Best 309 quotes in «western quotes» category

If others fell by the wayside, dear women and strong, loved by men, how had she, single and unloved, kept her sanity?

If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they’ll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that people aren’t always who you think they are.

If you ask today what art is, what its function is, what the meaning of art is and why one should create art, the answer given oftentimes by Western philosophers of art and those who special- ize in modern aesthetics is ‘‘art for art’s sake.’’ The modern response is that you just create art for the sake of art; but this was never the answer of traditional civilizations where one created art for both the sake of attainment of inner perfection and for human need in the deepest sense—because the needs of man are not only physical, they are also spiritual. We are as much in need of beauty as of the air that we breathe.

I have no roots anywhere else. I have no 'at home' but here. And I feel doomed. Like I'm riding to Hell on a fast horse. I'm not afraid of dying, but I don't want to die alone. I don't want some no one finding me finished off and asking a sheriff, 'Who's that ?

I laugh. Yer crazy, I says. I was fine till I met you, he says.

I know what it’s like to be different. I’m a Native American in a white world.

I know what you're up to." "I doubt that." Hayes leaned toward her, his hand looping around the back of McKenzie's neck as he gently drew her to him. "Because if you could see what I was up to, then you'd know I was about to kiss you.

I know you think I’ve behaved like a cad, so I’m coming clean. I love you, Tess. I have for a long time. I ache for you. Every morning I wake up, wishing you were in my arms. Back when Cassie was at her mom’s, I was relieved to be thinking about you and not her so much anymore, until I realized it meant that I was in love with you. I fell for you that first morning, when I saw you coming out of the garage with Dave. I couldn’t tell you the other day, but I wanted you to know.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Maybe I have been protecting myself, but mostly, I wanted to protect you.

In the distance, he could see a large star made out of red and green lights on the side of a barn, a reminder that Christmas was coming.

I’m not trying to start an argument with you,” William assured him. “I suppose I don’t know what it’s like to be a true revolutionary, though I think I’ve held some…similar…ideals. At times. Thought I could change things, if I fought hard enough.” “What did you try to change?” “Myself, in hopes that it would change others’ opinions of me.” “That is a bit more selfish than what we aspire to,” Luis clarified. William shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I pressed others to change as well. Guess I just didn’t fight hard enough for any of it.

Il pastore augurò Buon Natale, il coro riprese a cantare e l’organo a suonare. Fu in quel momento che Maggie sentì che lui era vicino. Si girò appena e lo vide. Se ne stava in piedi nel corridoio centrale, a qualche passo da lei, lo Stetson fra le mani, un’espressione indecifrabile sul volto. Il sangue prese a correrle troppo veloce nelle vene e, per quanto faticasse ad ammetterlo, si sentì così felice che un sorriso le illuminò il volto, come se lui fosse tornato a casa dopo un lungo viaggio. Già, quale casa? Mitch, invece, rimase di pietra, come se la chiamata di Maggie non fosse che un’altra scocciatura da risolvere. Il sorriso si spense poco per volta sulle labbra di Maggie e gli occhi, prima ridenti, si strinsero in uno sguardo interrogativo. Se il cowboy preferiva che fra loro ci fosse il gelo, che gelo fosse. Non era obbligata a sorridergli, in fondo, né a far conversazione. Lo avrebbe solo ringraziato per il passaggio e poi, estranei come prima. Mitch le fece cenno con la testa di seguirla e, senza neppure aspettarla, ruotò su se stesso e si incamminò verso l’uscita del tempio. Maggie sentì il suo amor proprio reagire all’atteggiamento scostante di Mitch, ma decise di fingere un’indifferenza e una calma che non provava; si prese il tempo necessario per ringraziare i signori Curtis e per salutare le altre persone che, come lei, erano in fila verso l’uscita.

In the West, people learn through the Socratic tradition. The education system was influenced by Western philosophy and is based on constantly questioning the knowledge that’s handed to you and arriving at the truth through that process of questioning. The Indian system took off from the Guru-Shishyha tradition in which your virtue as a student lay in taking tradition or parampara as it is given to you and passing it on to the next generation in the exact same way.

In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized.

In western societies many people become sick in their thirties, develop serious medical conditions in their forties and are disabled in their fifties.

Islamic tradition does not recognize such presumptuous and conceited preoccupation as "reviewing", which is now widely practised among scholars who regard highly this legacy of the Western tradition modern scholarship. a Muslim scholar, with the work of another before him, would either - according to Islamic tradition - refute it (radd), or elaborate it further in commentary (sharh) as the occasion demands. there is no such thing as "reviewing" it, whether the "review" is termed as such or as any other term which describes it. If there are petty mistakes they turn a blind eye to them; if there are obscurities they explain them in commentary - they polish a positive work and make it shine.

I only swing for one girl. But if she's into a certain kind of kink, who am I to deny her such pleasantries?"~ Luke Wagner

I think the best way I can put it,” Tom summarized, “was what I was once told that a Confederate prisoner said to his Union captor. The Yank said: ‘Why do you fight us so hard, Reb?’, and his prisoner replied: ‘Because you are here, Yank’.

I tell you, mister, if there’s anything good about being a hot-tempered bitch, it’s knowing right well what buttons to push in others seeing as they’re the same ones what get your own back up.

I think of it like a caterpillar--a wrinkly, ugly worm with traces of dull colors on it. But when the worm metamorphoses, it becomes something truly beautiful.” Charli

It is my expectation that the next world war will be a war on radiation, started by countries that have recognized the dangerous man-made global radiation environment created by modern western governments.

