Jack Abbott
Jack Abbott

The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals

of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton

The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation, — religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.

Felix Adler
Felix Adler

Why should there be any more the old dividing line between man and his brother-man? why should the fires of prejudice flare up anew between us? why should we not maintain this common ground which we have found at last, and hedge it round, and protect it — the stronghold of freedom and of all the humanities for the long years to come?

Josef Albers
Josef Albers

Yes it was 1949. How I came to that. That's like how one gets to know a human being. It so happens that I've always had a preference – as everyone has prejudices and preferences – for the square as a shape in preference to the circle as a shape. And I have known for a long time that a circle always fools me by not telling me whether it's standing still or not. And if a circle circulates you

don't see it. The outer curve looks the same whether it moves or does not move. So the square is much more honest and tells me that it is sitting on one line of the four, usually a horizontal one, as a basis. And I have also come to the conclusion that the square is a human invention, which makes it sympathetic to me. Because you don't see it in nature. As we do not see squares in nature, I

thought that it is man-made. But I have corrected myself. Because squares exist in salt crystals, our daily salt. We know this because we can see it in the microscope. On the other hand, we believe we see circles in nature. But rarely precise ones. Mature, it seems, is not a mathematician. Probably there are no straight lines either. Particularly not since Einstein says in his theory of relativity

that there is no straight line, rod knows whether there are or not, I don't. I still like to believe that the square is a human invention. And that tickles me. So when I have a preference for it then I can only say excuse me.

Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom

There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice.

Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom

Lines formed at Ruby Pier - just as a line formed someplace else: Five people, waiting, in five chosen memories, for a little girl named Amy or Annie to grow and to love and to age and to die, and to finally have her questions answered - why she lived and what she lived for. And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust

Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: That each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

Al Capone
Al Capone

The funny part of the whole thing is that a man in this line of business has so much company. I mean his customers. If people did not want beer and wouldn't drink it, a fellow would be crazy for going around trying to sell it!

Al Capone
Al Capone

It's hard, dangerous work, aside from any hate at all, and when a fellow works hard at any line of business he wants to go home and forget about it. He don't want to be afraid to sit near a window or an open door.

Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss

You see life as a contrast between misery and pleasure, Jon; that is not a correct interpretation.”
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb, I should have thought.”
Thought and non-thought is the only valid line of comparison.”
Bit of a bird’s-eye view, isn’t it? That puts us on the same level as the proles.

Shiro Amano
Shiro Amano

A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory… a far-off memory that's like a scattered dream… i want to line the pieces up… yours and mine.