Tim Martin > Tim's Quotes

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
― Samuel Johnson, Works of Samuel Johnson. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, A Grammar of the English Tongue, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the English Poets & more [improved 11/20/2010]

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Volume 5, 1709–1713

“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.”
― Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.”
― Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
― Dylan Thomas, In Country Sleep, and Other Poems

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.”
― Ruth K. Westheimer

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”
― O. Henry

“I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.”
― David Hockney

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“She said, "You're a warrior. So how do you kill without rage?"
"In compassion. Because of necessity." Hrahima set the empty water bowl back in Samarkar's hands. "The same way you carry water.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.”
― Elmore Leonard, Freaky Deaky

“The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited by members of the public.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot

“Hung herself in the closet."
"Hanged," said Nate.
"Don't be one of those people.”
― Peter Clines, 14

“Be the flame, not the moth.”
― Giacomo Casanova

“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.”
― Lawrence Durrell

“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”
― Lawrence Durrell, Justine

“Almost any concept or idea in the world can be expressed through comparison with a classic Warner Bros. cartoon.”
― Peter Clines, The Fold

“You know when you’re in a rush and you put a T-shirt on backward? Even if there’s no tag in it, you don’t have to look in the mirror to know it’s on wrong. You can just feel it.”
― Peter Clines, The Fold

“He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“The human mind searches for cause and effect, always; and we all prefer the weird and thrilling to the dull and commonplace as an answer.”
― Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers