Benjamin Hapgood Burt Quotes

“When you're all dressed up and no place to go.”

“So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood]”

“What man knows is little enough and most of his general concepts in every field are vitiated by the artificial concepts he has created to cover his ignorance. These concepts must be destroyed. One tool exists that can accomplish this destruction, and this tool is in your hands. It is simply curiosity—the instinct to ask and to question. It should be kept sharp and used without mercy.”

“The Uncertainty Principle states that you can know where a particle is, or you can know where it's going, but you can't know both at the same time. The same, it turns out, is true of people. And when you try, when you look too closely, you get the Observer Effect. By trying to work out what's going on, you're interfering with destiny. A particle can be in two places at once. A particle can interfere with its own past. It can have multiple futures, and multiple pasts. The universe is complicated.”

“This is what it means to love someone. This is what it means to grieve someone. It’s a little bit like a black hole. It’s a little bit like infinity.”

“After nearly a year of mourning, I feel like the Victorians when Edison came along- all those years in the darkness, and then electric light. I've got the earth between my toes.”

“Harriet pushed her hair back and looked at him seriously. 'Sport, what are you going to be when you grow up?''You know what. You know I'm going to be a ball player.''Well, I'm going to be a writer. And when I say that's a mountain, that's a mountain.' Satisfied, she turned back to her town.”

“During the last six months the little girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.”

“All you need to build a house, Is blood and bricks and plaster.”

“Nana's French knickers were surely a symbol of liberty and abandonment, worn only by women who didn't care for conventional frills or superficial nametags. Those french knickers were flags blowing in the wind, like a statement of victory.”