It is not an unusual life curve for Westerners - to live i n and be shaped by the bigness, sparseness, space clarity & hopefulness of the West, to go away for study and enlargement and the perspective that distance and dissatisfaction can give, and then to return to what pleases the sight and enlists the loyalty and demands the commitment.

It is not easy for students to realize that to ask, as they often do, whether God exists and is merciful, just, good, or wrathful, is simply to project anthropomorphic concepts into a sphere to which they do not pertain. As the Upaniṣads declare: 'There, words do not reach.' Such queries fall short of the question. And yet—as the student must also understand—although that mystery is regarded in the Orient as transcendent of all thought and naming, it is also to be recognized as the reality of one’s own being and mystery. That which is transcendent is also immanent. And the ultimate function of Oriental myths, philosophies, and social forms, therefore, is to guide the individual to an actual experience of his identity with that; tat tvam asi ('Thou art that') is the ultimate word in this connection. By contrast, in the Western sphere—in terms of the orthodox traditions, at any rate, in which our students have been raised—God is a person, the person who has created this world. God and his creation are not of the same substance. Ontologically, they are separate and apart. We, therefore, do not find in the religions of the West, as we do in those of the East, mythologies and cult disciplines devoted to the yielding of an experience of one’s identity with divinity. That, in fact, is heresy. Our myths and religions are concerned, rather, with establishing and maintaining an experience of relationship—and this is quite a different affair. Hence it is, that though the same mythological images can appear in a Western context and an Eastern, it will always be with a totally different sense. This point I regard as fundamental.

It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." He laughed. "No, honey, that would be you.

It's the easiest thing in the world to get to California-you just aim yourself west and start walking.

It was one of those dreams from which she woke up depressed about her reality, filled with a longing that pulled at her insides, wishing the dream could have lasted forever, or at least much longer than it had.

I want to die.” May shook her head. “Let me get a knife.” “I’ve made a horrible mess of things.” “Haven’t we all? If you don’t want your supper burned, die quietly while I get back to the kitchen.

Many lessons can be learned from the history of Western civilization, but one of them is especially clear. Lack of involvement in the affairs of one's society can lead to a sense of powerlessness. In an age that is often crisis-laden and chaotic, an understanding of our Western heritage and its lessons can be instrumental in helping us create new models for the future. For we are all creators of history, and the future of Western and indeed world civilization depends on us.

My father had seen in a flash that they were all gunmen, so he told me to stand still, although we were right in a possible line of fire. If near a gun-fight and the weapons are wielded by amateurs, run for your life; if professionals are handling the trigger, stand still — they know where they are shooting.

It looks like you’ll be dying in Hellfire after all, Captain!” Slaughter shouted. “Just like your family in that Georgia shack did. Ha! Oh yes, I heard their screams inside! It was music to my ears!” Tom shouted back across the flames. “Whether you die by my hands today or not, you’ll be the one in Hell, with your twin Lucifer, you MURDERING BASTARD!

I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.

Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.

Money is a tool we use to reach certain ends. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s hard to come by, though, so when opportunities arise, we need to make the most of them.

No matter how much he loves you, sometimes he'd just rather have an inch of rain than anything else in the world.

Off in the distance there were galleons of shock-white cumulus coulds gathering in the wide sky's cerulean harbor, and their azure shadows floated over the flatlands. Billy surprised himself by saying: "I love it here. I'll never leave.

Not hardly.” Reese lowered his pistol, letting the dread work through him in a tremble. “That was just a battle cry.

Now, if you don’t know ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’, then ‘Dixie’ will do nicely…” Tom began, cocking the pistol. Jesse stared, mouth agape at the carnage in the room. “NOW PLAY!” Tom exploded.

No. Some you put to the bullet. Some to the tongue. Reckon we’ll have to see, yet, which way this is going to turn.

not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.

One cowboy is never enough.

One more salt to try," Kellan said, reaching into the box. He brought a jar of black, flaky crystals up to the light. "Black diamond finishing salt. Extremely rare and too bold for those with meek palates. But, for a true connoisseur, the flavor is incomparable." He lowered her head and torso to the ground and pushed her sweater up to expose her stomach and ribs. "I want to sample it on your skin.

People didn’t love all of this when they still had it. If you love something, you do what’s best for it. You don’t destroy it.

Our world must be hell, then. It must be the hell of some other place where all of us committed atrocious sins of some sort, and now we’re stuck here until we die and either come back or are whisked off to some other hell. It couldn’t be worse than this one, though.

People have a right to good health and that right is being violated by corporate controlled governments.

Out west everything has its own space. Every little ramshackle cabin, shack, hut sits perched atop its own little piece of destiny with room to breathe, room to live, room to die. You'll see them, the dead ones, sitting by the side of the road like some faded gray and rotting mystery, thinking about the good ol days before trains and cars and wanting more.

People don’t really have much of a choice when the heart falls. I’m lucky enough that mine just so happened to fall for you, Misty.”—Dylan to Misty in, When the Heart Falls

Put me down.” Of course, the man couldn’t hear her. She barely heard the scratchy whisper. “I said—” “I heard you, Mrs. McBride, but I’m not putting you down.

Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechanism for elevating the achievements of Muslims to the level of a civilization rivaling that of Europe rendered it all the more irresistible and gained for it universal acceptance throughout the Muslim world.

Reese sucked in a breath and played faster, hurling the anger through his fingers until it spun all his fear, all his rage, into the gentle voice of music.

Put me down.” Of course, the man couldn’t hear her. She barely heard the scratchy whisper. “I said—” “I heard you, Mrs. McBride, but I’m not putting you down.” —Carson and Hattie in “Hattie of Crooked Creek