β
The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
β
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Ford... you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die."
"Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
"What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Remember, all the answers you need are inside of you; you only have to become quiet enough to hear them.
β
β
Debbie Ford
β
Some people want to be bank presidents. Other people want to rob banks.
β
β
Richard Ford
β
Revenge proves its own executioner.
β
β
John Ford (Broken Heart (New Mermaid Series))
β
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
β
β
Gerald R. Ford
β
Whether you think you can, or you think you can'tβyou're right.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We're safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
β
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts)
β
Whenever you think you can or think you canβt, either way you are right. (Henry Ford)
β
β
Rhonda Byrne (The Secret (The Secret, #1))
β
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
She already has a car.β
βA Ford. Thatβs like Toyotaβs worst enemy.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
β
What's up?" [asked Ford.]
"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there.
β
β
Douglas Adams
β
and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
β
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood...
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it ....
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5))
β
Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.
β
β
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
β
Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
That's what people do. Kill the things they're afraid of.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs
β
β
Henry Ford
β
If you always do what youβve always done, youβll always get what youβve always got.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice
β
β
Henry Ford
β
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Hereβs a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didnβt stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on βBright Eyes.β
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia ComΔneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures βDavidβ and βPietaβ by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech βI Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driverβs order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
β
β
Pablo
β
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."
His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up.
After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
β
If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
What's friendship's realest measure?
I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.
β
β
Richard Ford
β
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
You won't find a vampire in a Ford Fiesta
β
β
Charlaine Harris (Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1))
β
You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The library is like a candy store where everything is free.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Songs of Willow Frost)
β
There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
β
β
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
β
Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Out job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them.
β
β
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
β
He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
When I asked him -Mr.Henry Ford- if he ever worried, he replied: "No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end.
So what is there to worry about?
β
β
Dale Carnegie (How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Dale Carnegie Books))
β
When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.
Ford replied,''Produce it anyway.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up.
βI thought you must be dead β¦β he said simply.
βSo did I for a while,β said Ford, βand then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
β
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I find myself fascinated by a man who admits to enjoying fairy tales and uses the word "impinge"- barely misses a beat while indulging in a brief girl-on-girl fantasy. You're a man of layers, Ford."
Me and Shrek, we're onions.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Tribute)
β
I knew people were talking, but I wasn't listening. I wasn't interested in anything anyone had to say.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
β
I try not to live in the past...but...sometimes the past lives in me
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities.
β
β
Miriam Allen deFord
β
People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are.
β
β
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
β
Why is it that you have to warn people about who you are?
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
That sounds weird: "kill yourself." It makes it sound like you tried to murder someone, only that someone is you.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Some things just can't be put back together. Some things can never be fixed. Two broken pieces can't make a lot of anything anymore. But at least he had the broken pieces.
β
β
Jamie Ford
β
The waiter approached.
'Would you like to see the menu?' he said. 'Or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?'
'Huh?' said Ford.
'Huh?' said Arthur.
'Huh?' said Trillian.
'Thatβs cool,' said Zaphod. 'We'll meet the meat.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
β
It will go away... The stuff in your head. Little by little.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Anyone can be crazy. That's usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I'm still kind of a mess. But I think we all are. No one's got it all together. I don't think you ever do get it totally together. Probably if you did manage to do it you'd spontaneously combust. I think that's a law of nature. If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
β
β
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
β
Harper, did you just... did you just throw a pen at Liz?"
"Oh my gosh, no, Mrs. Ford! I was just... um... writing really fast because there was so much information to take in, and I had, like, some lotion? On my hands? Anyway the pen flew out of my hand and hit Liz
β
β
Rachel Hawkins (Rebel Belle (Rebel Belle, #1))
β
I'm tired of people thinking they're doing me favours.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.
β
β
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
β
Henry Ford summed it up best. βIf I had asked people what they wanted,β he said, βthey would have said a faster horse.
β
β
Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
β
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesnβt run on greed? You think Russia doesnβt run on greed? You think China doesnβt run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, itβs only the other fellow whoβs greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didnβt construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didnβt revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty youβre talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, itβs exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.
