Would Be Father Quotes

Without the Blessed Sacrament a position like mine would be intolerable. ~ Father Damien

The Liars believe in no afterlife, no God. We see the universe as it is, Father Damien, and these naked truths are cruel ones. We who believe in life, and treasure it, will die. Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry, no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities. When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it will be as if we had never lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end. It will be gone. It has never been. It has never mattered. The universe itself is doomed, transient, uncaring. [...] The truths, the great truths - and most of the lesser ones as well - they are unbearable for most men. We find our shield in faith. Your faith, my faith, any faith. It doesn't matter, as long as we believe, really and truly believe, in whatever lie we cling to. [...] We know truth for the cruel instrument it is. Beauty is infinitely preferable to truth. We invent beauty. Faiths, political movements, high ideals, belief in love and fellowship. All of them are lies. [...] Our lies are not perfect, of course. The truths are too big. But perhaps someday we will find one great lie that all humanity can use. Until then, a thousand small lies will do.
(from Way of Cross and Dragon) ~ George R.R. Martin

I want to be happy, to look back and feel I danced well at the end of my career and didn't dwindle off. It would be too sad. ~ Patricia McBride

I think if I had to put a finger on what I consider a good education, a good radical education, it wouldn't be anything about methods or techniques. It would be loving people first. ~ Myles Horton

A scratch at the door interrupted us. Colin dropped and rolled under the bed again. One of the maids poked her head in. "Miss?"
I tried not to look as if I was hiding a handsome young lad under the mattress.
"Yes?"
"Lord Jasper sent me up to see if you need help getting ready for a ball." She smiled proudly. "I have a fair hand with a curling iron."
"Oh.Thank you." I needed to get Colin out before I ended up naked in the middle of my bedroom. "I,um, could I get some hot water? To wash my face?"
"Certainly,miss. I'll have the footmen bring up the bathtub, if you like, before all the fine ladies start calling for their own baths."
"That would be great, thanks." I'd never actually been in a full reclining tub before. We had a battered hip bath in the kitchen.
The maid curtsied and closed the door behind her. I let out a breath. Colin crawled back out. "They need to sweep under there," he said, sneezing. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

It's not just that,' she said, trying to explain in a way he would understand. 'My life - any lady's life - is made up of morning calls, and musicales, and balls. I would be thrown out of society. No one would receive me or send invitations. That's what it means to be ruined. ~ Eloisa James

Sometimes the mind is cruel: it tells us we are worth no more than our possessions, and that without them we would be nothing. And when we believe it, perhaps it is true. ~ Victoria Finlay

The only way through is that kissing gate."
"Why is it called that?"
"I don't know." Lottie considered the gate thoughtfully. "I suppose because a kiss would be the unavoidable consequence of two people trying to pass through it at the same time."
"An interesting theory." Sydney paused inside the narrow gate. Leaning against one side of it, he sent her a challenging smile, knowing full well that she could not go through without brushing against him.
Lottie raised her brows. "By some chance are you expecting me to test it?"
Lord Sydney lifted one shoulder in a relaxed shrug, watching her with a vagabond charm that was nearly irresistible. "I won't stop you, if you feel so inclined."
-Lottie & Nick ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was a man seeking power. For good reasons, maybe. But I wasn't going to lie to myself or anyone else about my actions. If I killed him, I would be taking a life, something that was not mine to take. I would be committing deliberate, calculated murder. ~ Jim Butcher

No matter how strong our resolve, we eventually find ourselves enslaved by the compulsive preference for one particular woman. You've been caught, my friend. You may as well reconcile yourself to it." Nick did not bother trying to deny it. "I was going to be so much smarter than you," he muttered. Sir Ross grinned. "I prefer to think that intelligence has nothing to do with it. For if a man's intellect is measured by his ability to remain untouched by love, I would be the greatest idiot alive. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.
And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.
There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this. ~ Margaret Atwood

Happy? Most of the time? Happiness is always a fleeting thing," he said, "It never rests upon anyone as a permanent state, though many of us persist in believing in the foolish idea that if this would just happen or that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. I know moments of happiness just as most other people do. Perhaps I have learned to find it in ways that would pass some people by. I feel the summer heat here at this moment and see the trees and the water and hear that invisible gull overhead. I feel the novelty of having company when I usually come here alone. And this moment brings me happiness. ~ Mary Balogh

