Rat/culture/fiction

Famous quotes containing the words rat, culture and/or fiction:

    A rat crept softly through the vegetation
    Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
    While I was fishing in the dull canal
    On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
    Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
    And on the king my father’s death before him.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
    Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)