Callista's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 58)

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

tags: food, love, music
1,163 people liked it

"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
— Obi-Wan Kenobi

4 people liked it

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

tags: life, pain
636 people liked it

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: frost, glitter, gold, lost, poetry, roots, strength, strong, wander, wither
6,197 people liked it

"True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

tags: dreams
6 people liked it

"'What do you fear, lady?' [Aragorn:] asked.
'A cage,' [Éowyn:] said. 'To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.'"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

77 people liked it

"'I wished to be loved by another,' [Éowyn] answered. 'But I desire no man's pity.'"
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings - Return of the King)

7 people liked it

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."
— Mark Twain

tags: morals
717 people liked it

"'Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never would.'"
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

35 people liked it

"Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries."
— Elizabeth Peters (The Mummy Case)

15 people liked it

"No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it."
— Elizabeth Peters

tags: amelia, men, peabody, women
260 people liked it

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
— William Butler Yeats (The Wind Among the Reeds 1899)

tags: heaven
96 people liked it

"The combination of physical strength and moral sincerity combined with tenderness of heart is exactly what is wanted in a husband.--Ameila Peabody"
— Elizabeth Peters

8 people liked it

"I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are far too complicated to have simple labels."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

19 people liked it

"He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once."
— Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere: A Novel)

116 people liked it

"“I might as well enquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?” "
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

tags: pride-and-prejudice
19 people liked it

"Dear Diary, Today I tried not to think about Mr. Knightly. I tried not to think about him when I discussed the menu with Cook... I tried not to think about him in the garden where I thrice plucked the petals off a daisy to acertain his feelings for Harriet. I don't think we should keep daisies in the garden, they really are a drab little flower. And I tried not to think about him when I went to bed, but something had to be done."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

tags: emma-
30 people liked it

"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

6 people liked it

"I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them."
— Emma Thompson

tags: books, reading
12 people liked it

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

773 people liked it

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: writing
329 people liked it

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

tags: books, bookstore, towns
334 people liked it

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

tags: dreams, life
2,088 people liked it

"What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed?" said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. "Only innocent lives, Peter!"
"You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!"
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

50 people liked it

"You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?" called Voldemort… "Above such brutality, are you?"
"We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly… "Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit--"
"There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!"
…"You are quite wrong… Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things worse than death has always been your greatest weakness--""
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

28 people liked it

"I don't mean to be rude—" he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable.
"-Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often," Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

tags: humor, rude
63 people liked it

"Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck...'til some idiot killed it. Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint."
— Joss Whedon (Serenity Official Visual Companion)

19 people liked it

"Make the doors upon a woman's wit,
and it will out at the casement;
shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;
stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
"
— William Shakespeare

tags: intelligence, women
3 people liked it

"Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. "
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

tags: love
6 people liked it

"The better part of valour is discretion"
— William Shakespeare

tags: discretion, valor, valour
2 people liked it

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

tags: book, inspirational
259 people liked it

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
— Lewis Carroll (Jabberwocky and Other Poems)

4 people liked it

"I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe."
— T.H. White (The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once & Future King)

tags: diversity, eternity
3 people liked it

"Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm."
— Matthew Stover (Star Wars: Shatterpoint)

tags: civilization, jedi, justice, peace
1 person liked it

"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should be treated with caution."
— J.K. Rowling

tags: truth
808 people liked it

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."
— Desmond Tutu

tags: goodness, kindness
9 people liked it

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
— Albert Einstein

tags: greatness, opposition, spirit
817 people liked it

"Commander Harken: Seems odd you'd name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.
Malcolm Reynolds: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one. ('Firefly')
"
— Tim Minear

tags: right, wrong
2 people liked it

"…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew…."
— A.S. Byatt (Possession: A Romance)

tags: words, writing
4 people liked it

"I warn you, the trip will not be easy. Once you choose to walk in the light, your path will lead you places you do not want to go."
— Dave Wolverton (Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia)

tags: difficulty, light
2 people liked it

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

tags: gifts, unkind
1 person liked it

"If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction--and ultimately, without a major resolution."
— Jasper Fforde (Something Rotten)

tags: life, world
2 people liked it

"It takes much bravery to stand up to our enemies but we need as much bravery to stand up to our friends."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

tags: courage, friends
1,302 people liked it

"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

tags: gender, language, words
9 people liked it

"Never concede to evil…. When we concede to evil, even in a small way, we feed it, and it grows stronger.
"
— Dave Wolverton (Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia)

tags: evil, morals
1 person liked it

"'…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?
'What do you mean, odd?'
'Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.' "
— Jasper Fforde (Lost in a Good Book)

tags: odd, unusual, weird
4 people liked it

"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts."
— Anotole France

4 people liked it

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, truth
1,110 people liked it