Thy shalt not worship thy investment advisor, for if she were so smart she would be retired by now. ~ Steven J. Lee

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.
Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind. ~ Tahir Shah

Soon this would just be who I was. Soon old me would be dead too. I tipped my head against the cold glass of the window. When I felt myself begin to cry, I didn't fight against it. And when I caught my refection in the dark window, I wasn't able to tell what was tears and what was rain. ~ Morgan Matson

I'll tell you now before you can speak: strength is a myth. It's not what it is, when it looks like what it is. It's usually what it is when it looks like something else. It takes bravery to admit that you're petrified and keep soldiering on despite it. Oh,and, "easy"? Also a hoax! If it existed it would be sold for the same as you got it for- nothing! Ha! ~ Mary-Louise Parker

I had an eye-opening experience in Baghdad at the end of 2004 and I thought that the story of these guys who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world would be an interesting way to look at the war in a broader sense. ~ Mark Boal

Rachel looked uncomfortable. "My father is rarely around," she said, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't like to keep an eye on me. Last year, he put this parental spy software on all the home computers so he could monitor what I was doing." Ema said, "Yuck." "I know, right?" Ema shook her head and said, "Parents." I could see a softening between the two. It wasn't much. Softening might be too strong a word. Thawing might be more accurate. But it was there. "But the thing is, ~ Harlan Coben

If you don't feel a true passion through work, you can't do it. It's not possible for me. I've never done TV. I've never done commercials. I've never done anything for money. I can't do it. I wish I could. It would be easier. ~ Daniel Espinosa

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can't I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening - where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I'd like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one. ~ Katherine Mansfield

And there we were, in a kind of harmony; and the evening was so beautiful, that it made a pain in my heart, as when you cannot tell whether you are happy or sad; and I thought that if I could have a wish, it would be that nothing would ever change, and we could stay that way forever. ~ Margaret Atwood

She thought it funny how the poor environment had been raped just fine until there was a sufficient excess of the people who had effected the raping to produce sufficient numbers of themselves who were sufficiently idle that they might begin to protest the raping of the environment, which was irretrievably lost to the raping by that point.
And this would be the great soothing cathedral music, the stopping of the chainsaws amid the patter of acid rain, that all good citizens would listen to for the quarter-century it took them all to wire up to cyberspace and forget about the lost hopeless run-over gang-ridden land, reproducing madly still all the while, inside their bunkers listening to NPR. ~ Padgett Powell

It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, What am I to do? What am I to learn from this experience? What am I to change? Whom am I to help? How can I remember my many blessings in times of trial? Wiling sacrifice of deeply held personal desires in favor of the will of God is very hard to do. Yet, when you pray with real conviction, "Please let me know Thy will" and "May Thy will be done," you are in the strongest position to receive the maximum help from your Heavenly Father. ~ Richard G. Scott

Americans don't eat horses. They are not raised as food animals and they are treated with chemicals that render them unsafe for consumption. The regulations needed to change their status to "food animals" would cripple every aspect of the horse industry as we know it. Plus, it would be wrong. ~ Willie Nelson

My advice would be if you want to pursue a career in the music business, don't. ~ Simon Cowell

It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road ... A stone has no interests because it cannot suffer. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a being has interests - at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road because it will suffer if it is. ~ Peter Singer

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy. ~ Gore Vidal

Dad, despite the fact you can be a right grumpy bastard, I'm so incredibly grateful to have you in my life. ~ K.A. Hill

I settled for soothing as many of his hurts as I could with my love. Perhaps if I kissed every square inch of him, if I whispered enough words of love into his skin as I held him as close as humanly possible, it would be a start. ~ Anna Lee Huber

New teacher, if old was GreenHollyWood the new.... will be.... will be.... why not Holly Grendery... a teacher who lives agony - My Father (Bill) used to say if somebody is feeling miserable... let's take him out of his own misery. ~ Deyth Banger

