Quotes About Influence

Gentleness is not kindness. His fluid personality tested and stole into the weak places of others until it found it could settle down to its own advantage.

We are all of us palimpsests; we carry the past around, it comes surging up whether or not we want it, it is an albatross, and a crutch.

I control the world so long as I can name it.

That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely

What I could offer Lisa was not the conventional haven of maternal love and concern but my mind and my energy. If she had not acquired these genetically then I was quite prepared to show her how to think and act. I was no good at kissing away tears or telling bedtime stories – any mother can do that: my uses were potentially far more significant.

I cannot write chronologically of Egypt. Ancient Egypt. So-called ancient Egypt. In my history of the world – this realistic kaleidoscopic history – Egypt will have its proper place as the complacent indestructible force that has perpetuated itself in the form of enough carved stone, painted plaster, papyri, granite, gold leaf, lapis lazulis, bits of pot and fragments of wood to fill the museums of thew world. Egypt is not then but now, conditioning the way we look at things.

We all act as hinges - fortuitous links between other people. I link Sylvia to Laszlo, Lisa to Laszlo; Gordon links me to Sylvia.

Lowry and Augustus John)

I always listen to everything you say. You have very authoritative hair.

A change as small as the position of a bond—the link between atoms in a molecule—can lead to enormous differences in properties of a substance and in turn influence the course of history. So this book is not about the history of chemistry; rather it is about chemistry in history.

Son, as long as you live, Satan will use what you see and what you hear against you.

But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.

The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public.

it has been observed that Londoners became more extravagant in the presence of Charles Dickens, so that they might appear more Dickensian, so

The World makes its own Demons, which then the People see.

Those who pursue the process of living are those who create the history

The duke of Norfolk remarked to his chaplain, 'You see, we have hindered priests from having wives.' 'And can your grace', the chaplain replied, 'prevent also men's wives from having priests?

The argot that came to be used in the courts was known as 'Law French'. 'Master' and 'servant' come from the French. 'Crime' and 'treason' and 'felony' are French, as are 'money' and 'payment'. The

Many of the developments that have been described as Norman in fact represented only the acceleration of English custom.

You ask about the effects of my work on others. If I may wax ironical, that is a masculine questions. Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand - in the same sense that I have understood - that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.

Only the government could have made a 'terrorist' out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope….I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition." Nonetheless

Everything we knew from life suggested that America would do what it liked ...

By the way they looked at me, by their perception of me, they would make me into the creature they perceived. I would feel myself becoming a lesser thing. It is the power of men.

He smiled. 'They do not follow the