“He leaned on the arms of Damiana Cisneros and made an effort to walk. After a few steps he collapsed, pleading inside, but without saying a single word. He hit the ground and crumbled, as if he were nothing more than a pile of stones.”
“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older.”
“Cows are as varied as people. They can be highly intelligent or slow to understand; friendly, considerate, aggressive, docile, inventive, dull, proud or shy. ”
“What’s the monetary value of human civilization? Trying to answer than question proves you are a moral and practical idiot. Well, economists make such calculations all the time, but that’s their job, and they think it makes sense.”
“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”
“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors.”
“I was less interested in the question of what would happen if we quit sacrifice bunting and more interested in the question of whether we could persuade people to do it because it’s good and right and rational.”
“What of Art? -It is a malady. —Love? -An Illusion. —Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. —You are a sceptic. -Never! Skepticism is the beginning of Faith. —What are you? -To define is to limit.”
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.”
“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
“Anything which creates emotional ties between human beings inevitably counteracts war. What had to be sought was a community of feeling, and a mythology of the instincts.”
