Instant Quotes - Page 31

• You know the great thing, though, is that change can be so constant you don't even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don't even notice that your life is better or worse, until it is. Or it can just blow you away, make you something different in an instant.

  Mark Andrus

  Blow, Differences, Different

  "Life as a House". www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Purple, Oil, White

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• There were so many Pittsburgh poets in my hallway that if, at that instant, a meteorite had come smashing through my roof, there would never have been another stanza written about rusting fathers and impotent steelworkers and the Bessemer convertor of love.

  Michael Chabon

  Father, Pittsburgh, Poet

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• I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Thinking, Things In Life, People

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• I saw the Light,saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round and widening as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place-Lestat

  Anne Rice

  Song, Blessed, Tunnels

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• I’m a man who falls in love so easily, and with such reckless lack of consideration for the consequences of my actions, that from the very first instant of entering into a marriage I become, almost by definition, an adulterer.

  Michael Chabon

  Falling In Love, Men, Entering

  Michael Chabon (2012). “Wonder Boys”, p.26, HarperCollins UK

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• We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Mean, Common Sense

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

  Alberto Manguel

  Confused, Book, Childhood

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• Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?" asked Milo politely. "You could," said Alec, "but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does." Milo tried as hard as he could, and, as he did, his feet floated slowly off the ground until he was standing in the air next to Alex Bings. He looked around very quickly and, an instant later, crashed back down to the earth again. "Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alex. "Yes, it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.

  Norton Juster

  Children, Fall, Thinking

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• It was an excess of fantasy that killed the old United States, the whole Mickey Mouse and Marilyn thing, the most brilliant technologies devoted to trivia like instant cameras and space spectaculars that should have stayed in the pages of Science Fiction . . . some of the last Presidents of the U.S.A. seemed to have been recruited straight from Disneyland.

  J. G. Ballard

  Technology, Space, Should Have

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• The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.

  Gregory Maguire

  Soul, Redemption, Answers

  Gregory Maguire (2013). “The Wicked Years Complete Collection: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz”, p.32, Harper Collins

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• Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, while we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

  Andrew Marvell

  Sports, Running, Morning

  c.1650-1652 'To His Coy Mistress' (published 1681).

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• Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Logic, Capacity, Situation

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• And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Fighting, Choices Made, Decision

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• She was happy, and perfectly in line with the tradition of those women they used to call "ruined," "fallen," feckless, bitches in heat, ravished dolls, sweet sluts, instant princesses, hot numbers, great lays, succulent morsels, everybody's darlings . . .

  Jean Genet

  Sweet, Princess, Numbers

  Jean Genet (1994). “Querelle”, p.84, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

  Haruki Murakami

  Beautiful, Lonely, Stars

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Aug 06, 2014

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• Can I help you with something?" Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you." Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.

  Cassandra Clare

  Girl, Air, Car

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

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• Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Good Life, Rain, Coffee

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967”, p.101, Ballantine Books

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• He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Eye, Dark, Autumn

  Louisa May Alcott (1997). “A Long Fatal Love Chase”, Thorndike Pr

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• One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

  Salman Rushdie

  Stars, Over You, Lucky

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”, Penguin Books

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• He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Believe, Quality, World

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “O Grande Gatsby: The Great Gatsby: Edição bilíngue português - inglês”, p.174, Editora Landmark LTDA

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• We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench

  Samuel Beckett

  Sunshine, Trying, Together

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.111, Grove Press

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• The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.

  A. S. Byatt

  Wisdom, Community, Ephemeral

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Dec 17, 2011

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• Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.

  Italo Calvino

  Moments, Lost, Found

  Italo Calvino (2014). “Numbers in the Dark”, p.10, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The children of the nuclear age, I think, were weakened in their capacity to love. Hard to love, when you're bracing yourself for impact. Hard to love, when the loved one, and the lover, might at any instant become blood and flames, along with everybody else.

  Martin Amis

  Children, Thinking, Impact

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