Kate's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 134)

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)

tags: life, love
162 people liked it

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."
— Kurt Vonnegut

130 people liked it

"Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasinly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen

tags: forgiveness, love
54 people liked it

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

tags: love
1,519 people liked it

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: action, change, inspirational, philosophy, wish
11,267 people liked it

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

tags: action, actions, disappointed, disappointment, discover, dream, dreams, explore, sail
7,503 people liked it

"A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer."
— George MacDonald (Lilith)

tags: freedom
8 people liked it

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
— James Baldwin

tags: books, empathy, pain, reading
533 people liked it

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey)

tags: empathy, friends, friendship, inspirational
1,205 people liked it

"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: god
539 people liked it

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
— Charles Dickens

tags: chocolate, friendship
1,957 people liked it

"If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down."
— Ray Bradbury

tags: inspirational
126 people liked it

"Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it."
— Ray Bradbury

tags: common, life, sense
51 people liked it

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

tags: america, books, politics
1,005 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
17,754 people liked it

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

tags: animals, books, dogs, friends, humor
6,528 people liked it

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: love
258 people liked it

"If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both -- you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury

tags: writing
33 people liked it

"The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families."
— Jay McInerney (The Last of the Savages)

tags: family, friendship, humor
307 people liked it

"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: god, pain
230 people liked it

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
— C.S. Lewis (Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

tags: christianity
219 people liked it

"The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain."
— Madeleine L'Engle

tags: pain
34 people liked it

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

tags: action, attitude, choice, imagination, inspiration, life, pretend
961 people liked it

"If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
— Ray Bradbury

tags: writing
39 people liked it

"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

45 people liked it

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: creativity, invention, quip, wings, writing
383 people liked it

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow."
— William Shakespeare

tags: friendship
663 people liked it

"What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?"
— Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity Third Edition/Expanded)

6 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
10,330 people liked it

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
— Kurt Vonnegut

379 people liked it

"...you’ll find out it’s little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it’s full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You’ve time to seek and find. I know, you’re after the broad effect now, I suppose that’s fit and proper. But you got to look at grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well, and good. Right now such things are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn’t because you never learned to use them. If you had your way you’d pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you’d leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you’d have a devil of a time thinking up things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life."
— Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)

5 people liked it

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way to make life more bearable."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

139 people liked it

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Timequake)

151 people liked it

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: censorship, freedom, writersblock, writing
111 people liked it

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut

88 people liked it

"Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
— Kurt Vonnegut

64 people liked it

"Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: philosophy, reading
74 people liked it

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: critics, reviewers, writing
65 people liked it

"I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: beatles
78 people liked it

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: crayon, quip, writing
57 people liked it

"Make love when you can. It's good for you."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

53 people liked it

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

tags: college, semicolons, writing
331 people liked it

"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life."
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening, and Selected Stories)

31 people liked it

"She was moved by a kind of commiseration... a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium."
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening)

6 people liked it

"The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies"
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin)

tags: art
6 people liked it

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: body, soul
3,342 people liked it

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: children-s, entertainment, stories
879 people liked it

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: inspirational, prayer
234 people liked it