She said she had been thinking about the way you remembered your past. What you remembered, she said, was a string of events and years stretching back from the point where you now found yourself. In other words, a line of time. This might be coloured differently, depending upon what had happened to you. For example, if you had lost someone then it would be black. Other spots might be lighter. On some sections of the line time would have passed quickly, on other sections more slowly. But, for a long way back, it would still be a line. Though not all the way back – at any rate, not in her case – and what about me? She asked me to think about it. For her, she said, and maybe for everyone, if you went far enough back the line disintegrated. If you went all the way back to your early childhood it was no longer a line. Then there was a sort of landscape of events. You could not remember their sequence, maybe they had none, they just lay scattered about, as if on a plain. She believed that this plain belonged to the days before time had entered your world. ~ Peter Høeg

Driving a hybrid car could save about one ton of carbon-dioxide emissions per year but adopting a plant-based diet would save nearly one and a half tons over a comparable period."

"If every American reduced chicken consumption by one meal per week, the carbon-dioxide savings would be equivalent to removing 500,000 cars form the road."

In a given year, "the number of animals killed to satisfy American palates is 8.6 billion, or 29 animals per average American meat eater. The total number of animals killed on land and sea was approximately 80 billion, or 270 per American meat and fish eater - making the average number of animals consumed in one American lifetime 21,000. ~ Gene Stone

It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument. ~ Barry Eisler

And because I am an artist I find any passage of a novel interesting even when it is out of context. I find it interesting talking to you - so much so in fact that I'd like to talk to you every day while I'm here. I'll even fall in love with you if you'd like; that would be particularly interesting. But however deeply I were to fall in love with you it would not mean that we had to get married. If you think that marriage is the logical conclusion to falling in love, then it becomes necessary to read novels through from beginning to end. ~ Soseki Natsume

I believe Donald Trump would be better for America than Barack Obama, because he understands business. Donald Trump has taken a pro- life position. He believes that we're getting shanghaied by China. ~ Mike Huckabee

I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor. ~ Matthew Zapruder

It would be nice to say that after this small breakthrough, neither Liesel nor Max dreamed their bad visions again. It would be nice but untrue. The nightmares arrived like they always did, much like the best player in the opposition when you've heard rumors that he might be injured or sick - but there he is, warming up with the rest of them, ready to take the field. Or like a timetabled train, arriving at a nightly platform, pulling the memories behind it on a rope. A lot of dragging. A lot of awkward bounces. ~ Markus Zusak

that a lot of what happens in our lives is predetermined and that the only way forward is to accept what has happened and to move on. Who knew, perhaps what destiny had in store would be better than what one is grieving over now. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I may be biased, but I tend to find a much lower tendency among female programmers to be dishonest about their skills, and thus do not say they know C++ when they are smart enough to realize that that would be a lie for all but perhaps 5 people on this planet. ~ Erik Naggum

My idea as far as comedy goes has always been to push the limits of what's acceptable for a woman to do or say or be. My hero in that would be Lenny Bruce, who teaches us that words have no meaning. It's the intent behind them that is what's important. ~ Lea DeLaria

I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hellhound in tow started off once more through the fastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Maybe we all need to forgive our mamas and papas for the things they did that hurt us or confused us ... I came to realize that I needed to forgive Mr. Daniels for the resentment I'd allowed myself to feel toward him. If he was my father, then maybe God wanted that word to mean something in my life. And maybe the first thing it meant was forgiveness. I realized that I could never altogether be the person God wanted me to be without it. I realized that lots of times wholeness as a person starts with forgiving others, and usually somebody close to you like a mother or father. ~ Michael R. Phillips

It's true," Eliot said. "Statistically, historically, and however else you want to look at it, you are almost never right. A monkey making life decisions based on its horoscope in USA Today would be right more often than you. But in this case, yes, you were right. Don't spoil it. ~ Lev Grossman

My mum used to wear the guys' Chesty Bonds tanks, and I used to end up wearing them after she'd finish with them. She's a painter, and they would be covered in paint splatters. She would wear them and wear them until they were super-soft, and then I'd get them. But I was just a kid, so they were like a dress on me. ~ Ruby Rose

If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. ~ Steven Pressfield

To say that from the moment her lover had left, O began to await his return would be an understatement. She turned into pure vigil, darkness in waiting expectation of light. ~ Pauline Reage