Behave Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Behave. Here they are! All 200 of them:

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Well-behaved women seldom make history.
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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History)
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Now, you two – this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've – you've blown up a toilet or –" "Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet." "Great idea though, thanks, Mum.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
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Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my 'furry little problem' in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
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When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
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Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
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You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
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Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)
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It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
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Colette
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It’s you I love,” he says. β€œI spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. β€œYou probably guessed as much,” he says. β€œBut just in case you didn’t.
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Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
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For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
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Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)
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Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.
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Paulo Coelho
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You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. β€œYour life belongs to you and you alone.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun)
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With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.
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Steven Weinberg
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The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them.
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Steve Hall
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Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered.
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Dr. Seuss
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I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
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Beatrix Potter
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Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.
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Richard Adams (Watership Down)
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Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.
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Barbara De Angelis
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One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
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Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
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A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.
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Frank Zappa (The Real Frank Zappa Book)
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Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female β€” whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.
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Simone de Beauvoir
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She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.
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Oscar Wilde
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Well,” Tessa said, sighting along the line of the knife, β€œyou behave as if you dislike me. In fact, you behave as if you dislike us all.” β€œI don’t,” Gabriel said. β€œI just dislike him.” He pointed at Will. β€œDear me,” said Will, and he took another bite of his apple. β€œIs it because I’m better-looking than you?
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
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Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words β€œI love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are.
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Susan Forward (When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal)
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Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke . . . She will need her sisterhood.
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Gloria Steinem
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It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.
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Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)
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We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?
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Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence)
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Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisers.
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Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
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Some peopleβ€”and I am one of themβ€”hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Pnin)
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If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.
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Sally Rooney (Normal People)
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Kitten, you need to make a decision. Either we stay here and behave or we leave now and I promise you”—his voice dipped lower and the words fell against my lipsβ€”β€œif we leave, I won’t behave.
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Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, #1))
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Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
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W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
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A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
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Dalai Lama XIV
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It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.
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Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted (Ella Enchanted, #1))
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The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
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George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)
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You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave
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Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1))
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Because you believed I was capable of behaving decently, I did.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and placesβ€”and there are so manyβ€”where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
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Howard Zinn
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The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
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Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)
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Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.
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Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)
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Do not waste time bothering whether you β€˜love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
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C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
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If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.
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Fulton J. Sheen
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The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' β€” this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
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Aldous Huxley (Crome Yellow)
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You never laugh," she said. "You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention." For a moment he was silent. Then, "You," he said, half reluctantly. "You make me laugh. From the moment you hit me with that bottle." "It was a jug," she said automatically. His lips quirked up at the corners. "Not to mention the way you always correct me. With that funny look on your face when you do it. And the way you shouted at Gabriel Lightwood. And even the way you talked back to de Quincey. You make me..." He broke off, looking at her, and she wondered if she looked the way she felt - stunned and breathless.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.
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Cassandra Clare
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She now understood that the world wasn’t kind to young women, especially when they behaved in ways men didn’t like, and spoke truths that men weren’t ready to hear.
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Margaret Rogerson (Sorcery of Thorns (Sorcery of Thorns, #1))
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Pretty girls behave best when you ignore them. Of course, they have to know you are ignoring them, for otherwise they may not even know you exist.
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Chetan Bhagat (2 States: The Story of My Marriage)
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Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
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Aldous Huxley
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If there's any message, it is ultimately that it's okay to be different; that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.
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Johnny Depp
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Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.
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Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
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He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
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Jean-Paul Sartre
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How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.
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Robert A. Heinlein
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A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A Man Without a Country)
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It's never been about trying to look well-behaved. It's just how I am. I guess it's a weird thing to be 19 and not ever have been drunk, but for me, it just feels normal because I don't really know any other way. I don't know if I'd be comfortable getting wasted and not knowing what I've said. That doesn't mean when I'm older I won't have a glass of wine. I just don't think it's such a strange thing for me not to be wasted all the time.
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Taylor Swift
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Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again.
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Terry Pratchett (Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1))
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Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.
