Martina's quotes

(showing 1-49 of 49)

"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not."
— Nick Hornby

tags: books
162 people liked it

"Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

40 people liked it

"I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900."
— Nick Hornby (Housekeeping vs. The Dirt)

tags: books, reading
11 people liked it

"I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)

29 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
5,446 people liked it

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

tags: books, library, reading
1,420 people liked it

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

tags: friends, humor, people
2,191 people liked it

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898"
— Mark Twain

tags: austen, criticism, jerk, reading, writing
250 people liked it

"Perhaps it it our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!"
— Jane Austen (Emma)

180 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
5,985 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
6,051 people liked it

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor
1,993 people liked it

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: happiness
688 people liked it

"The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it."
— Ernest Hemingway

48 people liked it

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: drinking
28 people liked it

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: listening
80 people liked it

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: war
37 people liked it

"Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man."
— Homer (The Odyssey)

tags: inspirational, life
50 people liked it

"Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share."
— Homer (The Odyssey)

8 people liked it

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
— Plato

tags: philosophy
307 people liked it

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. "
— Plato

tags: love, poetry, song
660 people liked it

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
— Plato

149 people liked it

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men afraid of the light"
— Plato

60 people liked it

"Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them."
— Plato (Plato's Republic)

tags: law, music, state
25 people liked it

"How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? "
— Plato

19 people liked it

"only the dead have seen the end of war"
— Plato

27 people liked it

"The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands."
— Plato (Plato's Republic)

5 people liked it

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. "
— Plato

12 people liked it

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

tags: wisdom
6,194 people liked it

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind."
— William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

tags: love
2,785 people liked it

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

tags: dramatist, quotes
464 people liked it

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: road
354 people liked it

"All we have is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us. "
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

764 people liked it

"Hope is a waking dream."
— Aristotle

tags: dreams, hope
101 people liked it

"Wit is educated insolence."
— Aristotle

43 people liked it

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."
— Aristotle

20 people liked it

"Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life."
— Aristotle (Aristotle's Poetics)

tags: art, literature, philosophy
14 people liked it

"All men by nature desire to know."
— Aristotle

11 people liked it

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
— Aristotle

9 people liked it

"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life."
— Aristotle

tags: gods, religion
11 people liked it

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
— Socrates

tags: knowledge, wisdom
931 people liked it

"Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others."
— Socrates

17 people liked it

"If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality."
— Socrates

11 people liked it

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: books, reading
2,607 people liked it

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: truth
1,494 people liked it

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories)

tags: sin
697 people liked it

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: temptation
341 people liked it

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

74 people liked it

"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."
— Nick Hornby

tags: music
484 people liked it

Martina's profile »

all quotes
add a quote

Martina's quotes

tags from Martina's quotes