A Quote by James S.A. Corey

Science had given mankind many gifts, and she valued it. But the one important thing it had taken away was the value of subjective, personal experience. That had been replaced with the idea that only measurable and testable concepts had value. But humans didn't work that way.
If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy
People don't understand this: Ideas are important, but they're not essential. What's essential and important is the execution of the idea. Everyone has had the experience of seeing a movie and saying, "Hey! That was my idea!" Well, it doesn't mean anything that you had that idea. There's no such thing as an original concept. What's original is the way you re-use ancient concepts.
She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.
If Democracy should fail, it would be because we had been so lacking in self-discipline that our personal problems had taken all our substance and energies, leaving us nothing of value to contribute to the commonwealth.
And they did have fun, though it was of different kind now. All that yearning and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.
But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.
Early Chinese thinkers had taken variety at face value. They had favored diversification and collected anomalies instead of trying to explain them away.
She had been the quiet, rather plain girl, with a surprisingly sharp tongue if she was put out, lovely eyes and pretty hair and a way of looking very directly at one. Now he had to admit that she had become more important to him than anyone else in the world. The idea of a future without her wasn't to be borne. She had by some mysterious metamorphosis become more beautiful than anyone else he had ever encountered.
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.
She was tough in the best sense of the word. She'd taken blows, the disappointments, and had worked her way through them. Some people, he knew, would have buckled under, found a clutch, or given up. But she had carved a place for herself and made it work.
Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.
No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.
Oh, she doesn't belong to anybody now,' he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are all possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.
I have been in an experience where I thought everything that I had hoped for in my life was taken away from me, and I had to redefine what mattered.
Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.
The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German Shepherd. She was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Her name was Princess.
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