The Day He Proposed Famous Quotes & Sayings

Let us think of the human race as if it were a single human being," Ibn Rushd proposed. "A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge. The battle between reason and superstition may be seen as mankind's long adolescence, and the triumph of reason will be its coming of age. It is not that God does not exist but that like any proud parent he awaits the day when his child can stand on its own two feet, make its own way in the world, and be free of its dependence upon him. — Salman Rushdie

One day [Rabbi Spear] talked about his theory of happiness. He proposed that human feelings respond only to contrast and change, not to constancy, just as eyesight responds to contrasts of light and dark and to movement. The rabbi speculated that if emotions are similar to eyesight and other senses, then perhaps emotions were developed by nature as a survival mechanism. — Alan Lightman

He sighed. "You've chosen poorly, you know. When we return to England you'll be celebrated, just as I will be. If you've decided to abandon me, you might have netted someone titled, someone with enough wealth to see you esteemed and me able to continue my botanical studies. That would have been the aim of a dutiful daughter."
"I'm not abandoning you, and I chose Shaw. You're the one who declined to attend your daughter's wedding."
"You never used to speak to me like this. A dutiful child would never have accepted a proposal from the first man who asked, simply because he did ask."
"He didn't propose to me. I proposed to him."
Finally he looked more surprised than angry and frustrated. "You proposed to him?"
"Yes, because I didn't think he believed me when I said that I loved him. I can hardly blame him, since I had to think about it for an entire day after he said it to me, but I do love him. More than I can articulate to you. — Suzanne Enoch

I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in the corridor of the literature building and asked what he was doing wearing a fraternity pledge pin (wearing it on the chest of the new V-neck pullover in which his mother said he looked so collegiate). Miss Benson's response to his proposed scheme for self-improvement was at once so profound and so simply put that Zuckerman went around for days repeating the simple interrogative sentence to himself; like Of Times and the River, it verified something he had known in his bones all along, but in which he could not placed his faith until it had been articulated by someone of indisputable moral prestige and purity : "Why," Caroline Benson asked the seventeen-year-old boy, "should you want to learn a thing like that? — Philip Roth

One day on the plains he had an angry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspected driver agreed, and threw down his pistol-whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and shot him dead! — Mark Twain

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me: ... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. — Thomas Jefferson

This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day. — Robert K. Massie

It is the condition of our present state to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence ... It is, however, necessary for the idea of perfection to be proposed, that we may have some object to which our endeavours are to be directed; and he that is most deficient in the duties of life makes some atonement for his faults if he warns others against his own failings, and hinders, by the salubrity of his admonitions, the contagion of his example. — Samuel Johnson

As the company grew, Charles remained in Wichita, working ten-hour days, six days a week. When he proposed to his future wife, Liz, he did so reportedly over the phone, and she could hear him flipping through his busy date book in search of an open day for the wedding. In preparation, he required her to study free-market economics. — Jane Mayer