Elton Ravenel > Elton's Quotes

“We know you stood guard duty at the White House, Reuben. We have film of you urinating behind the bushes.”
― Kyle Keyes, Worm Holes

“We will always be in each other's life."
"And so too, the betrayals. They'll be there too." Savannah seemed stunned but Clarissa noticed her quick recovery.
"And so too, the laughter," she said as she began to close the door behind her. "And so too, the love," she added as the lock caught.”
― Vera Jane Cook, Pleasant Day

“But the outcome was inevitable: she assumed you would not take no for an answer; she could already see your charming smile morph into the grimace of a rabid dog. To”
― Isham Cook, Lust and Philosophy

“I imagine there are people out there who got a dog when what they wanted was a baby, but I wonder if there aren't other people who had a baby when all they really needed was a dog.”
― Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

“Never fear. When this rose blooms, you will be with me again.”
― Maurice Sendak, Dear Mili

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“She felt the blows and saw the weapon but ir felt as though it was”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Princess Dracula

“Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I didn't know that I was going to have to eat my own words:
- Milo”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Of course it was horrible,' smiled Dr. Branom. 'Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“What is a woman's place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin's words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past.

They ignore the greater assumption--that a 'place' for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be--by-nature--a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood.

I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither.

Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman's role above another. My point is not to stratify our society--we have done that far to well already--my point is to diversify our discourse.

A woman's strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“I don't suffer from an abundance of politeness.”
― Randy Pausch, Time Management

“Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“loved, and indulged to the full extent of her father”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Wilderness. The word itself is music.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“I saw that it was all over, put away in a box like a doll no longer cared for, the magical intimacy of our childhood together”
― Tennessee Williams, Collected Stories

“I don't want to teach Pakistani's children to think like Americans...I just want them to have a balanced, non-extremist education”
― Greg Mortenson

“When Will Graham could open his right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was- an intensive-care unit. He knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would pass. That's what it was there for.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“with your name on my mouth
and a kiss that never
broke away from yours.”
― Pablo Neruda

“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“I'm a student of history. Revolutions only get names after it's clear who won.”
― G Willow Wilson

“Es curioso lo rara que puede ser la gente.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“I've been waiting a long to to meet you”
― Pittacus Lore

“I like idling when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. Thatis my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of
a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly?”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty