Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

It is indeed a surprising and fortunate fact that nature can be expressed by relatively low-order mathematical functions.

Order is Heaven's first law; and this confessed, some are, and must be, greater than the rest, more rich, more wise; but who infers from hence that such are happier, shocks all common sense. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; bliss is the same in subject or in king.

..if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.

Don’t.” I walked up to him. “If it ever comes down to a situation between me and you, save yourself. I’m not worth dying for.” “Princess, I-” “None of us are,” I said, looking at him seriously. “Not the Queen or any of the Markis or Marksinna. That’s a direct order from the Princess, and you have to follow it. Save yourself.” “I don’t understand.” Duncan’s whole face scrunched in confusion. “But… if it’s as you wish, Princess.” “It is. Thank you,” I smiled at him and walked into the palace.

Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

Know you that Allah has made Islam the most sublime path for attainment of His supreme pleasure and the highest standards of his worship and obedience. He has favoured it with noble precepts, exalted principles, undoubtable arguments, unchallengeable supremacy and undeniable wisdom. It is up to you to maintain the eminence and dignity granted to it by the Lord, to follow it sincerely, to do justice to its articles of faith and belief, to obey implicitly its tenets and orders and to give it the proper place in your lives.

The Creator, the fountain of all wisdom, the approver of perpetual order, the eternal and superessential spring of geometry and harmonics.

What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.

As individuals, and as a society, we can choose to take responsibility for ourselves. In doing so we have to accept that sometimes when things go wrong, it is just an accident. In order to change how we lay blame, we’re going to have to change our over-protective habits; children can only learn to take responsibility when given a chance to assess and mitigate risk for themselves.

It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rule of law. Notice how much order we have?

For a woman ... to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her ambitions, her emotional and intellectual capacities, her social duties, her tender virtues, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration to the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity - a perversion, if you will.

Triumphs against the natural order of living exact unforeseen payments. At the same time that man attempts to straighten a crooked nature, he is striving to annihilate space, which seems but another phase of the war against substance. We ignore the fact that space and matter are shock absorbers; the more we diminish them the more we reduce our privacy and security.

For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.

Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order... catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society.

Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine, that woman crossing the street, and those children over there playing ball.

If the State does not enjoy a monopoly of violence, which then gives it the power to order people's lives and to compel them to obey decisions over which they have no control, or just limited control, then I think you have a consistently libertarian society.

Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

If the Almighty himself played the violin, the credits would still read 'Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky', in that order.

We exist in order to actualize the deepest desires of our hearts.

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

Terrorism kills far fewer people than cigarettes, or alcohol, or car accidents. But we don't see ourselves restructuring society and lives in order to make those threats go away.

Deep down? That sounds like settling to me. You shouldn't have to venture deep down in order to get to love.

All intelligent investing is value investing - acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.