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Simon Pegg
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You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." (Elizabeth Bennett)
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.
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Peter S. Jennison
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Yes, I see that you are behaving like a prince but that doesn't mean you won't behave like a devil at the first opportunity.
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Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1))
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Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.
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Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
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Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
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Frank Zappa
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People could behave how they liked, but Allan considered that in general it was quite unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to.
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Jonas Jonasson (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (The Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1))
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A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
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Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
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My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!
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Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
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You don’t think he’s our man?” asked Adam. It occurred to him that Ramsbottom was not exactly forthcoming with information. β€œI didn’t say that,” Ramsbottom said. β€œIn fact he is behaving very cautiously indeed, which makes me feel very suspicious.” β€œHe has probably figured out that you are following him,” said Adam. β€œOne can hardly fail to notice you hanging around all the time.” β€œThat may be so,” said Ramsbottom. β€œCan’t you get a disguise or something?” asked Adam. β€œSo he does not recognise you.
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Max Nowaz (Get Rich or Get Lucky)
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The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.
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George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion / My Fair Lady)
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I meant to behave. There were just too many other options.--T-SHIRT
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Darynda Jones (Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (Charley Davidson, #4))
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Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.
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Maya Angelou
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Just behave and don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning." Her gaze drifted over my shoulder, and she mustered, β€œWouldn’t be much.” β€œMom!” Laughing, she gave me a light shove. β€œI’m old, not dead.
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Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opal (Lux, #3))
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If I behave as though this is a completely normal situation, then maybe it will be ...
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Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (Shopaholic, #2))
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Until he gives you a reason not to trust him, behave as though you trust him.
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Sherry Argov (Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl―A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship)
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Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.
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Marya Hornbacher (Madness: A Bipolar Life)
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To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.
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bell hooks (Teaching Community)
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And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child's whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tenderness, of fondness, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent's reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
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My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities...like the ability to behave myself.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
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Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.
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Aldous Huxley (Island)
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When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.
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M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight)
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Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
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Albert Schweitzer
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People tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity.
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Marilyn Manson
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Let the guilt teach you how to behave next time,
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Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
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What I'm expecting is for you to behave like the gentleman I always thought you were.
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Wendelin Van Draanen (Flipped)
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I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.
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Deb Caletti (Honey, Baby, Sweetheart)
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You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules
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Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays)
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So I’m doing it for you because that’s how people should behave; they should fill in each other’s gaps.
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Talia Hibbert (Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1))
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My mother always said that I was born out of a bottle of vinegar instead of born from a womb and that she and my father bathed me in sugar for three days to wash it off. I try to behave, but I always go back to the vinegar.
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Maggie Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races)
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LAW 38 Think As You Like But Behave Like Others If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
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Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
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I like men to behave like men. I like them strong and childish.
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FranΓ§oise Sagan
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Now don't go wandering off, William," she said with a meaningful glance. "I don't want to lose you in the crowd." Will's jaw set. "I'm getting the oddest feeling that you're enjoying this," he said under his breath. "Nothing odd about it." Feeling unbelievably bold, Tessa chucked him under the chin with the tip of her lace fan. "Simply behave yourself.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life.
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (Night Flight)
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Charlie noted that more and more lately, he had a hard time resisting the urge to fuck with people, especially when they insisted upon behaving like idiots.
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Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1))
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My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
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Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
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I pretend I am a princess,so that I can try and behave like one.
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Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)
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You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
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Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)
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The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.
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Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)
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Sometimes we have to behave indifferent towards people who proclaim their love to us, just to see if they are really different.
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Michael Bassey Johnson
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The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.
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John C. Holt
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No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.
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BrenΓ© Brown (The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage)
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I know she's weird. Her friends know she's weird. And we all accept it because she's weird, but also amazing.
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Shelly Laurenston (Beast Behaving Badly (Pride, #5))
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People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy being this fucked up.
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Penelope Douglas (Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3))
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You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!
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Stephen R. Covey
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We wear on our faces the results of what we believe and how we behave, and such behavior is most evident in the eyes and on the faces of those who have lived many years.