β
β
Milton Friedman
β
Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
β
β
Steve Jobs
β
Once you realise there's nothing to be afraid of when you die, there's nothing else to worry about.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
β
Hope can get you through anything.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.
β
β
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
β
Just because your life isn't as awful as someone else's, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck. You can't compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn't work. What might look like the perfect life -- or even an okay life -- to you might not be so okay for the person living it.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
success is 99% failure
β
β
Henry Ford
β
How come someone always saves the people who try to kill themselves and then makes them tell everyone how sorry they are for ruining their evening? I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something. but I'm not going to. I don't have anything to apologize for. They're the ones who screwed everything up. Not me.
I didn't ask to be saved.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
What was the self-sacrifice?"
I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes."
Why was that self-sacrifice?"
Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly.
I think we have different value systems."
Well mine's better.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5))
β
I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I think we have different value systems." βArthur
"Well mine's better." βFord
β
β
Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5))
β
Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
β
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again.
β
β
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
β
There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember it, the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.
β
β
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
β
Let me tell something, seeing your name and psychiatric ward on the same piece of paper isn't the best way to start your day.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
The world is full of places to which I want to return
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
β
Love is when someone puts you on a pedestal and yet when you fall, they're there to catch you anyway.' - Tara Daniels
β
β
Jill Shalvis (The Sweetest Thing (Lucky Harbor, #2))
β
I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
To do more for the world than the world does for you - that is success.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.
β
β
Richard Ford (Canada)
β
I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is--it just matters that it feels like home.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I know all about dreams that make you want to scream.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail
β
β
Henry Ford (My Life And Work (The Autobiography Of Henry Ford))
β
I didn't realize there was a ranking." I said. "Sadie frowned. "What do you mean?" "A ranking," I said. "You know, what's crazier than what." "Oh, sure there is," Sadie said. She sat back in her chair. "First you have your generic depressives. They're a dime a dozen and usually pretty boring. Then you've got the bulimics and the anorexics. They're slightly more interesting, although usually they're just girls with nothing better to do. Then you start getting into the good stuff: the arsonists, the schizophrenics, the manic-depressives. You can never quite tell what those will do. And then you've got the junkies. They're completely tragic, because chances are they're just going to go right back on the stuff when they're out of here." "So junkies are at the top of the crazy chain," I said. Sadie shook her head. "Uh-uh," she said. "Suicides are." I looked at her. "Why?" "Anyone can be crazy," she answered. "That's usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford
β
Come on,β he droned, βIβve been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? βCos I donβt.β
He turned and walked back to the hated door.
βEr, excuse me,β said Ford following after him, βwhich government owns this ship?β
Marvin ignored him.
βYou watch this door,β he muttered, βitβs about to open again. I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that
β
β
Richard Ford
β
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necesary to a worthwhile achievement".
β
β
Henry Ford
β
There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
You're only good if you can do bad and decide not to.
β
β
Richard Ford (Canada)
β
there was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both.
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β
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
β
everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I found that sometimes it was a relief to do something unattractive in private, to confirm that Iβm deeply flawed when so many others imagine me to be perfect. People are often startled by my handwriting; because Iβm pretty, they assume everything I do is pretty. Itβs odd to them that I write like I have a hook for an arm, just as Ford would be startled to learn I have a hook for a heart.
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β
Alissa Nutting (Tampa)
β
I'll ruin everything if you touch me. I'll ruin us. I'll ruin this. I'll ruin you, just like you said. I'll ruin you and I'll ruin your life. And I love you too much to ruin you. So I'm leaving.
β
β
J.A. Huss (Panic (Rook and Ronin, #3))
β
It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not ... & No More Parades (Parade's End #1-2))
β
Money doesn't make us anyway it just unmasks us.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.
β
β
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
β
Iβve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didnβt die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesnβt seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I donβt feel lucky. For one thing, Iβm stuck in this pit. And just because your life isnβt as awful as someone elseβs, that doesnβt mean it doesnβt suck. You canβt compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesnβt work. What might look like the perfect lifeβor even an okay lifeβto you might not be so okay for the person living it.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford
β
Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
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β
Henry Ford
β
The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us?
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β
Debbie Ford
β
If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else.
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Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I begged her, 'Please don't leave me stranded in the middle of some primitive zarking forest with no medical help and a head injury. I could be in serious trouble and so could she.'"
"What did she say?"
"She hit me on the head with the rock again," Ford responded curtly.
"I think i can confirm that was my daughter."
"Sweet kid."
"You have to get to know her," said Arthur.
"She eases up, does she?"
"No, but you get a better sense of when to duck.
β
β
Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5))
β
Seven little crazy kids chopping up sticks;
One burnt her daddy up and then there were six.
Six little crazy kids playing with a hive;
One tattooed himself to death and then there were five.
Five little crazy kids on a cellar door;
One went all schizo and then there were four.
Four little crazy kids going out to sea;
One wouldn't say a word and then there were three.
Three little crazy kids walking to the zoo;
One jerked himself too much and then there were two.
Two little crazy kids sitting in the sun;
One a took a bunch of pills and then there was one.
One little crazy kid left all alone;
He went and slit his wrists, and then there were none.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
From the time we're born until we die, we're kept busy with artificial stuff that isn't important.
β
β
Tom Ford
β
Ford looked at him severely.
And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright?" he said.
The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't even begun to speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Everyday is one less day.
β
β
Tom Ford
β
Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
β
Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.
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β
Richard Ford (Canada)
β
You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer that nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.
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β
Richard Ford (Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2))
β
Alas, poor gentleman,
He lookβd not like the ruins of his youth
But like the ruins of those ruins.
β
β
John Ford (Broken Heart (New Mermaid Series))
β
It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.
β
β
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
β
I'm not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichΓ©s, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is.
It is home.
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β
Chris Rose (1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories)
β
Itβs a really crappy feeling to realise that your entire outlook on life can be controlled by some little pill.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I swear, sometimes it feels like there's this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I'm sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I'm thinking about bears.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Disagreements are inevitable. There will always be opposing viewpoints and a variety of perspectives on most subjects. Tastes differ as well as preferences. That is why they make vanilla and chocolate and strawberry ice cream, why they build Fords and Chevys, Chryslers and Cadillacs, Hondas and Toyotas. That is why our nation has room for Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals - and moderates. The tension is built into our system. It is what freedom is all about, including religious freedom.
I am fairly firm in my theological convictions, but that doesn't mean you (or anyone) must agree with me. All this explains why we must place so much importance on leaving "wobble room" in our relationships. One's theological persuasion may not bend, but one's involvement with others must.
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β
Charles R. Swindoll
β
It's like a bad joke over here: a black woman, a Filipino transvestite, and a Korean ex-stripper walk into a gay manβs house. All that's missing is a priest and a talking dog.β - Bobby Dawson
β
β
Rhys Ford (Dirty Kiss (Cole McGinnis, #1))
β
It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.
β
β
Thomas Sowell
β
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
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β
Henry Ford
β
Now I just have these reddish scars there. I guess I always will, although Goody says theyβll fade over time. I donβt know if I want them to fade. That probably sounds totally freaky, but part of me doesnβt want to forget what it felt like, even though it hurt. If I forget about the pain, I might also forget that it was a really stupid idea to do it in the first place.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I wish that every day was Saturday and every month was October.
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β
Charmaine J. Forde
β
The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are β without apology, without excuses, without masks to cover the truth of who you are.
β
β
Debbie Ford (Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence)
β
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
I think he just loved being with the bears because they didn't make him feel bad. I get it too. When he was with the bears, they didn't care that he was kind of weird, or that he'd gotten into trouble for drinking too much and using drugs(which apparently he did a lot of). They didn't ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he felt, or why he did what he did. They just let him be who he was.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Tweet, tweet, you're alive, you ignorant asshole.
β
β
Richard Ford
β
Our ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.
