#counter

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#mystical-encounter #reality #unicorn #dreams

Even when a person has all of life's comforts - good food, good shelter, a companion - he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation. ↗

— Dalai Lama

#comforts #companion #encountering #even #food

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril. ↗

— Lucretius

#encounters #great #over #part #peril

My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion. ↗

— Wentworth Miller

#comment #encounters #family #friends #group

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. ↗

— John Milton

#awe #bestows #change #encounter #everyday

According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts. ↗

— Ferdinand Mount

#action #against #bin #bush #chief

I'm fascinated by the ways in which people express themselves, because their responses are often counter to what they're actually feeling. Like when they're frightened, they tend to freeze. When they're angry, it doesn't always come out as volume. There are wonderful contradictions in the way that people express their emotions. ↗

— Edward Norton

#always #angry #because #come #contradictions

Whenever I go on a show with a comedian I just counter punch. ↗

— Bill O'Reilly

#counter #go #i #just #punch

In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed. ↗

— Serge Daney

#age #chances #emotions #encounter #images

I knew from the beginning that privacy was going to be a huge issue, especially with regard to applying Total Information Awareness in counterterrorism. Because if the technology development was successful, a logical place to apply it was inside the United States. ↗

— John Poindexter

#applying #awareness #because #beginning #counterterrorism