No real reason for this, well I guess it helps me memorize them by reading them, writing them, and then typing them.
"To embark in death is sometimes the means of escaping a shipwreck; and the coffin lid becomes a plank of safety" - Victor Hugo, Les Miserable
"The universe is a tease. It is like children. Those that want it, haven't it. Those that don't want it, have it." Victor Hugo, Les Miserable.
"I make little account of victory. Nothing is so stupid as to vanquish; the real glory is to convince." Grantaire in Les Miserable by Victor Hugo.
"Really sir", he observed, "I see that in spite of the reputation which you have acquired as a superior man, you contemplate everything from the material and vulgar viewpoint of society, beginning with man, and ending with man - that is to say, in the most restricted, most narrow view which it is possible for human understanding to embrace...I say sir, that with the eyes fixed on the social organization of nations, you see only the springs of the machine, and lose sight of The Sublime Workman who makes them act: I say that you do not recognize before you and around you any but careerists appointed by the minister or the king; and that the men whom God has put above those careerists, ministers, and kings, by giving them a mission to carry out, instead of a post to fill - I say that they escape your narrow limited ken. It is thus that human weakness fails from its debilitated and imperfect organs. Tobias visited the angel who restored him to light for an ordinary young man. The nations mistook Attila, who was doomed to destroy them, for a conqueror like other conquerors, and it was necessary for both to reveal their missions, that they might be known and acknowledged; one was compelled to say, " I am the angel of the Lord", and the other, "I am the hammer of God," so that the Divine Essence in both might be revealed. - Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
"The trouble with making yourself stupider than you are is that you all too often succeed." C.S. Lewis The Magicians Nephew
"The mother of democracies is once more revealed as a lying hypocrite, preaching liberty and human rights for all, except where she hopes to make a buck." - John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener
"...they hit the conspiracy button. Easiest thing in the world. Cherry-pick a few facts, cobble them together, listen to a couple of disgruntled alarmists with an axe to grind, throw in a household name or two, you can put together any bloody story you want." - John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener
"These beggars are...of very high descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand, from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even today, when poverty forces them to unlock their doors to a guest, they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse, from the first, the idea of the smallest intimacy." - Robert Louis Stevenson, Olalla
"From behind a desk is a dangerous place to watch the world" - John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
"One of the purposes of objectivity in practice, is to avoid coming to a moral conclusion." - Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance
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