The Fifth Elephant Quotes

Shut up sergeant. You're a free troll. That's an order
Sam Vimes ~ Terry Pratchett

Imagine fish swimming in a shallow pond, just below the lily pads, thinking that their "universe" is only two-dimensional. Our three-dimensional world may be beyond their ken. But there is a way in which they can detect the presence of the third dimension. If it rains, they can clearly see the shadows of ripples traveling along the surface of the pond. Similarly, we cannot see the fifth dimension, but ripples in the fifth dimension appear to us as light. ~ Michio Kaku

I was just a very torn child, very wounded in so many areas, with no family support. I happened to the be the fifth child of my family. So everybody was already grown and had left home already. ~ Djimon Hounsou

During the fifth inning, something came to the edge of the woods and looked at her. Flies and noseeums made a cloud around its rudiment of a face. In the specious brilliance of its eyes was a complete history of nothing. It stood there for a long time. ~ Stephen King

If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment. ~ Mason Cooley

One of the first groups we signed was the Fifth Dimension. ~ Johnny Rivers

Wyatt was, in fact, finding the Christian system suspect. Memory of his fourth birthday party still weighted in his mind. It had been planned cautiously by Aunt May, to the exact number of hats and favors and portions of cake. One guest, no friend to Wyatt (from a family "less fortunate than we are"), showed up with a staunchly party-bent brother. (Not only no friend: a week before he had challenged Wyatt through the fence behind the carriage barn with - Nyaa nyaa, suckinyerma's ti-it-ty ... ) Wyatt was taken to a dark corner, where he later reckoned all Good works were conceived, and told that it was the Christian thing to surrender his portion. So he entered his fifth year hatless among crepe-paper festoons, silent amid snapping crackers, empty of Christian love for the uninvited who asked him why he wasn't having any cake. ~ William Gaddis

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon. ~ Diane Keaton

The hell with all of you, you cooperative fellowship of idiots, united by a common goal which none of you understand. And the hell with me too.' This time the others, following Cahir's example, also remained tactfully silent. Dandelion, Maria Barring, also known as Milva, and Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy. 'What a company I ended up with,' Geralt continued, shaking his head. 'Brothers in arms! A team of heroes! What have I done to deserve it? A poetaster with a lute. A wild and lippy half-dryad, half-woman. A vampire, who's about to notch up his fifth century. And a bloody Nilfgaardian who insists he isn't a Nilfgaardian.' 'And ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Some of the films that I have really enjoyed include: The Fifth Element, The Crow, Toys, Seven, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, 12 Monkeys, Doctor Zhivago, Being There, and Trainspotting. ~ Frederick Lenz

If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian [Epstein]. ~ Paul McCartney

Her soul was a fifth season, of richer hue than autumn, bursting with more life than spring, hidden away, ready to transform the world with such glory as it had never seen. ~ Carol Berg

President Bush's war on Iraq is viewed broadly in Islamic communities as an attack on Islam, and thus the President has alienated a large part of one fifth of the world's population. ~ John Olver

Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn't tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn't very helpful.
If she were a wizard, she'd write reports for people. She'd make sure everything was very clear. She'd write, Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera. She'd have check boxes. Found your magical sword? Place X here. ~ Karen Foxlee

EZR7.6 this Ezra went up from Babylon: and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which Jehovah, the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of Jehovah his God upon him. EZR7.7 And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinim, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king. EZR7.8 And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. EZR7.9 For upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon; and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him. EZR7.10 For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of Jehovah, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances. ~ Anonymous

Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing, and atonement. This we might perhaps explain as part of the general splendid unreality of the heroic saga, but sober historians of the fifth century B.C. express the same spirit. Thucydides is assuredly by nature no reveller, yet religion is to him in the main 'a rest from toil.' He makes Pericles say: 'Moreover we have provided for our spirit very many opportunities of recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the year. ~ Jane Ellen Harrison

The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicket that they will worship power, might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be. ~ Edith Hamilton

Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen ~ John Taylor Gatto

To the left Derek raised his bloody muzzle from the ruined back of the fifth reeve.
"Don't bite!" Dumbass. Perfect wolf for you - isn't happy until he's got poisonous shit smeared all over his teeth. ~ Ilona Andrews

And while it sounds bad to hear that Americans underpay their taxes by nearly one-fifth, the tax economist Joel Slemrod estimates that the U.S. is easily within the upper tier of worldwide compliance rates. ~ Steven D. Levitt

I would like to believe that there is a resolution in the human tragedy and that order can be reimposed upon the earth in the same way it occurs in the fifth act of the Elizabethan drama that supposedly mirrors our lives. My experience has been otherwise. History seldom corrects itself in its own sequence, and when we mete out justice, we often do it in a fashion that perpetuates the evil of the transgressors and breathes new life into the descendants of Cain. I would like to believe the instincts of the mob can be exorcised from the species or genetically bred out of it. But there is no culture in the history of the world that has not lauded its warriors over its mystics. Sometimes in an idle moment, I try to recall the names of five slaves out of the whole sorry history of human bondage whose lives we celebrate. I have never had much success. ~ James Lee Burke

The 4th sort of creatures ... which moved through the 3 former sorts, were incredibly small, and so small in my eye that I judged, that if 100 of them lay [stretched out] one by another, they would not equal the length of a grain of course Sand; and according to this estimate, ten hundred thousand of them could not equal the dimensions of a grain of such course Sand. There was discover'd by me a fifth sort, which had near the thickness of the former, but they were almost twice as long.
The first time bacteria were observed. ~ Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

