Jonathan Sumption famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

  • Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.

  • In very clear and available language, this book details how to recognize the inner critic and how to deal effectively with it. Byron Brown's presentation is useful for any individual who wishes to be free from the inner suffering and coercion of this ancient foe of our humanity, but it is specifically directed to those interested and engaged in the inner journey toward realization and enlightenment.

  • It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?

  • I always thought the name of Utah’s major newspaper was some sort of weird misspelling of the word “desert.” But no, Deseret is the “land of the honeybee,” according to the Book of Mormon. I guess I should have figured they would have caught a typo in the masthead after 154 years.

  • My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.

  • The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show!

  • What I'm suggesting is we are going to look back, and we're going to see what happened in Syria, and we're going to see the larger destabilization of the Middle East, the rise of extremism, and we're going to wonder... Why didn't we at least try to force a political solution - at an acceptable cost to us, because no one is saying we should send in ground troops - and if we did it would be worse than doing nothing... If we do not act, we are going to look back and wonder why we didn't.

  • It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

  • "He who wants to protect everything, protects nothing," is one of the fundamental rules of defense.

  • It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment

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