Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
That she bear children is not a woman's significance. But that she bear herself, that is her supreme and risky fate.
Tragedy looks to me like man in love with his own defeat. Which is only a sloppy way of being in love with yourself.
So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.
To every man who struggles with his own soul in mystery, a book that is a book flowers once, and seeds, and is gone.
If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.
I'm a terribly irresponsible eater - I love soft-boiled eggs and chocolate. I never met a chocolate I could not eat.
If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure.
For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.
It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.
The morning’s recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.
Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.
I would not be at all surprised to find out . . . that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.
Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.
Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.
Much of what we now consider 'personality' will be explained away as structural and chemical functions of the brain.
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.
When you fall in love, it is spring no matter when. Leaves falling make no difference, they are from another season.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame - to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.
Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.
People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.
No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.
Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.
I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.
For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.
We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it.
Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow - they don't hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.
I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid.
It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important. What counts is that we don't betray each other.
Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.
Probably the best nonsense poetry is produced gradually and accidentally, by communities rather than by individuals.
The human beings did not hate Animal Farm any less now that it was prospering; indeed, they hated it more than ever.
Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.
His chains chinked softly. I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health. Yes, I meant for him to die.
They will not love me, you say? When have they ever loved me? How can I lose something I have never owned? - Stannis
So young," said Wyman Manderly, "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived he would've grown up to be a Frey.
[Melisandre] "His Grace is growing fond of you." [Jon] "I can tell. He only threatened to behead me twice." Page 58
Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself
There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.
For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.
Our house was awash in books, and my mother doled out her favorites like they were special treats - which they were.
They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.
To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.
The exceptions of the scrupulous put one in mind of some general pardons where everything is forgiven except crimes.
A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.
Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side.
To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.