Mary's quotes

(showing 1-39 of 39)

"If they give you lined paper, write the other way."
— William Carlos Williams

10 people liked it

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

tags: literacy
6,127 people liked it

"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself."
— George Bernard Shaw

tags: books, children
1,025 people liked it

"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?"
— Neil Gaiman

tags: librarians
150 people liked it

"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim."
— Linton Weeks

tags: librarians, libraries, post, washington
29 people liked it

"It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers,and schlemiels, whores and night owls ... three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calulations of their next big mistake."
— Michael Chabon

tags: donut-shop, drunks, gossip, mistakes, night, police
2 people liked it

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselssly into the past."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

tags: book, inspirational
261 people liked it

"All literature is gossip"
— Truman Capote

10 people liked it

"It may be a childish torment, but we do not get to choose our demons."
— Andrew Sean Greer (The Story of a Marriage: A Novel)

2 people liked it

"We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives."
— Andrew Sean Greer (The Story of a Marriage: A Novel)

1 person liked it

"Miss X has always been a ditherer -- she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

3 people liked it

"Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy."
— Charlaine Harris

tags: books, vacation
349 people liked it

"“Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.” "
— Daniel Webster

2 people liked it

"It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious."
— John Irving (The Hotel New Hampshire)

tags: art, life, work
36 people liked it

"Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you"
— John Irving (The Hotel New Hampshire)

4 people liked it

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

tags: be-yourself, confidence, individuality, those-who-matter
18,301 people liked it

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

tags: best, life, love, mistakes, out-of-control, truth, worst
10,820 people liked it

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

tags: wisdom
9,307 people liked it

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

tags: women
7,028 people liked it

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

tags: beatles, fate, life, planning, plans
6,936 people liked it

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

tags: exercise, humor, laziness
5,909 people liked it

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom
6,233 people liked it

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

tags: humor
5,735 people liked it

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

tags: friend, friendship, knowledge, love
6,475 people liked it

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

tags: books, classic, humor
5,571 people liked it

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor, procrastination
5,656 people liked it

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

tags: deadlines, humor, work
5,363 people liked it

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

tags: inspirational
5,063 people liked it

"The best of my education has come from the public library... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don't need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library."
— Lesley Conger

2 people liked it

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."
— Anne Herbert

tags: books, money, reading
85 people liked it

"Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills!"
— Charles Ogden

tags: books, librarians, libraries
79 people liked it

"Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone."
— Jennifer Weiner

tags: writing
67 people liked it

"If your library is not "unsafe," it probably isn't doing its job."
— John Berry

tags: books, libraries, library, reading
49 people liked it

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me."
— Anatole France

tags: books, lending, library
33 people liked it

"If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good."
— Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope)

27 people liked it

"She'd always been a little excitable, a little more passionate about books than your average person, but she was supposed to be -- she was a librarian, after all.
"
— Sarah Beth Durst (Out of the Wild)

tags: books, children-s, librarian, library
21 people liked it

"...but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
— Anna Quindlen

27 people liked it

"The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection, or are ‘brutally honest.’ When someone tells, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as a true equal, a friend…And the best men cook for you."
— Whitney Otto (How to Make an American Quilt)

tags: dating, men
7 people liked it

"You have to choose your combinations careful. The right choices will enhance your quilt. The wrong choices will dull the colors and hide their original beauty. There are no rules you can follow. You have to go by instinct and you have to be brave."
— Whitney Otto (How to Make an American Quilt)

4 people liked it

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