"The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology."

Bunting, Basil on mystics and mysticism
4 fans of this quote   

"One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth."

Berger, John on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep!"

Bernanos, Georges on disappointments   

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Berra, Yogi on decisions
7 fans of this quote   

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"Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them."

Bataille, Georges on despair   

"From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first."

Brecht, Bertolt on dress   

"Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke."

Bierce, Ambrose on jokes and jokers   

"Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition."

Bronte, Charlotte on feelings
6 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own."

Bronte, Charlotte on friends and friendship
9 fans of this quote   

"You -- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are -- I entreat to accept me as a husband."

Bronte, Charlotte on husbands   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns."

Bronte, Charlotte on irreverence   

"You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength."

Bronte, Charlotte on parasites
4 fans of this quote   

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones."

Bronte, Charlotte on prejudice
3 fans of this quote   

"Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision."

Bronte, Charlotte on reason
3 fans of this quote   

"Look twice before you leap."

Bronte, Charlotte on caution
5 fans of this quote   

"It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."

Bronte, Charlotte on action
3 fans of this quote   

"Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned."

Bronte, Charlotte on revenge
5 fans of this quote   

"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties."

Bronte, Charlotte on consistency   

"She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years."

Brookner, Anita on age and aging   

"Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence -- a lot passes you by -- simply because your attention is otherwise diverted."

Brookner, Anita on fiction   

"We gain our ends only with the laws of nature; we control her only by understanding her laws."

Bronowski, Jacob on conflict   

"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."

Bronowski, Jacob on action
4 fans of this quote   

"No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily."

Breton, Andre on enlightenment
3 fans of this quote   

"These repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind."

Bristol, Claude M. on affirmation
3 fans of this quote   

"The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even -- if you will -- eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with."

Brodsky, Joseph on evil
5 fans of this quote   

"There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying."

Bacon, Francis on trying
4 fans of this quote   

"The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."

Bronowski, Jacob on mind
3 fans of this quote   

"To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them."

Bronowski, Jacob on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime."

Bronowski, Jacob on dissent
4 fans of this quote   

"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature."

Bronowski, Jacob on nature   

"Power is the by-product of understanding."

Bronowski, Jacob on power
3 fans of this quote   

"That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer."

Bronowski, Jacob on science   

"No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power."

Bronowski, Jacob on science   

"Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved."

Bronowski, Jacob on science   

"The world is full of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show."

Bronowski, Jacob on winners and winning   

"Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy."

Brookner, Anita on friends and friendship
10 fans of this quote   

"I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am."

Baruch, Bernard M. on age and aging
6 fans of this quote   

"Every situation, every moment -- is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on eternity
11 fans of this quote   

"A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative."

Ade, George on family
6 fans of this quote   

"Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority."

Adler, Alfred on inferiority
8 fans of this quote