Servus Quotes

As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. The way nouns could sometimes modify other nouns in that tongue had always been one of his weak points. In Latin, as in most simple dialects of the region, a construction like servus puer meant about the same thing as puer servus, and even in English slave boy meant boy slave. But there the similarity ended. He had finally learned that house cat did not mean cat house, and that a dative of purpose or possession, as in mihi amicus, was somehow conveyed by dog food or sentry box even without inflection. But what of a triple appositive like fallout survival shelter? Brother Francis shook his head. The Warning on Inner Hatch mentioned food, water, and air; and yet surely these were not necessities for the fiends of Hell. At times, the novice found pre-Deluge English more perplexing than either Intermediate Angelology or Saint Leslie's theological calculus. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Every adversity has value if one searches for it. ~ Stephen Bly

Well, I thought it was a dog, and the critics did, too. Woof. ~ Jonathan Galassi

A lot of people don't know if Denmark is a country or a cheese. ~ Bassam Tibi

In every place there are 100 people who can say no and only one person who can say yes. You have to get a good piece of material to the right person. ~ Robert Evans

Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself? ... Or, to "be" himself? ~ Milkweed L. Augustine

You are one of the few successful persons I know."
"Me? Why?"
"You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well."
"But I don't really do much of anything."
"And of course the quantity means nothing to you, nor the weight others place upon your actions. In my eyes, that makes you a success."
"By not giving a damn? But I do, you know."
"Of course you do, of course you do! But it is a matter of style, an awareness of choice - ~ Roger Zelazny

Storms are the greatest predators in existence because they can destroy you with their savage strength or enthrall you with their terrible beauty. Like a poison flower with the stealth of a snake and the ferocity of a lion and the force of all the world's armies combined. ~ Cora Carmack

He had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. ~ Edith Wharton

Indigo, the deep blue contains an abundance of sapphires shining their light through the density, awakening and stirring our consciousness. In the daylight the sea will change, but for now it remains mysterious, obtainable through our imagination. ~ Jennifer Lynch

'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book. ~ Pat Barker

Was it hard?" I ask.
Letting go?"
Not as hard as holding on to something that wasn't real. ~ Lisa Schroeder