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N Quotes

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All N Quotes

“No life, my honest scholar, no life so happyand so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us.”

“No,” Lillian said frankly. “But much as I hate to admit it, that puts us in a minority. Swift is liked by everyone in the northern hemisphere, including Westcliff and his friends, my friends, the servants, the neighbors—” “You are exaggerating—” “—children, animals and the higher order of plants,” Lillian finished sardonically. “If root vegetables could talk, I’ve no doubt they would say they like him, too.” Daisy, who was sitting by the window with a book, looked up with a sudden grin. “His charm doesn’t extend to poultry,” she said. “He has a problem with geese.” Her smile turned quizzical. “Thank you for being so accommodating, Lillian. I expected you to make a fuss about the betrothal.”

“No literature is infallible, but while errors in scientific literature are proudly mended by later scientists, errors in religious literature are rarely mended - they are interpreted, reinterpreted, and justified in a million ways, but never questioned, as very few persons of faith have got the brain and backbone to acknowledge errors, let alone correct them - this is not holiness, it's blindness most primitive.”

“No literature is infallible, but while errors in scientific literature are proudly mended by later scientists, errors in religious literature are rarely mended - they are interpreted, reinterpreted, and justified in a million ways, but never questioned, as very few persons of faith have got the brain and backbone to acknowledge errors, let alone correct them - this is not holiness, it's blindness most primitive. Reverence without revision isn't sanctity, it's stagnation - and stagnation might feel honorous, but it leads to devolution. Just because it's habit doesn't make it holy - admission of error is the beginning of enlightenment.”

“No, Little Nightmare. In all the many years before you first terrified me, I never ... married." He raised an eyebrow as if to suggest more by the word. "That kind of knowledge of a person has its own kind of power. I have never felt so overcome that I have desired another person to know what makes me gasp with delight or sigh with pleasure. Knowledge is power. And I have kept that power to myself." He looked up at the stars before continuing. "It's so much harder to be cruel when you're in love. And so much easier to be betrayed.”

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, buy some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks meet neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

“No living creature lives without mistakes, Leo.” As it spoke, the flightsuit played videos in the visor, showing diapered babies sitting down hard as they learned to walk, tiger cubs rolling with each other and a blur of dozens of different moments captured from Earth. Everything man and Explorer creates is designed from mistakes, learned and corrected, to improve subsequent designs. I am the product of millions of mistakes, adjustments made to original concepts and plans.” The images in the visor displayed bridges swaying wildly, buildings crumbling to the ground, the blackened interior of a space capsule through a charred open door. “Every device you've ever used-so familiar you may have never considered their creation. Every device is the product of mistakes, hundreds or thousands of previous mistakes. You see the results, but you do not see the mistakes.” The flightsuit paused. “You see yourself in the mirror and see the results, and you do not see the millions of shaping events that made you. You survived these challenges. There are millions more shaping events ahead of you. You have not yet survived these, and so they feel dangerous and uncertain. If you were able to precisely recall, at will, the feelings of fear and uncertainty you experienced in the past or the moments you long ago overcame and survived would you discourage your past self from trying?”

“No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.”