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Gordon B. Hinckley (Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes)
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Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.
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Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1))
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Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.
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Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1))
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You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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Edward O. Wilson
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To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.
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Helen Keller
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Yeah, Atatsuki, don't call him by that name. It's rude! Kuran-sama is handsome, well-behaved, and a perfect honor student. Calling him "gang leader" would ruin his image!! At least call him "SUPREME GANG LEADER!!
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Matsuri Hino
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And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.
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Neil Gaiman (Make Good Art)
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all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.
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Elizabeth Bishop
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...our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn't mean we have to behave as monsters.
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Emm Cole (The Short Life of Sparrows)
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We were all here to learn. He was the one who had a problem, not I. Perhaps it was time for fathers to teach their sons how to behave around young women. They were not born superior, no matter how society falsely conditioned them. We were all equals here.
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Kerri Maniscalco (Hunting Prince Dracula (Stalking Jack the Ripper, #2))
β€œ
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
”
”
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
β€œ
Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.
”
”
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
β€œ
If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
”
”
Henry David Thoreau
β€œ
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
”
”
B.F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity)
β€œ
Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
β€œ
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
β€œ
History books say that kings and dukes and generals start wars. Don't believe it. We start them, you and I. Every time we turn away, keep quiet, stay out of it, behave ourselves.
”
”
Jennifer Donnelly (Stepsister)
β€œ
If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of β€˜I could have, I should have’. We can sleep in a storm. And when its time, our goodbyes will be complete.
”
”
Mitch Albom (Have a Little Faith: a True Story)
β€œ
I am not scared of bad people, of wicked evildoers, of monsters and creatures of the night. The people who scare me are the ones who are certain of their own rightness. The ones who know how to behave, and what their neighbors need to do to be on the side of the good.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances)
β€œ
Somewhere, right at the bottom of one’s own being, one generally does know where one should go and what one should do. But there are times when the clown we call β€œI” behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice cannot make its presence felt.
”
”
C.G. Jung
β€œ
To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.
”
”
Milan Kundera (Immortality)
β€œ
I haven't mentioned her to Flynn, and I'm glad because I'm now behaving like a stalker. Perhaps I should let him know".
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3))
β€œ
It’s disturbing to see him like this, behaving as though he might have emotions.
”
”
Holly Black (The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1))
β€œ
It’s you I love,” he says. ”I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.
”
”
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
β€œ
The concept of β€œmental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.
”
”
Theodore John Kaczynski (Industrial Society and Its Future)
β€œ
Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Contact)
β€œ
Now for God's sake, will you two start behaving like a princess and a Courier?" Halt told them. "If you don't, I'll have to think about sending Will home.' 'Me?' Will said, his voice breaking into a high-pitched squeak of indignation. 'What's it got to do with me?' 'It's all your fault!' Halt shouted irrationally.
”
”
John Flanagan (The Emperor of Nihon-Ja (Ranger's Apprentice, #10))
β€œ
What d'ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that." Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: "Go as far as you can --- way out yonder where the crawdads sing." Tate said, "Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.
”
”
Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
β€œ
Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.
”
”
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
β€œ
How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
β€œ
A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.
”
”
Desmond Tutu
β€œ
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
”
”
Aldous Huxley
β€œ
One glance and I knew exactly who and what he was. The classic alpha male, the kind who had spurred evolution forward about five million years ago by nailing every female in sight. They charmed, seduced, and behaved like bastards, and yet women were biologically incapable of resisting their magic DNA.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Smooth Talking Stranger (Travises, #3))
β€œ
Good is towing the line, being behaved, being quiet, being passive, fitting in, being liked, and great is being messy, having a belly, speaking your mind, standing up for what you believe in, fighting for another paradigm, not letting people talk you out of what you know to be true.
”
”
V (formerly Eve Ensler)
β€œ
The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion / My Fair Lady)
β€œ
I'm infatuated with you, I cannot deny it. Physically speaking, you're a very attractive man. But I don't like you, the vast majority of the time. So far as I can gather, you behave abominably in public and are only marginally better in private. I only find you remotely tolerable when you're kissing me.