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β
Richard Ford (The Lay of the Land (Frank Bascombe, #3))
β
We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
Sometimes I think thereβs someone up there just sitting around thinking of ways to make me look like a complete moron. Seriously, I bet thereβs an angelβor, more likely, a demonβassigned just to me. And every day it gets up and asks itself what it can do to ruin my life. Well, today it got an A plus.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
β
β
Harrison Ford
β
Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you're not. You will no longer have to prove you're good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to life in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired.
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β
Debbie Ford
β
Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. It's what you're willing to give up.
β
β
Richard Ford (Wildlife)
β
Kids can always tell the difference between adults who want to empower them, and adults who want to overpower them.
β
β
Ashley C. Ford (Somebody's Daughter)
β
I mean, how do you know if people are good for you or not? It's not like they come with an FDA approved sticker or anything.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Sphere of privacy, people.
β
β
J.A. Huss (Taut: The Ford Book (Rook and Ronin Spinoff, #2))
β
Can we get out of here?"
"Your chariot awaits."
"In the form of a blue Ford ute?" I curved my brow.
"But of course," he said in an over-the-top French accent.
"Sacre blur, bad accent alert!"
"Wow," he said, "Le rude?"
"Le sorry?"
"Le hurt." Toby clutched his heart.
"What can I do to soothe your shattered ego?"
Toby drummed his chin thoughtfully, pacing around me. He stopped just near enough to whisper in my ear.
"Le kiss?
β
β
C.J. Duggan (The Boys of Summer (Summer, #1))
β
If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
β
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
β
β
Henry Ford
β
That sounds so weird: "kill yourself." It makes it sound like you tried to murder someone, only that someone is you. But killing someone is wrong, and I don't think suicide is. It's my life, right? I should be able to end it if I want to. I don't think it's a sin.
β
β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Black Magick is the process of self-transformation through an antinomian initiatory structure, Black meaning the hidden wisdom, power of darkness, dreams and staging the reality you wish and Magick being the process to ascend, become immortal in spirit.
β
β
Michael W. Ford (Adamu: Luciferian Tantra and Sex Magick)
β
It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could ever improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.
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β
Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
β
Then, what's the matter?' I wonder, in fact, how many times I have said that or something equal to it to a woman passing palely through my life. What're you thinking? What's made you so quiet? You seem suddenly different. What's the matter? Love me is what this means, of course. Or at least, second best: surrender. Or at the very least, take some time regaling me with why you won't, and maybe by the end you will.
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β
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
β
We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford.
"..."
"And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."
"I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty.
"Such as?"
"Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords."
"Would you die for them?"
"Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No."
"Well then."
"Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.
β
β
Douglas Adams
β
I'm not sure what a good person is, exactly. On the one hand, it could be someone who always play by the rules. But someone can follow the rules and still be a real jerk, you know? In fact, some of the biggest idiots I know are people who follow the rules, usually because they make you feel like crap when you don't.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I donβt ever remember being afraid of βoldnessβ.
There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didnβt know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years agoβ¦ but that stuff feels pretty trivial.
Iβm happier than Iβve been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favourite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, Iβve made art Iβm proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and Iβve been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries.
Sometimes Iβll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself.
I miss friends who have died, but then, Iβm glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jonesβ¦ do you know how lucky that makes me?
Ah, Iβm rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than Iβm intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71.
I wish the time hadnβt gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish Iβd enjoyed it more on the way, and worried about it less.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.
β
β
Richard Ford (The Lay of the Land (Frank Bascombe, #3))
β
He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
β
You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the by-product. The point is that you can't otherwise talk. You can't finish talks at street corners; in museums; even in drawing-rooms. You mayn't be in the mood when she is in the mood β for the intimate conversation that means the final communion of your souls. You have to wait together β for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained...and exhausted. So that...
That in effect was love.
β
β
Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
β
There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.
