"Our minds are finite, and yet even in the circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can of that infinitude..."
~Alfred North Whitehead
"..but woman was made of a part of man, after that he was a living soul: Yet she was not produced from Adam's foot, to be his too low inferior; nor from his head to be his superior, but from his side, near his heart, to be his equal; that where he is lord, she may be lady..."
~A Muzzle for Melastomas by Rachel Speght
"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others."
~Dostoevsky. in The Brothers Karamazov
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because
they tell us that dragons exist, but because
they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
- G.K. Chesterton
Courage shall grow keener, clearer the will, the heart fiercer as our force faileth
~Anglo Saxon War poem
"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."
~Life of Pi - Yann Martel
"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."
~Jane Austin in Persuasion
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."
~Jane Austin in Pride and Prejudice
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life."
~Life of Pi - Yann Martel
"When you've eliminated the impossible, that which remains, regardless how improbable, is the one prevailing truth."
~The motto of Sherlock Holmes
"Ah! How the whole of human wisdom is so eloquently summed by those two beautiful words: Wait and hope."
~The Count of Monte Cristo
"It is my firm belief that the best of writers are always the worst of people. For they have put all of their eloquence and soul, everything that is beautiful about themselves, into their work, leaving behind nothing more than a hollow shell of tact and formality."
~Lord Henry Watton, from "The Portrait of Dorian Gray"
"Most of the miseries of the world were caused by wars. And, when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about."
~Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
"The course of True Love never did run smooth." - Lysander (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
"Love looks not with the Eyes but with the Mind." - Helena (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
"It is in his darkest hour that a man finds his true calling"-The Devil's Advocate by Bernard Shaw
"Here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Fox in The Little Prince
"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)
"There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't."
— Lemony Snicket
But there are times in this harum-scarum world when figuring out the right thing to do is quite simple, but doing the right thing is simply impossible...."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)
"A great flame follows a little spark."
— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Life sometimes get so bogged down in the details, you forget you're living it.
Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.
If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
~My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Adversity makes me, and prosperity makes monsters.
-Hugo Victor
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
-Hugo Victor
"Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember."
~Victor Frankenstein
“Any destiny at all, however long and complicated, in reality consists of a single moment: the moment in which a man once and for all knows who he is.”
~Jorge Luis Borges "Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)".
"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
~Oscar Wilde
Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself
~D.H Lawrance in Women in love
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye, and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
~ The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
~From Moby Dick
"What we do for ourselves dies with us, what we do for others and the world is and remains, immortal."
~Albert Pine
"Even a minute of dying is better than an eternity of nothingness. "
~Darren Shan (Sons Of Destiny)
"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."
~Mary (Pride & Prejudice)
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
~Daisy - David Copperfield
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
~Le Petit Prince / The Little Prince
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
~Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear. Frank Herbert's Dune
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