”
”
Tessa Dare (One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club, #1))
β€œ
It's you I love," he says. "I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.
”
”
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
β€œ
Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.
”
”
John Irving (The World According to Garp)
β€œ
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
”
”
Aldous Huxley
β€œ
Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. β€œAnd you wonder why we aren’t friends.” β€œI just wondered,” Gabriel said, in more subdued voice, β€œif perhaps you have ever had enough.” β€œEnough of what?” β€œEnough of behaving as you do.” Will crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes glistening dangerously. β€œOh, I can never get enough,” he said. β€œWhich, incidentally, is what your sister said to me when─” The carriage door flew open. A hand shot out, grabbed Will by the back of his shirt, and hauled him inside.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β€œ
The show's writers had peppered the piece with words like "savage," "wild," and "animalistic." What bullshit. Show me the animal that kills for the thrill of watching something die. Why does the stereotype of the animalistic killer persist? Because humans like it. It neatly explains things for them, moving humans to the top of the evolutionary ladder and putting killers down among mythological man-beast monsters like werewolves. The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (Bitten (Otherworld, #1))
β€œ
Humans β€” who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals β€” have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them β€” without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
”
”
Carl Sagan
β€œ
Next time I’ll just send the three of you e-mails. What was I thinking when I decided to have this meeting? (Acheron) Oh, I know. That men who are a couple of thousand years old could actually behave like grownups? (Nick) (Zarek elbowed Nick in the stomach.) Oops. Involuntary arm spasm. (Zarek)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Night Embrace (Dark-Hunter, #2))
β€œ
Hello, Uncle Brother Zachariah," James said without opening his eyes. "I would say that I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm sure this is the most excitement you've had all year. Not so lively in the City of Bones, now is it?" "James!" Will snapped. "Don't talk to Jem like that." "As if I am not used to badly behaved Herondales, Brother Zachariah said, in the way Jem had always tried to make peace between Will and the world.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Midnight Heir (The Bane Chronicles, #4))
β€œ
All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
”
”
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
β€œ
A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of β€œslut” meant β€œuntidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line.
”
”
Jaclyn Friedman
β€œ
A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.
”
”
Abraham Joshua Heschel
β€œ
You understand Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.
”
”
Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking (Pippi LΓ₯ngstrump, #1))
β€œ
Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
β€œ
Michael, Eleanor is without a doubt the most beautiful woman who has ever or will ever live. If you could take a nighttime thunderstorm and turn it into a woman, you would have a very good idea what she looks like. And a fairly good idea how she behaves as well.
”
”
Tiffany Reisz (The Angel (The Original Sinners, #2))
β€œ
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
”
”
Fleur Adcock
β€œ
You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.
”
”
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
β€œ
All incidents which we experience are warily interpreted and translated in the dark chamber of our mind. They inspire us how to behave, how to think, how to act and prompt our predilections and our way of visualizing the world. The mind opens itself then to welcome the enchantments of life or to tear up destructive thinking patterns. The brain becomes truly a precious resilient partner. ( "Camera obscura of the mind" )
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
β€œ
I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice , self-interest, deceit and roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I'm furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.
”
”
Molière (The Misanthrope)
β€œ
Alex decided he’d had enough. He put down his knife. β€œAll right,” he said. β€œYou’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to work with me. Well, that’s fine. Because I don’t want to work with you either. And for what it’s worth, nobody would ever believe you were my mom because no mom would ever behave like you.” β€œAlex…,” Carver began. β€œForget it! I’m going back to London. And if you’re Mr. Byrne asks why, you can tell him I didn’t like the jelly, so I went home to get some jam.
”
”
Anthony Horowitz (Skeleton Key (Alex Rider #3))
β€œ
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
”
”
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
β€œ
She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as a vessel of the king's fury. But then it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly. A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster , did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else? Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all.
”
”
Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
β€œ
The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.
”
”
George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying)
β€œ
Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping ou the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β€œ
Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.
”
”
Epictetus
β€œ
It seems to be the fashion nowadays for a girl to behave as much like a man as possible. Well, I won't! I'll make the best of being a girl and be as nice a specimen as I can: sweet and modest, a dear, dainty thing with clothes smelling all sweet and violety, a soft voice, and pretty, womanly ways. Since I'm a girl, I prefer to be a real one!
”
”
Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
β€œ
I don’t hate you, you idiot. I’m in love with you. That’s why I’m panicking!” She marched to the door and yelled, β€œAnd our children will not be freaks!” β€œExcept their mother already is,” her father yelled back.
”
”
Shelly Laurenston (Beast Behaving Badly (Pride, #5))
β€œ
It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie. They smooth over imperfections to tell a good tale, or to instruct us how we should behave, or to assign glory to victors and shame those who falter. Perhaps there were some in Sparta who embodied those myths. Perhaps. But how we are remembered is less important than what we do now.
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (Lore)
β€œ
Whenever I'd been sad or upset before, the relevant people in my life would simply call my social worker and I'd be moved somewhere else. Raymond hadn't phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He'd elected to look after me himself. I'd been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behavior wasn't a reason to end their relationship with you. If they liked you -- and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now -- then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways. This was something of a revelation.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
β€œ
How many times have I told you, Magnus? Behave professionaly in a professional setting. Which means no being rude to Nephilim, and also no getting attached to Nephilim." "I never get attached to Nephilim!" Magnus protested. Ragnor coughed, and in the midst of the cough said something that sounded like "blerondale." "Well," said Magnus. "Hardly ever.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Saving Raphael Santiago (The Bane Chronicles, #6))
β€œ
The Corporation would like to apologize for the preceding pages. Of course, it's not all right for girls to behave this way. Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.
”
”
Libba Bray (Beauty Queens)
β€œ
In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of youβ€”the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These thingsβ€”the beauty, the memory of our own pastβ€”are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
β€œ
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying β€” to others and to yourself.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β€œ
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to β€œa war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the β€œright” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
β€œ
Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad. The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them. When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication. In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: β€˜Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’ And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such β€˜wisdom’, why not allow him to rule the country? The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
β€œ
And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. β€œAs good as gold,” said Bob, β€œand better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
β€œ
Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn. When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either." But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose. The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world." "She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you.
”
”
Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1))
β€œ
Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit that you can't catch it. That you're not supposed to catch it. At some point, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert
β€œ
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tis-sues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales. And so on.Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done. If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
β€œ
Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.
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Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Les liaisons dangereuses)
β€œ
Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria: 1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...) 2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...) 3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts. 4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors. (...) 5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...) 6) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...) 7) If they do possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits. (...) 8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility ... Civilized people don't simply obey their baser instincts ... they require mens sana in corpore sano. And so on. That's what civilized people are like ... Reading Pickwick and learning a speech from Faust by heart is not enough if your aim is to become a truly civilized person and not to sink below the level of your surroundings. [From a letter to Nikolay Chekhov, March 1886]
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Anton Chekhov (A Life in Letters)
β€œ
No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.
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Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
β€œ
All of the diagnoses that you deal with - depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, post traumatic stress disorder, even psychosis, are significantly rooted in trauma. They are manifestations of trauma. Therefore the diagnoses don't explain anything. The problem in the medical world is that we diagnose somebody and we think that is the explanation. He's behaving that way because he is psychotic. She's behaving that way because she has ADHD. Nobody has ADHD, nobody has psychosis - these are processes within the individual. It's not a thing that you have. This is a process that expresses your life experience. It has meaning in every single case.
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Gabor MatΓ©
β€œ
But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat. He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.