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β
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
β
None of our men are 'experts.' We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
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β
Henry Ford
β
It's a really crappy feeling to realize that your entire outook on your life can be controlled by some little pill that looks like a Pez, and that some weird combination of drugs can make your brain think it's on a holiday somewhere really sweet when you're standing naked in the middle of the school cafeteria while everyone takes pictures of you. Metaphorically. Or whatever.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didnβt stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.
During the following weeks Ford Perfect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox.
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β
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
β
I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one...
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β
Henry Ford (My Life And Work (The Autobiography Of Henry Ford))
β
And anyway, the truth isn't all that great. I mean, what's the truth? Planes falling out of the sky. Buses blowing up and ripping little kids into millions of pieces. Twelve-year-olds raping people and then shooting them in the head so they can't tell. I can't watch the news anymore or look at the papers. It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and makes everything crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
I stole a bit of a chopped vegetable and was about to put it in my mouth when Jaeβs long fingers closed over my wrist. βWhat? You canβt eat this raw?β
βItβs bitter melon. You wonβt like it.β He went into the fridge and came out with something that looked halfway familiar. βHere, leftover bao. Thereβs char siu inside.β
βThe red pork stuff? Yeah, I like that. I thought it was Chinese.β
βIt is. We also eat hamburgers and spaghetti.
β
β
Rhys Ford (Dirty Kiss (Cole McGinnis, #1))
β
Well it's not really a mystery. It was the day I met you, that's when. You've changed me, Rook. You make me weak, you make me stumble, you make me fall, and even though I know you'll pick me up if I ask you to, it's not enough. I want you to make me stronger, just like I made you. I want it all or I want nothing. And since I can't have it all, I'll take nothing.
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β
J.A. Huss (Panic (Rook and Ronin, #3))
β
You think of yourself as an "individual person", with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is an illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between- these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled.
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β
Douglas Preston (Blasphemy (Wyman Ford, #2))
β
One time Allie and I skipped school and went to see this foreign film called Los Diablos, where these villagers found a glowing blue ball and peeled pieces off of it to see what was inside. Only the ball was really radioactive, and they all died from the poison. I think thatβs what happens when you look too deep inside for the truth. The poison comes out, and you die, even though you have beautiful glowing pieces of blue truth in your fingers.
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β
Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
β
Surrender is the ultimate sign of strength and the foundation for a spiritual life. Surrendering affirms that we are no longer willing to live in pain. It expresses a deep desire to transcend our struggles and transform our negative emotions. It commands a life beyond our egos, beyond that part of ourselves that is continually reminding us that we are separate, different and alone. Surrendering allows us to return to our true nature and move effortlessly through the cosmic dance called life. It's a powerful statement that proclaims the perfect order of the universe.
When you surrender your will, you are saying, "Even though things are not exactly how I'd like them to be, I will face my reality. I will look it directly in the eye and allow it to be here." Surrender and serenity are synonymous; you can't experience one without the other. So if it's serenity you're searching for, it's close by. All you have to do is resign as General Manager of the Universe. Choose to trust that there is a greater plan for you and that if you surrender, it will be unfolded in time.
Surrender is a gift that you can give yourself. It's an act of faith. It's saying that even though I can't see where this river is flowing, I trust it will take me in the right direction.
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β
Debbie Ford (Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life)
β
A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options β neutrois, two spirit, bigenderβ¦any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.
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β
Ian McEwan (Nutshell)
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A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life.
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Richard Ford
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God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.
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John Piper (Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist)
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I just can't see the upside in this," I heard myself say by way of explanation.
Later he said that if John had been sitting in the office he would have found this funny, as he himself had found it. "Of course I knew what you meant to say, and John would have known too, you meant to say you couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel."
I agreed, but this was not in fact the case.
I had meant pretty much exactly what I said: I couldn't see the upside in this.
As I thought about the difference between the two sentences I realized that my impression of myself had been of someone who could look for, and find, the upside in any situation. I had believed in the logic of popular songs. I had looked for the silver lining. I had walked on through the storm. It occurs to me now that these were not even the songs of my generation. They were the songs, and the logic, of the generation or two that preceded my own. The score for my generation was Les Paul and Mary Ford, "How High the Moon," a different logic altogether. It also occurs to me, not an original thought but novel to me, that the logic of those earlier songs was based on self-pity. The singer of the song about looking for the silver lining believes that clouds have come her way. The singer of the song about walking on through the storm assumes that the storm could otherwise take her down.
