Rate Quotes - Page 16

• I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

  Willa Cather

  Success, Sleep, Air

  "My Antonia". Book by Willa Cather, 1918.

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• What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

  William Maxwell

  Memories, Lying, Emotional

  William Maxwell (2010). “So Long, See You Tomorrow”, p.28, Random House

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• My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.

  J. D. Salinger

  Thinking, Necks, Minutes

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• The idea that Bill Gates (one of the founders of Microsoft) has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place...

  Douglas Adams

  Funny, Humor, Technology

  "Biting back at Microsoft" by Paul Mooney, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2001.

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• Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

  George Orwell

  Heart, Differences, Feelings

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• It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love You, Brain, Use

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.74, HarperCollins UK

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• This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!

  Lewis Carroll

  Party, Tea, Trying

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass: 150th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.69, Penguin

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• But there's this one difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost, rendered worst than unavailing.

  Emily Bronte

  Differences, Quality, Gold

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.522, Penguin

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• Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Positive Thinking, Mind, Second Rate

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• If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Depressing, Lonely, Writing

  Martha Gellhorn, Caroline Moorehead (2006). “The letters of Martha Gellhorn”, Vintage

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• I've always held that early marriage is a sure indication of second-rate goods that had to be sold in a hurry." - Martin Harris

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Goods, Second Rate, Indication

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• This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. . . . Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. . . . Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Suicide, Country, Heart

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• What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you've read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You've read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He's not only read your story...he wrote it.

  Max Lucado

  Inspirational, Book, Air

  Max Lucado (2014). “One God, One Plan, One Life: A 365 Devotional”, p.171, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Consistency, Add, Fiction

  Joyce Carol Oates (2007). “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982”, Ecco

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• A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Greatness, Men, Doe

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.18, Race Point Publishing

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• The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her toungue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Tongue, Speed, Should

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• It is unconceivable that the whole Universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate moon.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Moon, Planets, Thirds

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• I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50% rate.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Prayer, Numbers

  George Carlin (2007). “The Best of Brain Droppings”, p.28, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• (and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)

  Zadie Smith

  Giving, Catholic, Promise

  Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.25, Vintage

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• I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't... Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  "You Are All Diseased". Book by George Carlin, 1999.

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• Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did not count his work, anyone could have done it. What had he known, but the long, marital embrace with his wife. Curious, that this was what his life amounted to! At any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would say so to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his arms, and she was still his fulfillment, just the same as ever. And that was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was proud of it.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Long, Wife, Done

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• We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

  Peter Drucker

  Jobs, Skills, Numbers

  Peter Drucker, Alan Kantrow, Rick Wartzman, Julia Kirby (2016). “Get the Right Things Done: The Drucker Collection (6 Items)”, p.12, Harvard Business Review Press

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• At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?

  Sylvia Plath

  Girl, Baby, Writing

  sylvia plath (1971). “the bell jar”

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• To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hands, Ordinary, Bags

  Oscar Wilde (1899). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.38

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• In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Glasses, Air, People

  "Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

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