Robert Blaisdell Quotes

I've a goodly share of faults. I rush in, where I should tread carefully. I speak, where I should listen. But when I hear them sing, I don't just hear a hymn. They're singing to God because they haven't found anyone else who will listen. ~ Courtney Milan

He felt as if he'd woken up, weak and confused, only to be told that he'd spent the last three weeks in bed with a fever
and that during his illness, Queen Victoria had abdicated the throne and run off with a lion-tamer from Birmingham. The world seemed an entirely different place. ~ Courtney Milan

My most ardent wish is that you, and everyone like you, will look up. That you'll do so and never be beaten into the ground again. I write handbills because I can write those words without fear of reprisal - because if I am discovered, the House of Lords will never prosecute me. I write because those words must be written. I write because to not write, to not speak, would be to waste what I have been given. ~ Courtney Milan

He considered it permissible, indeed even all but indispensable, to entertain, behind the back of his Edith, whom he couldn't break through to or perhaps never wanted to break through to, certain minor enrapturements, secondary belles, as it were, insignificant wiles with gentle smiles, so as to prevent his becoming, for instance, sentimental, which he would have found distasteful, and which in point of fact would have been just that. Unfaithfulness is morally far more valuable than sentimental clinging and fidelity. That ought to be at least a little clear to even the biggest lump. ~ Robert Walser

Men of great spirit are at high risk at a time when small souls rule the world. ~ Robert Silverberg

Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. ~ Robert Kennedy

I had wanted to be a novelist for so long, but I didn't have a story. That story came from the death of my father, and wrestling with how to help my mother. Writing it allowed me to work through my fears, frustrations and desires. I wanted control over the situation. And I wasn't sure I would have any in real life. ~ Robert Crais

Completing a piece of art and using all of the elements of making a film, was satisfying, for sure. ~ Robert Stromberg

A little man in a threadbare coat spoke up for the poor as if he really knew what he was talking about. The women with the flowers threw them down for him. "That's Robert Speer," one said. "Something like that. He's our man. ~ Marge Piercy

Measure your life by improvements rather than mistakes. ~ Robert A. Giacalone

I had started climbing trees about three years earlier, or rather, re-started; for I had been at a school that had a wood for its playground. We had climbed and christened the different trees (Scorpio, The Major Oak, Pegagsus), and fought for their control in territorial conflicts with elaborate rules and fealties. My father built my brother and me a tree house in our garden, which we had defended successfully against years of pirate attack. In my late twenties, I had begun to climb trees again. Just for the fun of it: no ropes, and no danger either.

In the course of my climbing, I learned to discriminate between tree species. I liked the lithe springiness of silver birch, the alder and the young cherry. I avoided pines -- brittle branches, callous bark -- and planes. And I found that the horse chestnut, with its limbless lower trunk and prickly fruit, but also its tremendous canopy, offered the tree-climber both a difficulty and an incentive. ~ Robert Macfarlane

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits. ~ Robert Hall

Budget the luxuries first. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

We are ultimately alone in that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves. ~ Robert Zemeckis

It is in its pure form that an art hits hard. ~ Robert Bresson

Love is a dangerous commodity-fraught with peril, ~ Robert Indiana

21. Revelation
WE make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are ~ Robert Frost

The devil's name is dullness. ~ Robert E.Lee

Philip doesn't let go, his eyes glinting with rage. We're gonna survive this thing,and we're gonna do it by being bigger monsters than they are! You understand? There ain't no philosophy, there ain't no grace, there ain't no mercy, there's only us and them, and all they wanna do is eat our ass! So we're gonna fucking eat them! We're gonna chew 'em up and spit 'em out, and we're gonna survive this thing or I will blow a hole through this whole fucked up world! You follow me? You FOLLOW ME! ~ Robert Kirkman

I put my office right in the middle of the death they threaten us with. [ ... ] here I sit, every day, hanging over all this wasted nothing. I will never forget what the world could be, should my vigilance never fail. And more than that, I will never forget that in a way we are all hanged men and hanged women, awaiting those deaths which cannot be avoided. Yet I will make sure that we live and die the way we choose for as long as we possibly can. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

I think you say the word in your mind anyway, you know. When you look at a word, you say it. ~ Robert Barry

There were undoubtedly those to whom killing was easy and pleasurable: he had met a few such. Millions had been successfully trained to end others' lives; he, Strike, was one of them. Humans killed opportunistically, for advantage and in defense, discovering in themselves the capacity for bloodshed when no alternative seemed possible; but there were also people who had drawn up short, even under the most intense pressure, unable to press their advantage, to seize the opportunity, to break the final and greatest taboo. ~ Robert Galbraith

How does any idea come to your mind? I don't know. ~ Robert Barry

American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does. ~ Robert Kuttner

We can only receive what our minds are capable of accepting. ~ Robert Anthony

I see love as an evolution of true friendship. ~ Robert Pattinson

Pike put down the cat. He slid from Pike's arms like molasses and puddled at his feet. ~ Robert Crais

Meanwhile, back at reality..."- G.Lucas ~ Robert Lynn Asprin

Sometimes the failures can be exciting and fun. It's just a step on the road, it's not the end of something. ~ Robert Redford

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate. ~ Robert Dallek

Dignity was a luxury in a fight with Lyndon Johnson, a luxury too expensive to afford. ~ Robert A. Caro

Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles of our feet, shaped by the surfaces they press upon, are landscapes themselves with their own worn channels and roving lines. They perhaps most closely resemble the patterns of ridge and swirl revealed when a tide has ebbed over flat sand ~ Robert Macfarlane

In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition. ~ Robert Benchley

The most common mistake we make as teachers is attempting to tell our students too much. ~ Robert H. Frank

Wars of any magnitude release powerful social and economic forces which can change the whole face of the world. ~ Robert Kennedy

Put in the bluntest possible terms, what I discovered was that the U.S. secret intelligence community was collecting only information it considered secret, while ignoring the eighty to ninety percent of the information in the world, in all languages, that was not secret. ~ Robert David Steele

Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality. ~ Robert Graves

It made the kids at camp much more enthusiastic and cooperative when they had ego goals to fulfill, I'm sure, but ultimately that kind of motivation is destructive. Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Now we're paying the price. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That's never the way. ~ Robert M. Pirsig