Of all things I liked books best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading. He did not permit it and would fly in a rage when he caught me in the act. He hid the candles when he found that I was reading in secret. He did not want me to spoil my eyes. But I obtained tallow, made the wicking and cast the sticks into tin forms, and every night I would bush the keyhole and the cracks and read, often till dawn.
Nikola TeslaRelated topics
act best bush cast catch dawn father found fly hid keyhole large library manage night passion permit rage read reading secret spoil tallow till tin try wicking things sticks eyesRelated quotes
The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.
John Constable
I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.
Haruki Murakami
What they don't realize is that I'm not in the business to make clothes. I'm not in the business to make more money for myself, for Christ's sake. This is the reason Patagonia exists - to put into action the recommendations I read about in books to avoid environmental collapse. That's the reason I'm in business - to try to clean up our own act, and try to influence other companies to do the right thing, and try to influence our customers to do the right thing. So we're not going to change.
Yvon Chouinard
When Frankie Goes To Hollywood were still going strong, we made a point of being as Spinal Tap as possible. Yes, we had food fights. Yes, items were thrown out of hotel windows. But one childish prank I liked at the time was when we stayed in those really posh hotels where, at night, you could put your shoes out and in the morning they've been cleaned. We amused ourselves by roaming the corridors at night and having a crap in each pair of shoes we found. We even made bets: whoever filled the most shoes, won.
Holly Johnson
And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [...] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry”). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals-my old and valued friends-Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten.
Oliver Sacks
