Sydney's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 54)

"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
18,518 people liked it

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

tags: life
11,417 people liked it

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

tags: angelou, maya
5,125 people liked it

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou

tags: inspirational, stories, writing
2,740 people liked it

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

tags: dreams, love, reality, sleep
10,606 people liked it

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy
7,258 people liked it

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation
7,718 people liked it

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

tags: advertising, apple, change, commercial, computers, different, madness, misfits, nonconformity, progressive, quo, rebels, status, think, troublemakers
7,132 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
7,898 people liked it

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: accomplishment, be-yourself, conformity, individuality, world
7,004 people liked it

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: friendship
7,576 people liked it

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle

tags: books, children, difficult, grown-ups, write, writers, writing
3,074 people liked it

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: life
4,394 people liked it

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

tags: fear, inspirational
2,970 people liked it

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

tags: body, soul
3,524 people liked it

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
— Henry David Thoreau

tags: confident, direction, dream, dreams, imagine, life, live
2,425 people liked it

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: good, writing
1,932 people liked it

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

tags: inspirational, love
2,525 people liked it

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one."
— John Lennon

tags: beatles, connection, dreamers, dreaming, dreams, hope, inspirational, peace
1,843 people liked it

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
— Robert Frost

tags: reading, writing
563 people liked it

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
— Sylvia Plath

tags: writing
584 people liked it

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: writing
169 people liked it

"Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn't live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist."
— Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn)

tags: breaking-dawn, death, fate, life, love, soulmates, true, twilight
930 people liked it

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."
— Saul Bellow

tags: imagination, inspiration, writing
275 people liked it

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."
— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

tags: writing
83 people liked it

"Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either."
— Meg Cabot

tags: writing
187 people liked it

"You can make anything by writing."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: writing
156 people liked it

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: writing
181 people liked it

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

tags: moon, writing
121 people liked it

"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."
— Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)

tags: inspirational, tattoo, writing
96 people liked it

"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: writing
200 people liked it

"Writing a book is a horrible,
exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."
— George Orwell

tags: writing
84 people liked it

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: writing
70 people liked it

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."
— Peter De Vries

tags: humor, writing
82 people liked it

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Politics and the English Language, 1946"
— George Orwell

tags: writing
62 people liked it

"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
— Colette

tags: editing, writing
50 people liked it

"Learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading."
— Eudora Welty

tags: inspirational, writing
66 people liked it

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."
— Stephen King

tags: writing
155 people liked it

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."
— Isaac Asimov

tags: writing
50 people liked it

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: writing
132 people liked it

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."
— Ursula K. Le Guin

tags: brighter, guin, le, souls, writing
46 people liked it

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
— Cyril Connolly

tags: faithfulness, principles, writing
42 people liked it

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

tags: writing
70 people liked it

"What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud."
— Louis Sachar

tags: books, writing
22 people liked it

"E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

tags: inspirational, life, writing
58 people liked it

"...a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it."
— Ian McEwan (Atonement)

tags: writing
28 people liked it

"Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper."
— Erica Jong

tags: writing
18 people liked it

"Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world."
— Robert McKee

tags: writing
13 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