Nonfiction Quotes
221 quotes
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
"Rejection is an opportunity for your selection."
"The foundation of adult trust is not "You will never hurt me."It is "I trust myself with whatever you do."
"The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ..."
"You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects."
"When we feel unsafe with someone and still stay with him, we damage our ability to discern trustworthiness in those we will meet in the future."
"Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice."
"This is your life – not your parents’, teachers’ or significant other’s. If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn’t feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car, get out – change your shoes and start walking."
"I never want you to deny anything about yourself because you have grown up thinking it’s unacceptable or inconvenient for the people around you."
"Being a Dream Girl is never going to be about what you look like or how much you weigh. After all, our physical appearances are just reflections of our inner worlds. What makes you a Dream Girl is your emotional sensitivity, your self-awareness, and your ability to communicate who you are effectively and compassionately in the world."
"For a woman to deny the necessity of true love in her life would be to deny herself, and her creator."
"Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy force that wants nothing more than for us to honor and accept who we are and discover what we’re meant to do in the world."
"Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital."
"My definition of a great story has nothing to do with "a varied and interesting background." It is: One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increasing pleasure. The business about a varied and interesting background belongs to my definition of a good story."
"Does anyone know an effective way of keeping rabbits out of a garden that does not involve building a fence? I have tried that already, but the rabbit will not sit still long enough for me to get the fence all the way around him."
"The slight criticism of evolution I offer should not be taken as evidence that I do not believe in evolution; I do. Let's not blame God for everything. I also believe in Lamarckism, as it was put forward by Lamarck. (The Lamarckism presented in standard textbooks is actually Lysenkoism, a straw man set up by the opponents of Lamarckism, palpably false and easily disproved.) There is no paradox in that: Lamarckism and Darwinism are not mutually exclusive, except politically."
"Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions."
"I have called these animals destriers, borrowing an old word for war-horses. I've given them clawed feet instead of hoofs because I think the genetic engineers will give them claws too. The horse's hoofs seem to be an evolutionary mistake. To speak in Lamarckian terms, the horse has lengthened its legs by standing on its toes until it has ended up standing on one toenail. [...] Cheetahs, wolves, and greyhounds all have nonretractile claws that serve them as their spikes serve runners and baseball players. Racehorses could not run as fast as they do if they did not wear aluminum or magnesium shoes."
"The Falklands War continues to fascinate me. What a conflict! What an unlikely pair of antagonists! The British have always fought, to be sure. No nation on Earth can be taken seriously in historical circles unless it has had at least one war with the British; it's like not having an American Express card. And yet the very idea of Britain in a contemporary war is a shock. Britain, one feels, fights in history books and not on TV."
"It will come as no surprise to those of you in the book trade when I say that although books do not cause cancer, books in general do not sell as well as cigarettes."
"Here in two flat sentences are the best things I can say about our field on American television: Dr. Who is sometimes aired. Sometimes Battlestar Galactica is not."
"This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. [...] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name."
"The same critics who spend hundreds of pages discussing various peculiarities of the author's supposed nature often devote none to that much more significant person, the reader for whom he wrote. [...] It is a failure that disqualifies a great deal of head-scratching and hypothesizing. It amounts to saying that the letter is more important than its recipient, the signal more important than the changing image created from it, the bait more important than the fish."
"We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see."
"The true dawn of adulthood, of intellectual maturity, if you like, is the realization that adults are all fools."
"Almost any interesting work of art comes close to saying the opposite of what it really says."
"Some are haunted by ghosts. I am haunted by stories."
"Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write for students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it."
"Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us."
"I think there is more barbarism in eating men alive, then to feed upon them being dead; to mangle by tortures and torments a body full of lively sense, to roast him in pieces, and to make dogs and swine to gnaw and tear him... (as we have not only read, but seen very lately..., not amongst ancient enemies, but our neighbours and fellow-citizens; and which is worse, under pretence of piety and religion) then to roast and tear him after he is dead."
"The Cannibals and savage people do not so much offend me with roasting and eating of dead bodies, as those which torment and persecute the living."
"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."
"Man came into being through cannibalism – intelligence can be eaten."
"You will never experience personal growth, if you fear taking chances. And, you will never become successful, if you operate without integrity."
"Money has the power to get, all that you want.Money has the power to make you forget, all that you want."
"Make mistakes, a thousand of them because we are only humans.Never repeat your mistakes because we are humans."
"Most important thing in life is family,Without them you are nothing.Whatever you do will be worth nothing,If there is no one to appreciate it."
"Some writers write to forget. Some forget to write."
"Gratitude is the root of all transformation and abundance."
Carol Starr Taylor, Life in Pieces: From Chaos to Clarity. Lies, Secrets & Finding Your Truth.
"It's nice to know in my life Jesus is behind me. There have been times when I thought that I was going through my struggle myself. I was resentful of anyone that was happy around me since I was bitter that I had to go through , what I felt to be, a very unbearable trial. It was a good relief to know that I could talk to Jesus about my problems when I felt like I had no one else to talk to. It was comforting to know that He understood my dilemma when others couldn't."
Sunshine Rodgers, God The Father Jesus The Big Brother Holy Spirit The Best Friend
"But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper."
"It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel."
"The foundation of adult trust is not "You will never hurt me." It is "I trust myself with whatever you do."
David Richo, Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
"no one can recover if they won’t admit the wrongdoings. i won’t recover if i pretend it was all sunshine. i have to remember his vindictive temper and realize that sheltering the house from the storm wasn’t actually going to make a difference if i still got damaged in the process. because then it’s just another broken house with no one to tell its story."
"Your limits are somewhere up there, waiting for you to reach beyond infinity."
"Collect memories, not things.Fill-up dreams, not pockets.Rise above your calling and be the person you always wanted to be."
"Never fade into your life,Never stop imagining,Never give up on your dreams,You only fail, when you think you have failed."
"Never stop dreaming,Never get satisfied,Make you goals bigger, every-time you reach them.Be more then you were, every day."
"Consistency is the playground of dull minds"
"Non-fiction is to theory as fiction is to experience."
Showing 50 of 221 quotes