autism spectrum quotient

Prose: ordinary speech or writing, without metrical structure.



You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5



Noise, crowding, pollution, and the sheer rush of our complex, modern society are rapidly becoming as oppressive to many individuals as the worst kind of political dictatorship. ~Thomas F. Eagleton



We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld



Aside from new babies, new mothers must be the most beautiful creatures on earth. ~Terri Guillemets



It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears. ~Helen Keller



He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin



Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly. ~Andre Norton



Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1859



For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. ~Friedrich Nietzsche



Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory. ~Albert Schweitzer



Those who can, do. Those who can do more, volunteer. ~Author Unknown



I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105. ~Bob Hope



Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. ~George Bernard Shaw



History is past politics, and politics present history. ~John Robert Seeley, The Growth of British Policy



The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde



As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~John F. Kennedy



If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi. ~Richard Preston



It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. ~John Stuart Mill



Ah, steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fiber? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines cleaving the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on! ~Nikolai V. Gogol, Dead Souls, 1842, translated from Russian (above is combination of translations by Bernard Guildert Guerney, Richard Peaver, and Larisa Voloklonsky)