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“The moonlight drifts in silently from the dark sky and onto the light wooden blinds that hang at each of the three windows in the narrow room. Outside, the streets are tranquil, radiating the heat of the August day that ended a few hours before.”
― M.F. Kelleher, Olivia Streete and the Parisian Contract

“Infantile love follows the principle ‘I love because I am loved.�� “Mature love follows the principle ‘I am loved because I love.�� “Immature love says ‘I love you because I need you.�� “Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.”
― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”
― F Scott Fitzgerald

“It always came back to love. More than freedom, more than acceptance—love. True love, like they sang about in the second era. The kind that filled up a person's soul. The kind that lent itself to dramatic gestures and sacrifices. The kind that was irresistible and all-encompassing.”
― Marissa Meyer, Cress

“the Congo government had enough money from mining to promise the mercenaries extravagant pay packages, but they often ended up paying themselves. It became routine on operations when entering a Congolese town for the mercenary forces to hurry to the local bank, blow open the safe with dynamite and take whatever was inside.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

“She can't afford to commit more troops,' Holly whispered. 'The gate is her priority, and she needs to have as many Berserkers watching her back as possible. We are secondary at this point.'
'That will be her undoing,' Artemis gasped, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. 'Artemis Fowl will never be secondary.'
'I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?' said Holly.”
― Eoin Colfer

“Yes, we've given them the benefit of the doubt. But, isn't it time (for once in our lives) to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt?”
― Janine Myung Ja, Adoption Stories

“Although this scouting gig sounded like a financial hit, it made Nonie extremely nervous. She feared someone slip--that someone being Buggy--and others would find out Nonie's secret. And if the wrong person caught wind that she could see and speak to the dead, word would spread through Clay Point like ants at a picnic.”
― Deborah Leblanc, Toe to Toe

“Where did you see him?�� Heidi asked.
“At the grocery store,�� Mildred replied. “He was picking out a cantaloupe. Of course, I had to give him some tips. He was about to pick one that wasn’t anywhere near ripe.�� The women tossed each other knowing looks.”
― Kirsten Fullmer, Problems at the Pub

“Who’d guess I fight crime?��
“Don’t exaggerate. You catch people doing the nasty with people they have no business getting nasty with.”
― Nancy Mangano, Deadly Decisions

“Millions more people in Africa, Asia, South America, and the rest of the world have also had the benefit of racist European “cleansing�� and “civilising�� in which Christian religious orders played a heinous role that contradicted every godly thing they preached about and claimed to stand for. When Europe’s imperial powers sought new geographic regions to expand their spheres of influence in the nineteenth century, Africa �� with its wealth of natural resources �� became a prime target for colonisation in which Christianity played a major role as one of Colonialism’s “Three Cs��: Civilisation, Christianity, and Commerce.”
― William Hanna, The Grim Reaper

“Our DNA is coded to harmonise the frequency of the atoms we use to build ourselves. The frequencies of the subatomic particles making up the atoms are changed subtly enough to do this but not enough to change their structure. You could say throughout our development, from birth to death, our genes are composing a harmonic symphony that makes us what we are. It's what makes us individual; it's our life force, our soul.”
― D.S. Smith, Unparalleled

“. . . While competency and insanity are not the same things and the standards of proof are different, they are undoubtedly first cousins.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal High

“It was odd–talking to the trees, so I made a joke out of it. While sitting by a pawpaw tree, I whispered, “Is this where you grew up? . . . (Yes, and I never left home) . . . I hope to leave home . . . (Wish I could).�� I laughed so hard at a tree wanting to leave home, I keeled over. Then I cried. I knew why but I couldn’t think about it or I’d cry all day.”
― G.M. Monks, Iola O

“I was thinking of that old expression: Those who fail to repeat history are doomed to learn it.”
― Steve Bates, Back To You

“Happiness develops when you are working on something bigger than yourself. It is attained slowly, little by little, as you build yourself up. It develops as you develop your altruism. You find happiness by committing to other people and positivity, by working to better yourself and find real meaning in your life.”
― Robert Gill Jr., Happiness Power: How to Unleash Your Power and Live a More Joyful Life

“According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created��. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal��. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal��? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal�� should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently��.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Cixi’s lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity.

Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi’s future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons�� brides �� gold necklaces with corals and pearls �� and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines�� wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more “than nine million taels of silver had gone missing.

Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss �� whether or not they were guilty.

Cixi’s great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amounted to 43,200 taels �� a colossal sum, next to which his official salary had been a pittance. As he had died a long time ago, his son, Cixi’s grandfather, was obliged to pay half the sum, even though he worked in the Ministry of Punishments and had nothing to do with the state coffer. After three years of futile struggle to raise money, he only managed to hand over 1,800 taels, and an edict signed by the emperor confined him to prison, only to be released if and when his son, Cixi’s father, delivered the balance.

The life of the family was turned upside down. Cixi, then eleven years old, had to take in sewing jobs to earn extra money �� which she would remember all her life and would later talk about to her ladies-in-waiting in the court. “As she was the eldest of two daughters and three sons, her father discussed the matter with her, and she rose to the occasion. Her ideas were carefully considered and practical: what possessions to sell, what valuables to pawn, whom to turn to for loans and how to approach them. Finally, the family raised 60 per cent of the sum, enough to get her grandfather out of prison. The young Cixi’s contribution to solving the crisis became a family legend, and her father paid her the ultimate compliment: ‘This daughter of mine is really more like a son!��

Treated like a son, Cixi was able to talk to her father about things that were normally closed areas for women. Inevitably their conversations touched on official business and state affairs, which helped form Cixi’s lifelong interest. Being consulted and having her views acted on, she acquired self-confidence and never accepted the com“common assumption that women’s brains were inferior to men’s. The crisis also helped shape her future method of rule. Having tasted the bitterness of arbitrary punishment, she would make an effort to be fair to her officials.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

“Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be. ”
― John Stuart Mill, The Autobiography

“Now to be precise. I had seen the whole building as an image of living, praying man. But inside it was a richly written book to instruct that man.”
― William Golding, The Spire

“Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing, as they played outside.”
― Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"

“When you’re putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“They live in cardbox encampments, tin shacks, they live in tents and sleeping bags, they live on the ground. They yell at each other, scream at each other, sleep with each other, do drugs and drink with each other, fuck each other, kill each other. They”
― James Frey, Bright Shiny Morning

“This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”
― Nick Hornby, About a Boy

“The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

“Alicia: ¿Cuánto tiempo es para siempre? Conejo blanco: A veces, sólo un segundo.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
― Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“You appear to be a mass of contradictions; there’s a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive.”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity