John Quotes

... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ...

If there is anything unique about the human animal, it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience.

We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.

...don't settle for pap - our thoughts wander through eternity - experience the wonder of being alive...

Simplicity may be simple, but like complexity it requires linguistic precision, and may therefore call for relatively obscure expressions at times.

People's sense of how they talk tends to differ from the reality.

A spoken language is a body, a living creature, whose physiognomy is verbal and whose visceral functions are linguistic. And this creature's home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate.

For the first few months I went round in a linguistic fog. Often I only realized what someone had said minutes or even days or weeks afterwards.

God did not give us the gospel to convince humanity

Do you know, by the way, that German is the only language in the world that has a word for ‘pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’? Schadenfreude.

The language looks rather different when you look at a lot of it at once.

A civil tongue speaks the language of masters. An uncivil tongue reveals character flaws of its master.

Language is the light of the mind.

Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

[L]anguage functions best when we mediate between the descriptive and prescriptive influences, changing the rules to better suit some things, but sticking to them for others.

...you do violence with your words if you force them - art is given - the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands - call it a Muse ...

...language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset...

Let's get mind stretched by God's love letters written just for you

I lit up like a Christmas tree-Augustus Waters

There are so many different kinds of ghosts.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - too sad story. This book is very good and sad

If that was the last event of the night, it would have made a terrible ending. It was just the beginning, though.

If people were rain i was drizzle and she was a hurrican.

What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked."You die, too. And you wait around for your body to catch up.

We don't get to choose if we get hurt in this world, old man, but we do have a say in who hurts us. I know I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.I do, Augustus. I do.

You are lucky to feel sadness.

It lit up like a Christmas Tree Hazel Grace...

Whatever you think you are, that's what you are

People who believe in buried gods, ’ said Louis.‘Do you believe in buried gods, Detective Walsh?’‘I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.

The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.

John Brown, raised by disciplinarians, became one himself.

It was tempting to take refuge in feelings of British superiority, although I disliked myself for it and hoped it didn't show.

The American Club was for those who preferred to have dinner at six and brunch on a Sunday and avoid the stress of dealing with Greeks and their language.

Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty

Alexander Hamilton reflected as early as the middle of the Revolutionary War that rallying at the last minute was part of the national character of his countrymen.

Established churches not infrequently formed an alliance with the aristocracy, joining arm in arm against change.

In the context of today, this WAS heroism.

Our religion was the religion of a Book. Man must be educated on Earth for Heaven. John Quincy Adams

Their lot in life, their station, became a part of their personalities and helped to for my worldview.

Chinese food in Texas is the best Chinese food in the United States except Boston.

God bestows great gifts on human beings with perfect justice, but not All gifts we are given come from God. Some gifts come from society or culture, and it is here that problems develop.

while modernity is not Christianity, modernity is the product of a Christian civilization. Lately the defects of modernity have been made plain to us while its virtues have been taken for granted.

The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language...the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry.

What I'm going to do is pry every stinking tag off these f.ing chairs and make a f.ing collar and throw that cat right in Connor's puked-up face. Pale turd.

The height the dupe has fallen is measured by his anger.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then surely greed must be the father. Children of this odd couple are named: Laziness, Envy, Greed, Jr., Gluttony, Lust, Anger and Pride.

You're not me. You can't feel like I feel.""I can feel.""No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine.""It's not fine. It's just not so bad.

What you feel, you can heal.

It was my first dead body and I waited for the appropriate feelings. I didn't know what feelings to expect, which was worse than realising that I had none.

I don't break down, " she announced. "Got it?"He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed of himself, but somehow he was still holding her wrist."I never break down. I'm a lawyer.