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Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
β€œ
Most of what she knew, she'd learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently then they too were functions of life's fundamental core. Tate's devotion eventually convinced her that human love is more than the bizarre mating competitions of the marsh creatures. But life also taught her than ancient genes for survival still persist in undesirable forms among the twists and turns of man's genetic code. For Kya it was enough to be part of this natural sequence as sure as the tides. Kya was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.
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Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
β€œ
When I say 'I won't hurt you', it's a promise, which can and will be kept but it does not come from me without a breakdown of what it means. It does not mean we will never disagree, nor does it mean that you will always like everything which I say or do. It does not mean that you will never hurt yourself by behaving in a way which is damaging to a relationship or by behaving in a way which would ultimately result in my withdrawal from your life. What it does mean is that I can promise all that I expect in terms of loyalty, honor and respect. It means I am faithful. It also means that I will not intentionally or carelessly behave in a way which causes upset or doubt. It means, at the lowest level, 'You will break these terms before I do.' Communication is essential. Trust is paramount. Be completely honest and don't make promises that you can't keep, that's all.
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Eva Schuette
β€œ
I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe β€” of scientific awe β€” which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.
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Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character)
β€œ
The chef turned back to the housekeeper. β€œWhy is there doubt about the relations between Monsieur and Madame Rutledge?” The sheets,” she said succinctly. Jake nearly choked on his pastry. β€œYou have the housemaids spying on them?” he asked around a mouthful of custard and cream. Not at all,” the housekeeper said defensively. β€œIt’s only that we have vigilant maids who tell me everything. And even if they didn’t, one hardly needs great powers of observation to see that they do not behave like a married couple.” The chef looked deeply concerned. β€œYou think there’s a problem with his carrot?” Watercress, carrotβ€”is everything food to you?” Jake demanded. The chef shrugged. β€œOui.” Well,” Jake said testily, β€œthere is a string of Rutledge’s past mistresses who would undoubtedly testify there is nothing wrong with his carrot.” Alors, he is a virile man . . . she is a beautiful woman . . . why are they not making salad together?
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Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
β€œ
The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the last to mature, by definition the frontal cortex is the brain region least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
β€œ
If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary; and after one's original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better; just as in an illness 'feeling better' is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results. A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world taking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.
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C.S. Lewis
β€œ
Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.
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Diana Wynne Jones (The Tough Guide to Fantasyland)
β€œ
Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign.
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Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
β€œ
Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.
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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History)
β€œ
It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken." I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
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Jacob Bronowski
β€œ
You are mistaken, Mr Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner." She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued, "You could not have made me the offer of your hand in an possible way that would have tempted me to accept it." Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on. "From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry." "You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and now have only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
β€œ
Giants isn't eating each other either, the BFG said. Nor is giants killing each other. Giants is not very lovely, but they is not killing each other. Nor is crockadowndillies killing other crockadowndillies. Nor is pussy-cats killing pussy-cats. 'They kill mice,' Sophie said. 'Ah, but they is not killing their own kind,' the BFG said. 'Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.' 'Don't poisonous snakes kill each other?' Sophie asked. She was searching desperately for another creature that behaved as badly as the human. 'Even poisnowse snakes is never killing each other,' the BFG said. 'Nor is the most fearsome creatures like tigers and rhinostossterisses. None of them is ever killing their own kind. Has you ever thought about that?' Sophie kept silent. 'I is not understanding human beans at all,' the BFG said.' You is a human bean and you is saying it is grizzling and horrigust for giants to be eating human beans. Right or left?' 'Right,' Sophie said. 'But human beans is squishing each other all the time,' the BFG said. 'They is shootling guns and going up in aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other's heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.' He was right. Of course he was right and Sophie knew it. She was beginning to wonder whether humans were actually any better than giants. 'Even so,' she said, defending her own race, I' think it's rotten that those foul giants should go off every night to eat humans. Humans have never done them any harm.' 'That is what the little piggy-wig is saying every day,' the BFG answered. 'He is saying, "I has never done any harm to the human bean so why should he be eating me?'" 'Oh dear,' Sophie said. 'The human beans is making rules to suit themselves,' the BFG went on. 'But the rules they is making do not suit the little piggy-wiggies. Am I right or left?' 'Right,' Sophie said. 'Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making his own rules to suit himself.