Grace Slaughter - the surname of her fifth husband, a manufacturer of pharmaceutical toners and "prophylactic" products, recently deceased due to a ruptured peritoneum - was sharply chauvinistic and would allow no more than two exceptions to her all-American views, exceptions with which her first spouse, Astolphe de Guéménolé-Longtgermain, no doubt had something to do: cooking had to be done by French nationals of male gender, laundry and ironing by British subjects of female gender (and absolutely not by Chinese). That allowed Henri Fresnel to be hired without having to hide his original citizenship, which is what had to be done by the director (Hungarian), the set designer (Russian), the choreographer (Lithuanian), the dancers (Italian, Greek, Egyptian), the scriptwriter (English), the librettist (Austrian), and the composer, a Finn of Bulgarian descent with a large dash of Romanian. ~ Georges Perec

Only you could climb the highest mountain in the Empire, hunt down a fallen star, and escape the Fifth Army without a trace. - Tem, to Kamzin ~ Heather Fawcett

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Victorian London. Rome in the fifth century. Egypt in the early twentieth. There must have been a hundred different places listed, all with small journal entries, like Saw the Queen as she and the Prince rode past us on their way to Buckingham Palace and The camel nearly ate Gus's hair, ripped it from his scalp like grass and My God, if I never see another big-bellied man wrapped in a toga… ~ Alexandra Bracken

It's very rare that I come to an event where I'm like the fifth- or sixth-most interesting person. ~ Barack Obama

So what's your version? Did she put you in your place, or vice versa?" "I plead the fifth." With a grin, Lincoln turned to the caddie and exchanged his iron for a putter. "Well, well, well. I guess you don't need to say anything. That smile on your face is as self-incriminating as it can get. Do we need to have you and Miss Gregory over for dinner one evening?" "No." Lincoln shook his head and practiced a couple of putting shots. "Hannah Gregory might be a fascinating young woman, but she isn't interested in the man who took her home. ~ Lorna Seilstad

You keep looking around for who's in fucking charge, and there's just nobody like that at all. The cops just ride their horses back and forth through the park, up and down Fifth Avenue. Who the hell's angry on Fifth Avenue, that's what I want to know. ~ Steve Erickson

In her own fumbling way, she'd reminded him he was just a man, fallible, needful, a member of the supremely imperfect human race ... and shamefully undeserving of what she had to offer.
Looking at Billie, touching her, tasting her, had filled him with a wanting fiercer than any he'd known. For the first time, he was faced with something he couldn't truly have, because of what he'd become. ~ Shelby Reed

Well," he asked, "whaddya expect?"
It was so obviously a rhetorical question that of course I answered it. My truth impulse seemed stronger around this boy,my impulse control way under par.
"I would expect you to be dancing."
His expression was unreadable in the limited light. "Is that an invitation?"
"No. An observation."
He shrugged. "Okay. I needed a break. It was either keep an eye on Chase while he pukes up a fifth of cheap rum in the guys' bathroom or follow the girls into the ladies' room."
I almost smiled and told him about Willing's bathrooms and me. Instead, some truly horrific and irresistible impulse had me announcing, "Amanda looks really pretty tonight."
"So do you."
Bizarrely, I felt my breath catch in my chest, and for a long, awful second, I thought I might cry. I gripped the top of my pad tightly, concentrated on the spiral metal binding where it dug into my skin.
"It's a cool costume," he said. "Water nymph?"
"Sea goddess," I answered quietly. "Roman."
"Hmm." Alex was staring out toward the garden now,looking so at ease that I went from pretzel to knot. Could it really be that easy for him? To say things like he did without thinking? Without meaning them at all? "Too many mermaids tonight. Not that I have anything against mermaids.Mermaids are hot. I mean,you saw my drawing."
I nodded.
"You know," he went on, "that day in the hall,you compared my stuff to two Japanese artists-"
I nodded a ~ Melissa Jensen

The fifth leading division of names is into relative and absolute, or let us rather say, relative and non-relative; for the word absolute is put upon much too hard duty in metaphysics, not to be willingly spared when its services can be dispensed with. ~ John Stuart Mill

Some Western politicians are already threatening us with not just sanctions, but also the prospect of increasingly serious problems on the domestic front. I would like to know what it is they have in mind exactly: action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of 'national traitors', or are they hoping to put us in a worsening social and economic situation so as to provoke public discontent? We consider such statements irresponsible and clearly aggressive in tone, and we will respond to them accordingly. ~ Vladimir Putin

Finally, on the fifth day of fasting, I left the apartment. Spending my
last few hundred yen to buy a pastry and another part-time job
magazine, I decided to start doing physical work that very day.

Dive

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Physical day labor. . . I mastered the work surprisingly easily,
bringing supplies into event halls, helping with moving and the like.
Once in a while, I made a mistake and got punched by one of the
higher-ups; even so, the work was refreshing. The rougher I treated my
body, the more and more empty my head became. For the first time in
several years, I could go to sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. ~ Tatsuhiko Takimoto

The fifth member of my band is my non-profit work. ~ Bonnie Raitt

Those were my fifth-year fantasies: kisses and blood and Snow ridding the world of me. ~ Rainbow Rowell

In the fifth grade I discovered something I could do better than the other kids. One day, the teacher set up a bunch of chairs, and she had everyone run to the chairs and back while she timed us. I had the fastest time in the whole school! ~ Caitlyn Jenner

Dr Smart-Allick, of Narkover, gave a powerful address in the Speech Hall last night.
He said that it was not always the timid fellow, with four conventional aces in his hand, who won the highest honours,
'"it is often," he said, "the fifth ace that makes all the difference between success and failure." He was loudly cheered from the fifth-form benches and at the end of the address a young master swarmed up a pillar and threw playing cards down among the boys. ~ J.B. Morton