There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk 'his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' on an outcome dubious.
-Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
-J.R.R Tolkein The Lord of the RIngs trilogy

"God creates dinosaurs; God destroys dinosaurs; God creates man; Man destroys God; Man creates dinosaurs."
--Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over
me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to its
path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain
--Frank Herbert Dune

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
-- Anne Frank, diary entry (1944)

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
~ William Faulkner (1955 seminar and speeches in Japan), Tokyo: Kenkyusha (1956). Faulkner at Nagano

"When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
- Lewis Carroll, "Alice In Wonderland"

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost (1951)

I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language---and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

- Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

- Charles Dickens, opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities"

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden," 1854

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
- Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment"

Once I read an article by a man born and brought up in one of the countless brick terraces of south Manchester. He wrote that the supreme moment of his life had come when, as a little boy, he had gone out into the street during an air raid and looked at the sky. Suddenly he realised that somebody, at least, knew that he existed; somebody cared enough to be trying to kill him.

- From "Games With Shadows", Neal Ascherson, p.8

"Whats your best thing, then?" Jim took another long sip. "Must be good at something, Bill, everyone is."
Now this was an unfortunate question to ask of Roach just then for it occupied most of his waking hours. Indeed he had recently come to doubt whether he had any purpose on earth at all.
- Jim Prideaux & Bill Roach, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" : John Le Carre

Ask me no questions and Ill tell you no fibs.
- Oliver Goldsmith, "She Stoops to Conquer"

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"
- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing max - Of cabbages and Kings - and why the sea is boiling hot - and whether pigs have wings."
- Lewis Carroll

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not. It took me years to find out...
- J. D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye"