Brooks Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Brooks. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.
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Geraldine Brooks (March)
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We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (Report from Part One)
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Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. [Quoting Reverend Phillips Brooks, during Remarks at Presidential Prayer Breakfast, February 7 1963]
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John F. Kennedy
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Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
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Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
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When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure from the inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything.
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Chase Brooks (Hello, My Love 2: First Love Deserves a Second Chance)
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When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth...... But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself." But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
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Kahlil Gibran (Le Prophète)
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Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
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Mel Brooks
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Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
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Mel Brooks
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And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
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George Moore (The Brook Kerith)
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But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.
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Kahlil Gibran
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It’s always hard to lose somebody. It leaves a hole in you heart that never grows back.
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Kevin Brooks (Lucas)
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I am a flawed person. A brook with many stones, a clear blue sky with many blackbirds. I have many shortcomings. A rainbow that’s not long enough, a starry night with clouds. But I can only be thankful to the God who loves me just this way, and I can only be grateful to the people in my life who accept the clear blue sky with many blackbirds and who are patient with the rainbow that isn’t long enough. And because of this, I am taught love, because of this I love my God, and I love these people.
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C. JoyBell C.
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You can't, Brooke, you can't leave. You're mine
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Katy Evans (Real (Real, #1))
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I'll never recover if he breaks my heart. ~Brooke
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Katy Evans (Real (Real, #1))
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As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
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Mel Brooks
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To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.
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Geraldine Brooks (March)
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We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren't able to burn.
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Tish Thawer (The Witches of BlackBrook (Witches of BlackBrook, #1))
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What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
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Henry David Thoreau
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Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” β€œLove has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving
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Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
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Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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Who would you be but who you are?
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Terry Brooks (The Black Unicorn (Magic Kingdom of Landover, #2))
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Not all broken things need to be fixed. Sometimes they just need to be loved. It would be a shame if only people who were whole were deserving of love.” β€œBrooks.
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Brittainy C. Cherry (The Silent Waters (Elements, #3))
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I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Lady, lady, never start Conversation toward your heart; Keep your pretty words serene; Never murmur what you mean. Show yourself, by word and look, Swift and shallow as a brook. Be as cool and quick to go As a drop of April snow; Be as delicate and gay As a cherry flower in May. Lady, lady, never speak Of the tears that burn your cheek- She will never win him, whose Words had shown she feared to lose. Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.
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Dorothy Parker
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Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger. Travel too far that road and the way is lost.
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Terry Brooks (The Elfstones of Shannara (The Original Shannara Trilogy, #2))
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Use your head; cut off theirs.
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Max Brooks (Zombie Survival Guide, The: Complete Protection From The Living Dead)
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The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.
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Max Brooks (Zombie Survival Guide, The: Complete Protection From The Living Dead)
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Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.
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John Donne
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A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.
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Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book)
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She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and sparkled with joy in his soul. He had loved and had found himself. But most people love to lose themselves.
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Hermann Hesse (Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend)
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Because some things are never meant to be anything more than a moment. And that was one of them.
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Kevin Brooks (Lucas)
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Brooke Dumas. I'm Remington.
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Katy Evans (Real (Real, #1))
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You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.
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Geraldine Brooks (March)
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Writing is a delicious agony.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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I’m going to fight to prove to you that this is real. That I’m not going anywhere and that what I feel for you isn’t going to change. And then someday – maybe not any time soon, but one day – I’m going to tell you that you, Kate Brooks, are the love of my life, and you won’t have any doubt that it’s true.
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Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
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Although my mind recognizes that Kate Brooks is now my rival, apparently my cock hasn’t gotten the memo.
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Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
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The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
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Brooks Atkinson
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Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent thinking clearly is never time wasted.
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Max Brooks (Zombie Survival Guide, The: Complete Protection From The Living Dead)
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We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.
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Terry Brooks (The Druid of Shannara (Heritage of Shannara, #2))
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I love you. On intense days. On good days. On long, exhausting work days. On really strange days when I find out that I have a long-lost brother. And most of all, on days when you make me smile, which happens to be every day I'm with you. You are not just a big-picture girl for me, Brooke Parker. You're the only picture.
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Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
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The world keeps spinning because you heartbeats exist
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Brittainy C. Cherry (The Silent Waters (Elements, #3))
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One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (In the Mecca)
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The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe." That blew me away. "Turn on the TV," he'd say. "What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products." Fuckin' A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
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Mel Brooks
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The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that it's coming quickly.
