Famous quotes containing the words dire, straits and/or mark:
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“There are no such oysters, terrapin, or canvas-back ducks as there were in those days; the race is extinct. It is strange how things degenerate.... I passed, the other day, the deserted house of Mrs. Gerry, which I used to think so lordly. It stands alone now amid the surrounding sky-scrapers, and reminds me of Don Quixote going out to fight the windmills. It should always remain to mark the difference between the past and the present.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)