"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."

Asimov, Isaac on science
4 fans of this quote   

"Tearless grief bleeds inwardly."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on tears   

"The tears of those repenting are the wine of angels."

Bernard, St. on tears
4 fans of this quote   

"Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on tears
4 fans of this quote   

"The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together, and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science their labor bore fruit."

Mikes, George on tea   

"Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century."

Ballard, J. G. on science   

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love."

Irving, Washington on tears
14 fans of this quote   

"In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory -- horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene -- and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since."

Ehrenreich, Barbara on science   

"What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hide hole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luke Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there's a message there, I don't think I want to hear it."

Guin, Ursula K. Le on science   

"Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident."

Hoffer, Eric on science   

"Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?"

Colby, Frank Moore on humor
4 fans of this quote   

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not."

Havel, Vaclav on humor
5 fans of this quote   

"Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed."

Keller, Helen on museums and galleries   

"I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth."

Lapham, Lewis H. on museums and galleries   

"The ocean is a mighty harmonist."

Wordsworth, William on oceans   

"I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."

Ellison, Ralph on outcasts
5 fans of this quote   

"If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid."

Arbus, Diane on photography
3 fans of this quote   

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking."

Atkinson, Brooks on photography
3 fans of this quote   

"The photographic image... is a message without a code."

Barthes, Roland on photography   

"Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure."

Benn, Tony on photography
5 fans of this quote   

"The moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the moon that pulls the tides, and the moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist. When we describe the moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness."

Lawrence, D. H. on moon
6 fans of this quote   

"The reason kids like rock 'n roll is their parents don't."

Miller, Mitch on rock and roll
4 fans of this quote   

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."

Updike, John on rain
4 fans of this quote   

"Still falls the rain -- dark as the world of man, black as our loss -- blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross."

Sitwell, Dame Edith on rain
3 fans of this quote   

"There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down."

Delillo, Don on rain
7 fans of this quote   

"It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph -- only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones."

Sontag, Susan on photography   

"If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph."

Malcolm, Janet on photography   

"The true university of these days is a collection of books."

Carlyle, Thomas on libraries
5 fans of this quote   

"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life."

Cousins, Norman on libraries
3 fans of this quote   

"A man's library is a sort of harem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
5 fans of this quote   

"Your library is your paradise."

Erasmus, Desiderius on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"Some on commission, some for the love of learning, some because they have nothing better to do or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears."

Macneice, Louis on libraries   

"My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

Malcolm X on libraries
7 fans of this quote   

"There are seventy million books in American libraries, but the one you want is always out."

Masson, Thomas L. on libraries
3 fans of this quote   

"The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history."

Rowan, Carl on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"My library was dukedom large enough."

Shakespeare, William on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents."

Tuchman, Barbara on libraries   

"Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts."

Day, Clarence on curiosity   

"All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence."

Bunuel, Luis on curiosity