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1 " Touchstone watched, suddenly conscious that he probably only had five seconds left to be alone with Sabriel, to say something, to say anything. Perhaps the last five seconds they ever would have alone together.I am not afraid, he said to himself." I love you," he whispered. " I hope you don't mind. "
2 " As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: " Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything." She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on. "
3 " People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water. "
4 " After reading some of my stories, I once had a friend say to me, " I'd love to spend five minutes in your head to see what's going on in there." I warned them, " If you spent five seconds in my mind you'd probably run out screaming and never speak to me again. "
5 " I heard someone say one time that 'anger after five seconds is just pride. "
― Kevin Breel , Boy Meets Depression: Or Life Sucks and Then You Live
6 " After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him. "
― Douglas Adams , The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
7 " War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said. " Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?" " Absol—well, okay." " Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?" " All right, I'll grant you that, but—" " Saving civilization from a horde of—" " It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply. " Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge? "
8 " There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love — oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds — the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically . . . . "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Demons
9 " Yeah, computers are going to take over the programming business because they have become so fast recently that they can solve the Halting Problem in five seconds flat. "
10 " Genuine expressions of emotion rarely persist longer than five seconds and almost never longer than 10. A fixed smile is likely to conceal anger, anxiety, or some other negative emotion. "