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Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking)
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But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man, is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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Sometimes during the night I'd look at my poor sleeping mother cruelly crucified there in the American night because of no-money, no-hope-of-money, no family, no nothing, just myself the stupid son of plans all of them compacted of eventual darkness. God how right Hemingway was when he said there was no remedy for life - and to think that negative little paper-shuffling prissies should write condescending obituaries about a man who told the truth, nay who drew breath in pain to tell a tale like that! ... No remedy but in my mind I raise a fist to High Heaven promising that I shall bull whip the first bastard who makes fun of human hopelessness anyway - I know it's ridiculous to pray to my father that hunk of dung in a grave yet I pray to him anyway, what else shall I do? sneer? shuffle paper on a desk and burp rationality? Ah thank God for all the Rationalists the worms and vermin got. Thank God for all the hate mongering political pamphleteers with no left or right to yell about in the Grave of Space. I say that we shall all be reborn with the Only One, and that's what makes me go on, and my mother too. She has her rosary in the bus, don't deny her that, that's her way of stating the fact. If there can't be love among men let there be love at least between men and God. Human courage is an opiate but opiates are human too. If God is an opiate so am I. Thefore eat me. Eat the night, the long desolate American between Sanford and Shlamford and Blamford and Crapford, eat the hematodes that hang parasitically from dreary southern trees, eat the blood in the ground, the dead Indians, the dead pioneers, the dead Fords and Pontiacs, the dead Mississippis, the dead arms of forlorn hopelessness washing underneath - Who are men, that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I'm talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking 'What is there to laugh about in that?' 'How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?' 'Who makes fun of misery?' There's my mother a hunk of flesh that didn't ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who also didn't ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere, all in the night, worst of all for that matter all in noonday glare of bestial Gulf Coast roads - Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here? What kind of crazy college would feature a seminar where people talk about hopelessness, forever?
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Jack Kerouac (Desolation Angels)
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If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, βwe could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .β
βFiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. βFiscal policy!"
The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.
βFiscal policy. . .β he repeated, βthat is what I said.β
βHow can you have money,β demanded Ford, βif none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.β
βIf you would allow me to continue.. .β
Ford nodded dejectedly.
βThank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.β
Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.
βBut we have also,β continued the management consultant, βrun into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one shipβs peanut."
Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
βSo in order to obviate this problem,β he continued, βand effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.
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Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
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As sinners we are like addicts - addicted to ourselves and our own projects. The theology of glory simply seeks to give those projects eternal legitimacy. The remedy for the theology of glory, therefore, cannot be encouragement and positive thinking, but rather the end of the addictive desire. Luther says it directly: "The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it." So we are back to the cross, the radical intervention, end of the life of the old and the beginning of the new.
Since the theology of glory is like addiction and not abstract doctrine, it is a temptation over which we have no control in and of ourselves, and from which we must be saved. As with the addict, mere exhortation and optimistic encouragement will do no good. It may be intended to build up character and self-esteem, but when the addict realizes the impossibility of quitting, self-esteem degenerates all the more. The alcoholic will only take to drinking in secret, trying to put on the facade of sobriety. As theologians of glory we do much the same. We put on a facade of religious propriety and piety and try to hide or explain away or coddle our sins....
As with the addict there has to be an intervention, an act from without. In treatment of alcoholics some would speak of the necessity of 'bottoming out,' reaching the absolute bottom where one can no longer escape the need for help. Then it is finally evident that the desire can never be satisfied, but must be extinguished. In matters of faith, the preaching of the cross is analogous to that intervention. It is an act of God, entirely from without. It does not come to feed the religious desires of the Old Adam and Eve but to extinguish them. They are crucified with Christ to be made new.
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Gerhard O. Forde (On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Theology))