Our Lord God doesn't do great things except by violence, as they say
The further you go in writing the more alone you are. Most of your best and oldest friends die. Others move away. You do not see them except rarely, but you write and have much the same contact with them as though you were together at the café in the old days. You exchange comic, sometimes cheerfully obscene and irresponsible letters, and it is almost as good as talking. But you are more alone because that is how you must work and the time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you feel you have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.
International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction. . . . We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
The key to culture is it's a framework for making decisions. And if it's baked into your culture, people learn how to make decisions across that culture without you ever saying anything. You never have to really do anything except watch and promote and move people around.
The unfortunate thing about working for yourself is that you have the worst boss in the world. I work every day of the year except at Christmas, when I work a half day.
It was the shaving that bothered me the most. I'm not a great fan of shaving and I had to be really clean-shaven, hands, head, hairline, all the fluff off my face, everything except my eyebrows, so this sheen, this kind of polish they used on me, would stick.
I love the atmosphere at the mall - everything about Christmas. I don't think anything specific gets me in the holiday spirit except for the holidays themselves.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be. . .
Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms — if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. Everything that mattered except one lousy picture was in the trash, but it felt so great. I started jogging, wanting to put even more distance between myself and school. It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said no matter how much they attacked him and the Nation of Islam under his leadership, they only helped the Nation to grow. So, the more they attacked me and the more I withstood that onslaught, the more thousands of people came out to, at least, hear a man that was being so vilified in the media. When they recognized that they were not hurting but helping me, they decided they wouldn't say anything except to continue to discredit. So, there is a conscious effort not to publicize anything that the Nation is doing of value.
Remember, Monsieur that roses are not gathered except in the midst of thorns and that heroic acts of virtue are accomplished only in weakness.
I am not interested in the past, except as the road to the future.