Ray Bradbury Quotes

We have for years been building a society in which everybody plunders everybody, and while we are weary of being plundered, we enjoy the plunder.

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite.

Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.

A corrupt society is terrible for humanity and great for business.

And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

When the young woman leans over the sky, about to water the flowers as well as the weeds, her white front splits open until her milk runs.

Man is a degeneration of what he was.

the rain is coming. little sister, the night broke. the thunder cracked my brain finally. the rain is coming, i promise you. i didn’t mean to but your tears will bring life back. purple flowers grow, the colour blood looks in the veins. they’ll sprout out of my chest. i promise you they’ll crack the ground, grow over the freeways, down the slopes to the sea. i’ll be in their faces. i’ll be in the waves, coming down from the sky. i’ll be inside the one who holds you. and then i won’t be.

The bird thinks it a favor to give the fish a lift in the air

You cannot force things to happen before their time. The Spring Will come and the flowers will blossom, but you cannot force the Spring. The Rain will come, the clouds will cover the sky, the whole thirst of the earth will be gone- but you cannot force it. And this is the beauty... that the more patient you are, the quicker is the coming of Spring.

Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point.

The problem with addicted people, communities, corporations, or countries is that they tend to lie, cheat, or steal to get their 'fix.' Corporations are addicted to profit and governments to power.

To eat off another man's plate. [To live an another's expense.]

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;And love, love sang toward.

I've been to your mountains, I've been to your sea-side, and everywhere I went somebody's wanted a free ride.

All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.

The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa-aa-aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!

We are dust and to dust return. In the end we're neither air, nor fire, nor water, just dirt, neither more nor less, just dirt, and maybe some yellow flowers.

And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning's will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.