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Roald Dahl (The BFG)
β€œ
Ellie said, "Isn't it a little warm for black?" You're extremely pretty, Dr. Sattler," he said. "I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray." Ellie was staring at him, her mouth open. "These colors are appropriate for any occasion," Malcolm continued, and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers." But don't you find it boring to wear only two colors?" Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing," Malcolm said. "I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports." Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions." And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.
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Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Parque JurΓ‘sico, #1))
β€œ
But I suppose if you're friends of Magnus's ..." He went completely still. His runes faded. Then he leaped out of my hand and flew towards Annabeth, his blade twitching as if he was stiffing the air. "Where is she? Where are you hiding the babe?" Annabeth backed towards the rail. "Whoa, there, sword. Personal space?" "Jack, behave," Alex said. "What are you doing?" "She's around here somewhere," Jack insisted. He flew to Percy. "Aha! What's in your pocket, sea boy?" "Excuse me?" Percy looked a bit nervous about the magical sword hovering at his waistline. Alex lowered his Ray-Bans. "Okay, now I'm curious. What do you have in your pocket, Percy? Enquiring swords want to know." Percy pulled a plain-looking ballpoint pen from his jeans. "You mean this?" "BAM!" Jack said. "Who is this vision of loveliness?" "Jack," I said. "It's a pen." "No, it's not! Show me! Show me!" "Uh ... sure." Percy uncapped the pen. Immediately it transformed into a three-foot-long sword with a leaf-shaped blade of glowing bronze.. Compared to Jack, the weapon looked delicate, almost petite, but from the way Percy wielded it I had no doubt he'd be able to hold his own on the battlefields of Valhalla with that thing. Jack turned his point towards me, his runes flashing burgundy. "See Magnus? I told you it wasn't stupid to carry a sword disguised as a pen!" "Jack, I never said that!" I protested. "You did.
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Rick Riordan (The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #3))
β€œ
The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing does dome tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend. It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.
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C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β€œ
I only wanted to . . . I mean, just now, when Mr. George interrupted us, there was something very important I wanted to say to you.” β€œIt is about what I told you in the church yesterday? I mean, I can understand that you may think me crazy because I see these beings, but a psychiatrist wouldn’t make any difference.” Gideon frowned. β€œJust keep quiet for a moment, would you? I have to pluck up all my courage to make you a declaration of love . . . I’ve had absolutely no practice in this kind of thing.” β€œWhat?” β€œGwyneth,” he said, perfectly seriously, β€œI’ve fallen in love with you.” My stomach muscles contracted as if I’d had a shock. But it was joy. β€œReally?” β€œYes, really!” In the light of the torch I saw Gideon smile. β€œI do realize we’ve known each other for less than a week, and at first I thought you were rather . . . childish, and I probably behaved badly to you. But you’re terribly complicated, I never know what you’ll do next, and in some ways you really are terrifyingly . . . er. . . naΓ―ve. Sometimes I just want to shake you.” β€œOkay, I can see you were right about having no practice in making declarations of love,” I agreed. β€œBut then you’re so amusing, and clever, and amazingly sweet,” Gideon went on, as if he hadn’t heard me. β€œAnd the worst of it is, you only have to be in the same room and I need to touch you and kiss you . . .” β€œYes, that’s really too bad,” I whispered, and my heart turned over as Gideon took the hatpin out of my hair, tossed the feathered monstrosity into the air to fall on the floor, draw me close, and kissed me. About three minutes later, I was leaning against the wall, totally breathless, making an effort to stay upright. β€œHey, Gwyneth, try breathing in and out in the normal way,” said Gideon, amused. I gave him a little push. β€œStop that! I can’t believe how conceited you are!” β€œSorry. It’s just such a . . . a heady feeling to think you’d forget to breathe on my account.
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Kerstin Gier (Saphirblau (Edelstein-Trilogie, #2))