Taken quotes
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"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him; let us worship God through Jesus if we must - if ignorance has so far prevailed that this name can still be spoken in all seriousness without being taken as a synonym for rapine and carnage. Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror."
"I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths."
"Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe."
"Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards."
"The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations."
"During the first period of our lives the greatest danger is not to take the risk. When once the risk has been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking at first one turns aside and serves trivialities; in the second case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic and perhaps to presumption."
"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it."
"You knew that what is given or granted can be taken away, that what is begged can be refused; but that what is earned is kept."
"You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives"
"Any single path truly taken leads to all the others. What matters is choosing a starting place - where to stand and begin spinning outward. Even then, you will find that outward and inward become the same direction. The center of the wheel is everywhere."
"Our status as a free society and world power is not based on brute strength. When we've taken up arms, it has been for the defense of freedom for ourselves and for other peaceful nations who needed our help. But now, faced with the development of weapons with immense destructive power, we've no choice but to maintain ready defense forces that are second to none. Yes, the cost is high, but the price of neglect would be infinitely higher."
"Let me die fighting. Two years of physical suffering have taken from me twenty years of life. But the soul changes not, does it? It is there, the same madcap - Atman - mad upon one idea, intent and intense."
"I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling."
"There aren't that many people who have written seven-book series, taken them 17 years. Actually finishing was (the) most remarkable feeling I've ever had. (I) couldn't tell you which was uppermost - euphoria or feeling devastated."
"I constantly work at maintaining balance. For me, my family comes first. If my family is taken care of, then everything else usually falls into place."
"Few things under heaven bring more benefit than the lessons learned from silence and the actions taken without striving."
"If I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk, and the risk led to one my greatest artistic and personal experiences."
"[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers] A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times — you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you."
"Friends, both the imaginary ones you build for yourself out of phrases taken from a living writer, or real ones from college, and relatives, despite all the waste of ceremony and fakery and the fact that out of an hour of conversation you may have only five minutes in which the old entente reappears, are the only real means for foreign ideas to enter your brain."
"For something to be great, there has to be some kind of trial or some type of struggle that actually makes it special or valuable to you. Otherwise, anything could be easily taken for granted."
