β
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.
β
β
Woodrow Wilson
β
[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more...
β
β
AndrΓ© Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
β
I would never let anyone else borrow my heart if I know thereβs a chance in hell you might want it back.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (November 9)
β
Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
I'll be a story in your head. That's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? 'Cause it was, you know. It was the best. The daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well I borrowed it. I was always going to take it back.
β
β
Steven Moffat
β
There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other is to lend.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
β
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β
And tell Rowan,β Aelin said, fighting her own sob, βthat I'm sorry I lied. But tell him it was all borrowed time anyway. Even before today, I knew it was all just borrowed time, but I still wish we'd had more of it.β She fought past her trembling mouth. βTell him he has to fight. He must save Terrasen, and remember the vows he made to me. And tell him . . . tell him thank youβfor walking that dark path with me back to the light.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5))
β
Sections in the bookstore
- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them
β
β
Italo Calvino (If on a Winterβs Night a Traveler)
β
You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wings
and soar with them above a common bound.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Donβt borrow tomorrowβs trouble.
β
β
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
β
To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them thereβs nothing there.
β
β
Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)
β
English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.
β
β
R.F. Kuang (Babel)
β
She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.
β
β
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
β
The words you canβt find, you borrow.
We read to know weβre not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.
β
β
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
β
Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed--
borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.
β
β
Osho
β
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
β
β
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Poems of Passion)
β
When youβre in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to keep your pride. Itβs a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find the balance.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Lend.β
βLend?β Raquel asked.
βYes, as in, lend me your self.β He shimmered into Raquel again.
βWhy not Borrow?β I asked. βBetter yet, Steal?
β
β
Kiersten White (Paranormalcy (Paranormalcy, #1))
β
Letβs make a deal that we donβt borrow tomorrowβs problems today.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire (Blood and Ash, #2))
β
You don't happen to have a thousand dollars I can borrow?"
"I don't have five you can borrow. My piggy bank is officialy anorexic.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
In riding a horse, we borrow freedom
β
β
Helen Thompson
β
This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you arenβt as devastated.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
β
Everyone in this world is breathing borrowed air.
β
β
Rachael Lippincott (Five Feet Apart)
β
There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
β
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door β
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; β vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow β sorrow for the lost Lenore β
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore β
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me β filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door β
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; β
This it is, and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" β
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore β
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; β
'Tis the wind and nothing more."
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door β
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door β
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore β
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaningβ little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door β
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)
β
No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed.
β
β
Ian McEwan
β
The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.
β
β
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
β
But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
My wants are simple: a job that I like and a guy whom I love.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
People who want to make a million borrow a million first
β
β
Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (Shopaholic, #2))
β
Maybe the thing to do after you roll the dice-and lose-is simply pick them up and roll them again.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories)
β
i give myself five days to forget you.
on the first day i rust.
on the second i wilt.
on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue.
i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day.
i try to replace your scent on the fourth day.
the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate.
a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold.
the midas of cheap metal.
tinsel in the middle of summer.
crevice glitter, two days after the party.
i glow the way unwanted things do,
a neon sign that reads;
come, i still taste like someone elseβs mouth.
β
β
Warsan Shire
β
I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)
β
You stole my car."
"Borrowed it I did, return it I will."
"Okay Yoda, can I have the woman whose body you stole back?
β
β
Amelia Hutchins (Fighting Destiny (The Fae Chronicles, #1))
β
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.
β
β
Karl Marx (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
β
It's the worst thing to fall in love with someone who will never stop disappointing you...
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they've missed in your life. In the world.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt
β
We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
β
β
David Brower
β
Yesterday i carved your name into the surface of an ice cube
then held it against my chest til it melted into my aching pores
today i cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door
and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.
β
β
Andrea Gibson
β
I borrowed this from Kyle. My other shirt was pretty filthy."
"Wow, you're wearing each other's clothes now. That's, like, best friend stuff."
"Feeling left out?" said Kyle. "I suppose you want to borrow a black T-shirt too."
"As long as everyone's wearing their own pants."
"I see have come in on a fascinating moment in the conversation." Eric poked his head through the curtain.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
β
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
β
β
James D. Nicoll
β
Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?β
His eyes flashed. βGot any to spare?β
I couldβve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idiot. Come to the Keep with me, be my princess. Mourn me when your crazy dad kills me. Yeah, right.
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, #4))
β
I thought maybe she'd whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible.
"Oh, yes," she purred. "I like this one! Come along, children."
"But this isn't yours," I pointed out.
"My dear, I'm a cat. Everything I see is mine." She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked. The engine began to purr. [No, Sadie. Not like a cat, like an engine.]
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
Fee-fi-fo-fum -
Now I'm borrowed.
Now I'm numb.
β
β
Anne Sexton
β
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too.
β
β
Italo Calvino (If on a Winterβs Night a Traveler)
β
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
β
β
William J.H. Boetcker
β
No,β said Hermione shortly. βHave either of you seen my copy of Numerology and Gramatica?β
βOh, yeah, I borrowed it for a bit of bedtime reading,β said Ron, but very quietly.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
β
Nothing is ever perfect. It is what you make of it.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
I don't have 'five' you can borrow. My piggy bank is officially anorexic.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Rooseveltβs eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they havenβt time to read.
β
β
David McCullough
β
Iβm not stealing it. Weβre stranded. This is called borrowing.β
βThis is called youβre crazy.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
β
Worry is the intrest paid by those who borrow trouble.
β
β
George Washington
β
When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You might grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume that it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for grandted, whuch might be the very thing so dear about it.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
To borrow Grannyβs description, a bookstore is a place densely populated with tens of thousands of authors, dead or living, residing side by side. But books are quiet. They remain dead silent until somebody flips open a page. Only then do they spill out their stories, calmly and thoroughly, just enough at a time for me to handle.
β
β
Sohn Won-Pyung (Almond)
β
The end of the world started when a pegasus landed on the hood of my car.
Up until then I was having a great afternoon.Technically I wasn't supposed to be driving because I wouldn't turn sixteen for another week, but my mom and my stepdad, Paul, took my friend Rachel and me to the private stretch of beach on the South Shore, and Paul let us borrow his Prius for a short spin.
Now, I know what your thinking, Wow, that was really irresponsible of him, blah, blah, blah, but Paul knows me pretty well. He's seen me slice up demons and leap out of exploding buildings, so he probably figured taking a car a few hundred yards wasn't exactly the most dangerous thing I'd ever done.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
β
Touched by her fingers, the two surviving chocolate people copulate desperately, losing themselves in a melting frenzy of lust, spending the last of their brief borrowed lives in a spasm of raspberry cream and fear.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives)
β
Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.
β
β
Ramakrishna (The Gospel of Ramakrishna)
β
I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.
β
β
Milan Kundera (Immortality)
β
He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the worldβs store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.
β
β
Milan Kundera (Life is Elsewhere)
β
I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker" said Locke. "I'll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn't know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded.
"But what the fuck" he said slowly, "ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with?
β
β
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
β
Delilah Bard,β she said. βWeβve met before. And you looked worse.β
Rhy laughed silently. βI apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.β
βI apologize for shooting you in the leg,β said Lila. βI was myself entirely.β
Rhy broke into his perfect smile. βI like this one,β he said to Kell. βCan I borrow her?β
βYou can try,β said Lila, raising a brow. βBut youβll be a prince without his fingers.
β
β
Victoria E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1))
β
For a moment, I pretended. Not that we weren't two different species, because I didn't see him that way, but that we actually liked each other.
And then he shifted and rolled. I was on my back, and he was still on the move. His face burrowed into the space between my neck and shoulder, nuzzling. Sweet baby Jesus...Warm breath danced over my skin, sending shivers down my body. His arm was heavy against my stomach, his leg between mine, pushing up and up. Scorched air fled my lungs.
Daemon murmured in a language I couldn't understand. Whatever it was, it sounded beautiful and soft. Magical. Unearthly.
I could've woken him up but for some reason I didn't. The thrill of him touching me was far stronger than anything else.
His hand was on the edge of the borrowed shirt, his long fingers on the strip of exposed flesh between the hem on the shirt and the band of the worn pajama bottoms. And his hand inched up under the shirt, across my stomach, where it dipped slightly. My pulse went into cardiac territory. The tips of his fingers brushed my ribs. His body moved, his knee pressed against me.
I gasped.
Daemon stilled. No one moved. The clock on the wall ticked.
And I cringed.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian (Lux, #1))
β
Mrs. May looked back at her. "Kate," she said after a moment, "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.
β
β
Mary Norton (The Borrowers (The Borrowers, #1))
β
Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil.
β
β
Moss Cass
β
Did Cinderella ever consider fessing up to the prince, that night she was enjoying herself in the fancy ball gown? Did she even think of telling him, oh, by the way, Prince, the coach isnβt mine, Iβm really a filthy little barefoot servant on borrowed time? No. She took her moment. And then went quietly away after midnight.
β
β
Lissa Price (Starters (Starters, #1))
β
Wow." Sin said, her high-heeled boots clacking on the floor as she approached. " I didn't expect a party or anything, but I figured you might be able to handle a hi."
"I'm serious" , he gritted. "Get out."
"Well, you know what ?" She tied her hair up in a knot. "I would, except that you fucking bonded me to you or something, and I need to borrow your dick for a minute.
β
β
Larissa Ione (Sin Undone (Demonica, #5))
β
The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
β
β
Erma Bombeck
β
We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Jason turned to Leo. βDo you think you can fly this thing?β
βUmβ¦β Leo put his hand on the side of the helicopter, concentrating hard, as if listening to the machine.
βBell 412HP utility helicopter,β Leo said. βComposite four-blade main rotor, cruising speed twenty-two knots, service ceiling twenty-thousand feet. The tank is near full. Sure, I can fly it.β
Piper smiled at the ranger again. βYou dinβt have a problem with an under-aged unlicensed kid borrowing your copter, do you? Weβll return it.β
βI-β The pilot nearly choked on the words, but she got them out: βI donβt have a problem with that.β
Leo grinned. βHop in kids, Uncle Leoβs gonna take you for a ride.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
β
Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.
Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.
Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.
β
β
SARK
β
I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.
β
β
Henri Matisse
β
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,β
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink lifeβs gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
β
β
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
β
And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without. Maybe true love does that
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So, when the whole things spills, you aren't as devastated.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
...the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.
β
β
Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
β
You should have called us. Desmond would have picked you up.'
'No I wouldn't,' Valkyrie's dad said, stepping into earshot. 'Sorry, Fletcher, but I had important fatherly duties to take care of, which included eating breakfast, showering, and finding my trousers. Of those three, I only managed two. Without looking down, can you guess which one I missed?'... Fletcher smiled back. 'I just want to borrow Stephanie for a moment.'
'Take our daughter,' Valkryie's dad said, waving a hand airily. 'We have another one now.
β
β
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
β
Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the βdivine madness,β to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
β
β
Rollo May (The Courage to Create)
β
The second we put a bullet in the head of one of those undead monsters -- the moment one of us drove a hammer into one of their faces -- or cut a head off. We became what we are! And that's just it. THAT's what it comes down to. You people don't know what we are.
We're surrounded by the DEAD. We're among them -- and when we finally give up we become them! We're living on borrowed time here. Every minute of our life is a minute we steal from them! You see them out there. You KNOW that when we die -- we become them. You think we hide behind walls to protect us from the walking dead?
Don't you get it? We ARE the walking dead! WE are the walking dead.
β
β
Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead, Vol. 5: The Best Defense)
β
Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.
β
β
Dorothy L. Sayers (Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society)
β
If you see Myrnin, tell him I said I want my slow cooker back."
"Your- You let him borrow something you put food in?"
Hannah's smile disappeared. "Why?"
"Um, never mind. I'll make sure it gets disinfected before you get it back. But don't lend anything to him again unless you can put it in some kind of sterilizer." That made even Hannah look nervous. "Thanks. Tell crazy boy I said hey." "I will" Claire promised. "Hey, if you don't mind me asking - when did he borrow it from you?"
"He just showed up at my door one night about a week ago, said, 'Hi, nice to meet you. Can I borrow your Crock-Pot?' Which I understand is pretty typical Myrnin.
β
β
Rachel Caine (Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires, #9))
β
Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.
β
β
Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)
β
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.
β
β
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
β
You are an amazing person, and I don't know where the feelings that you give me come from. What I do know is that I am completely and utterly into you and I want time to freeze so I can be with you all the time and not have to think of anything else at all. I like literally everything about you, including the way your face shows everything you're thinking and especially the way it looks when we are together and your hair is back and your eyes are closed and your lips are open just a little bit. Okay. That's all I wanted to say. Delete this.
β
β
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
β
i think thats one of the problems with the world today, nobody knows who they are. everyone is running around looking for an identity, or trying to borrow one, only they dont know it. they actually think they know who they are and hat they are? theyre just a bunch of schleppers...who have no idea what a search for personal truth and identity really is, which would be alright if they didn't get in your way, but they insist that they know everything and that if you dont live their way then youre not living properly and they want to take your space away...they actually want to somehow get into your space and live in it and change it or destroy it...they just cant believe that you know what you are doing and that you are happy and content with it. you see thats the problem right there. if they could see that then they wouldnt have to feel threatened and feel that they have to destroy you before you destroy them. they just cant get it through their philistine heads that you are happy where you are and dont want to have anything to do with them. my space is mine and thats enough for me.
β
β
Hubert Selby Jr. (Requiem for a Dream)
β
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified,
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
β
β
Italo Calvino (If on a Winterβs Night a Traveler)
β
In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying- or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity- but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, oneβs bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devistation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.
β
β
William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
β
A moment later, Helen had returned; she was walking slowly now, and carefully, her hand on the back of a thin boy with a mop of wavy brown hair. He couldnβt have been older than twelve, and Clary recognized him immediately. Helen, her hand firmly clamped around the wrist of a younger boy whose hands were covered with blue wax. He must have been playing with the tapers in the huge candelabras that decorated the sides of the nave. He looked about twelve, with an impish grin and the same wavy, bitter-chocolate hair as his sister.
Jules, Helen had called him. Her little brother.
The impish grin was gone now. He looked tired and dirty and frightened. Skinny wrists stuck out of the cuffs of a white mourning jacket whose sleeves were too long for him. In his arms he was carrying a little boy, probably not more than two years old, with the same wavy brown hair that he had; it seemed to be a family trait. The rest of his family wore the same borrowed mourning clothes: following Julian was a brunette girl about ten, her hand firmly clasped in the hold of a boy the same age: the boy had a sheet of tangled black hair that nearly obscured his face. Fraternal twins, Clary guessed. After them came a girl who might have been eight or nine, her face round and very pale between brown braids.
The misery on their faces cut at Claryβs heart. She thought of her power with runes, wishing that she could create one that would soften the blow of loss. Mourning runes existed, but only to honor the dead, in the same way that love runes existed, like wedding rings, to symbolize the bond of love. You couldnβt make someone love you with a rune, and you couldnβt assuage grief with it, either. So much magic, Clary thought, and nothing to mend a broken heart.
βJulian Blackthorn,β said Jia Penhallow, and her voice was gentle. βStep forward, please.β
Julian swallowed and handed the little boy he was holding over to his sister. He stepped forward, his eyes darting around the room. He was clearly scouring the crowd for someone. His shoulders had just begun to slump when another figure darted out onto the stage. A girl, also about twelve, with a tangle of blond hair that hung down around her shoulders: she wore jeans and a t-shirt that didnβt quite fit, and her head was down, as if she couldnβt bear so many people looking at her. It was clear that she didnβt want to be there β on the stage or perhaps even in Idris β but the moment he saw her, Julian seemed to relax. The terrified look vanished from his expression as she moved to stand next to him, her face ducked down and away from the crowd.
βJulian,β said Jia, in the same gentle voice, βwould you do something for us? Would you take up the Mortal Sword?
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
β
Some sleepers have intelligent faces even in sleep, while other faces, even intelligent ones, become very stupid in sleep and therefore ridiculous. I don't know what makes that happen; I only want to say that a laughing man, like a sleeping one, most often knows nothing about his face. A great many people don't know how to laugh at all. However, there's nothing to know here: it's a gift, and it can't be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one's character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better. A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all of his innermost secrets. Even indisputably intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive. Laughter calls first of all for sincerity, and where does one find sincerity? Laughter calls for lack of spite, but people most often laugh spitefully. Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth. A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time, then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. Note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man's laughter must in no case seem stupid to you, however merry and simplehearted it may be. The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone's laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence, though he may do nothing but pour out ideas. Or if his laughter isn't stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you, even just slightlyβknow, then, that the man has no real sense of dignity, not fully in any case. Or finally, if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal to you, know, then, that the man's nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later on the man is certain to change for the worse, to take up what's 'useful' and throw his noble ideas away without regret, as the errors and infatuations of youth.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Adolescent (Vintage Classics))
β
The Western States nervous under the beginning change.
Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land.
Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants
the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land
--wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is
the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor
were ours it would be good--not mine, but ours. If our tractor
turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good.
Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as
we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor
does two things--it turns the land and turns us off the land.
There is little difference between this tractor and a tank.
The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think
about this.
One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car
creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a
single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered.
And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another
family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat
on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the
node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these
two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each
other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the
zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split
and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our
land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and
perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still
more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have
none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little
food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction.
Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are
ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-
meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women;
behind, the children listening with their souls to words their
minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby
has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's
blanket--take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb.
This is the beginning--from "I" to "we."
If you who own the things people must have could understand
this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate
causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx,
Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive.
But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes
you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."
The Western States are nervous under the begining
change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action.
A half-million people moving over the country; a million
more restive, ready to move; ten million more feeling the
first nervousness.
And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.
β
β
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
β
I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.
I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man...
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing.
Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object.
...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:
'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'
Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'.
Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.
'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'
Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.
So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.
But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.
Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}
β
β
Thomas A. Edison (Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison)