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“I must protest this policy, he transmitted in silence. Why shouldn't they be allowed to read their own books? Aren't we preserving these things for THEM, after all?

Old fellow, you must understand, I replied as casually as I could. […]you've been down among them yourself. You know the villainy of which they're capable. Destructive little Barbary apes for the most part, and human intelligence only makes them worse. How many libraries have you seen burned in your time?

But the mortals built the libraries too, argued Lewis[…] It takes thousands of them to create an archive of human wisdom; only one to set a torch to it. Wouldn't you have to say, then, that the work of the librarians is more typical of mortal behavior than the work of the arsonist?”
― Kage Baker, The Children of the Company

“We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish.”
― Marshall McLuhan

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.”
― Neil Gaiman

“He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.'
It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli.
I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas.
I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The central assertion of this book is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality. Concepts like “nation,�� “society,�� and “culture�� name bits and threaten to turn names into things. Only by understanding these names as bundles of relationships, and by placing them back into the field from which they were abstracted, can we hope to avoid misleading inferences and increase our share of understanding.”
― Eric R. Wolf

“I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“…through the years, I had come to realize a simple fact of reporting: if you approach people with respect, listen hard, and genuinely try to understand their point of view, they will talk to you, no matter how different your background is.”
― Brad Parks, Faces of the Gone

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
― Edward Everett Hale

“You'll live to regret it, young fellow! Why didn't you go too? You don't belong here; you're no Baggins—you—you're a Brandybuck!'
'Did you hear that, Merry? That was an insult, if you like,' said Frodo as he shut the door on her.
'It was a compliment,' said Merry Brandybuck, 'and so, of course, not true.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien

“Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.”
― Steven Brust, Jhereg

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

“See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.”
― Douglas Adams

“I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.”
― Douglas Adams

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.”
― Jane Goodall

“MR. BROWNE'S SEPTEMBER PRECEPT:

WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN BEING
RIGHT OR BEING KIND, CHOOSE KIND.”
― R. J. Palacio, Wonder

“I actually like how doctors talk. I like the sound of science. I like how words you don't understand explain things you can't understand.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!”
― Gerard Nolst Trenité, Drop your Foreign Accent

“There's no reason why women shouldn't behave like rational beings," Simon asserted stolidly.
Poirot said drily: "Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile