of truth. There are the truths that pour out on confessional blogs and YouTube channels. There are the supposed truths exposed in gossip magazines and on reality television, which everyone knows are just lies in truth clothing. Then there are the truths that show themselves only under ideal circumstances: like when you are talking deep into the night with a friend and you tell each other things you would never say if your defenses weren't broken down by salty snacks, sugary beverages, darkness, and a flood of words. There are the truths found in books or films when some writer puts exactly the right words together and it's like their pen turned sword and pierced you right through the heart. Truths like those are rare and getting rarer. ~ Susan Juby

Feminine intuition, a quality perhaps even rarer in women than in men. ~ Ada Leverson

Dude, you ever taste harpy's blood? We're rarer than shit so I'm betting not. Want to go out for a drink sometime? If you put out, I might let you have a sip. ~ Thea Harrison

Desire was its own reward, and a rarer luxury than you'd think. You could sometimes buy what you wanted; you could never buy wanting it. ~ Lionel Shriver

occurrence - yet the rarer the event, the more confident these "scientists" involved in predicting, modeling, and using PowerPoint in conferences with equations in multicolor background have become. ~ Anonymous

The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff. ~ Enid Bagnold

that very rare ability called imagination, that rarer quality called courage, and who make things happen. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nothing is rarer than true good nature; they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

So it's not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. ~ Gilles Deleuze

Insight is rarer, and infinitely more precious. A strong insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand reasons to act and make something happen. That, more than anything, should be your reason to fight and persevere for your own insight moment. When you are armed with a powerful insight, the ideas never stop flowing. ~ Phil Dusenberry