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Mel Brooks
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Humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong.
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David Brooks (The Road to Character)
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Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical disguise.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (Annie Allen)
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I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Acquainted with the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rainβ€”and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
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Robert Frost (West-Running Brook)
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Learn to like what doesn't cost much. Learn to like reading, conversation, music. Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking. Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills. Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different...different from you. Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done. Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs. Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things. Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day. Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.
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Lowell C. Bennion
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It's better to die in pursuit of your dreams than to live a life without hope.
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Terry Brooks (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Novelizations, #1))
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I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.
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Terry Brooks
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Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.
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Brooke Shields
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When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And When his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And When he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden... But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears... But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
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Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
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But, mark my words; someday she'll get what's coming to her. Karma's a bigger bitch than she is,
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Kathleen Brooks
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You will always be the answer, when somebody asks me what I'm thinking about.
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Lisa Brooks
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Humor is just another defense against the universe.
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Mel Brooks
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Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Uncle Drew?" "Yes, sweetheart?" "Where do babies come from?
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Emma Chase (Twisted (Tangled, #2))
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Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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You can't blame anyone else, ... , no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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[...]you don’t have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
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Mel Brooks
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Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different.
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David Brooks (The Road to Character)
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-No todos podemos ser don-nada-me-altera, cariΓ±o. -TΓΊ me alteras
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Joana MarcΓΊs (La ΓΊltima nota (Canciones para ella, #1))
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Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and perceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and last some crisis shows what we have become.
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Brooke Foss Westcott
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God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.
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Geraldine Brooks (Year of Wonders)
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Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
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Phillips Brooks
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We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (Selected Poems)
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Poetry is life distilled.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be.
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Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
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Name me no names for my disease, With uninforming breath; I tell you I am none of these, But homesick unto death β€”Homesick for hills that I had known, For brooks that I had crossed, ...Before I met this flesh and bone And followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last, Yet name no name of ills. Say only, "Here is where he passed, Seeking again those hills.
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Witter Bynner (Grenstone Poems: A Sequence)
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If you believe you can accomplish everything by "cramming" at the eleventh hour, by all means, don't lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining
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Max Brooks (The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead)
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Madness is not what it seems. Time stops. All my life I've been obsessed with time, its motion and velocity, the way it works you over, the way it rushes you onward, a pebble turning in a brook. I've always been obsessed with where I'd go, and what I'd do, and how I would live. I've always harbored a desperate hope that I would make something of myself. Not then. Time stopped seeming so much like the thing that would transform me into something worthwhile and began to be inseparable from death. I spent my time merely waiting.
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Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)
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Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if to love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; to rest at noon and meditate love's ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude; and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
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Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
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1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you? 3. Use your head: cut off theirs. 4. Blades don't need reloading. 5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair. 6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike. 8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert! 9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
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Max Brooks (The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead)
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- ΒΏContando el mes de pausa cuando terminΓ³ el verano?- pregunto. -Pretendamos que eso no pasΓ³. -Entonces ocho meses. -Ocho meses- murmura, asintiendo con la cabeza- He tenido una relaciΓ³n mΓ‘s duradera contigo que con mi psicΓ³logo. -QuΓ© romΓ‘ntico eres siempre. Me dejas completamente desarmada.
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Joana MarcΓΊs (La ΓΊltima nota (Canciones para ella, #1))
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It's like this old patchwork quilt my momma used to have...Each piece on that quilt meant something. And some of those pieces were the damn ugliest things you've ever seen...But some of the pieces were so beautiful they almost hurt my eyes to look at when I was a kid...That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you have so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones.
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Brooke McKinley (Shades of Gray)
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Needy people are like newborns, I have come to realize. One intoxicated night and BAM! You are stuck with this problem. You finally take it home and it wants to keep you up all night and cries when it isn’t sucking on various parts of your anatomy. It wants you there for everything – rocking, feeding, burping, changing... It’s ridiculous. If I wanted a kid I would have one. Until then, grow the hell up and stand on your own two feet, you little crazy.
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Chase Brooks
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I love the stillness of the wood; I love the music of the rill: I love the couch in pensive mood Upon some silent hill. Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees, The silver-crested ripples pass; and, like a mimic brook, the breeze Whispers among the grass. Here from the world I win release, Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude, Break into mar the holy peace Of this great solitude. Here may the silent tears I weep Lull the vested spirit into rest, As infants sob themselves to sleep Upon a mothers breast. But when the bitter hour is gone, And the keen throbbing pangs are still, Oh, sweetest then to couch alone Upon some silent hill! To live in joys that once have been, To put the cold world out of sight, And deck life's drear and barren scene With hues of rainbow-light. For what to man the gift of breath, If sorrow be his lot below; If all the day that ends in death Be dark with clouds of woe? Shall the poor transport of an hour Repay long years of sore distressβ€” The fragrance of a lonely flower Make glad the wilderness? Ye golden house of life's young spring, Of innocence, of love and truth! Bright, beyond all imagining, Thou fairy-dream of youth! I'd give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of Life's decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer's day.
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Lewis Carroll
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Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you've got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy, colorful and lively.
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Mel Brooks
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Getting over it doesn't mean forgetting it, it just means reducing the pain to a tolerable level, a level that doesn't destroy you. I know that right now the idea of getting over it is unimaginable. It's impossible, inconceivable, unthinkable. You don't want to get over it. Why should you? It's all you've got. You don't want kind words, you don't care what other people think or say, you don't want to know how they felt when they lost someone, They're no you, are there! They can't feel what you feel. The only thing you want is the things you can't have. It's gone. Never coming back. No one know how that feels. No one know what it's like to reach out and touch someone who isn't there and will never be there again. No one knows the unifiable emptiness. No one but you. You and me, love. We don't want anything. We want to die, but life won't let us. We're all it's got.
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Kevin Brooks (Lucas)
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The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and the advent of the dawn declared itself in the newborn blue of heaven. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as in our tempestuous life the transitory wreaths of sleep brook upon a pain-racked soul, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east to the west sped those angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light from breast and wing. On they sped out of the darkness, perfect, glorious; on, over the quiet sea, over the low coast-line, and the swamps beyond, and the mountains above them; over those who slept in peace and those who woke in sorrow; over the evil and the good; over the living and the dead; over the wide world and all that breathes or as breathed thereon.
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H. Rider Haggard (She: A History of Adventure (She, #1))
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Her eyes were glittering like the eyes of a child when you give a nice surprise, and she laughed with a sudden throaty, tingling way. It is the way a woman laughs for happiness. They never laugh that way just when they are being polite or at a joke. A woman only laughs that way a few times in her life. A woman only laughs that way when something has touched her way down in the very quick of her being and the happiness just wells out as natural as breath and the first jonquils and mountain brooks. When a woman laughs that way it always does something to you. It does not matter what kind of a face she has got either. You hear that laugh and feel that you have grasped a clean and beautiful truth. You feel that way because that laugh is a revelation. It is a great impersonal sincerity. It is a spray of dewy blossom from the great central stalk of All Being, and the woman’s name and address hasn’t got a damn thing to do with it. Therefore, the laugh cannot be faked. If a woman could learn to fake it she would make Nell Gwyn and Pompadour look like a couple of Campfire Girls wearing bifocals and ground-gripper shoes with bands on their teeth. She could get all society by the ears. For all any man really wants is to hear a woman laugh like that.
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Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men)
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and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand pch radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I cancelled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and halfthrottled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque, part o nous ne serons jamais spars; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torneven then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
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We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.
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David Brooks (The Road to Character)
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I am not delicate. I am skinny dipping at 2am; I am dancing naked under the full moon and playing in the mud. I am the reverberating echoes of a curse word ricocheting off the steeply sloping mountain you thought I couldn’t climb; I am bare skin in the deepest depths of winter; I am the song of courage, and the melody of freedom you long to sing. I am a fearless mother. I am a passionate lover; a devoted friend. I am the healer, the witch, the nurturing of your wounds. I am the heat of a wildfire, the rage of a storm. I am strong. Delicate things are pretty-cute, even. But I am not delicate. I am wild, fierce and unpredictable. I am breathtaking. I am beautiful. I am sacred.
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Brooke Hampton
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I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.
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David Brooks
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I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hopeβ€”and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any otherβ€”it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him, I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain, let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel, pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If Chrysostom's impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode.
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
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When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story -- And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday -- When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon Looking off down the long street To nowhere, Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why? And if-Monday-never-had-to-comeβ€” When you have forgotten that, I say, And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles Or chicken and rice And salad and rye bread and tea And chocolate chip cookies -- I say, when you have forgotten that, When you have forgotten my little presentiment That the war would be over before they got to you; And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end Bright bedclothes, Then gently folded into each otherβ€” When you have, I say, forgotten all that, Then you may tell, Then I may believe You have forgotten me well.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks: (American Poets Project #19))