"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
— Oscar Wilde

"I'm in a duel to the death with this wallpaper, one of us has to go."
— Oscar Wilde

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb...," He murmured.
"What a stupid lamb, " I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion."
— Stephenie Meyer

"But if you bring her back damaged again-and I don't care whose fault it is; I don't care if she merely trips, of if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head - if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition I left her in, you will be running with three legs. Do you understand now mongrel?"
— Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell."
— Harry S. Truman

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference."
— Harry S. Truman

"We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others"
— Harry S. Truman

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair"
— Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)

"What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.
"
— Cold Mountain

"A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far."
— J.K. Rowling

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
— Mitch Albom

"All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."
— Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)

"Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.
--Eddie's Wife"
— Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Meniti Bianglala)

"No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone."
— Mitch Albom

"When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth."
— Mitch Albom (For One More Day)

"But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin."
— Mitch Albom (For One More Day)

"This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for."
— Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Meniti Bianglala)

"Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back."
— Mitch Albom (For One More Day)

"When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times."
— Mitch Albom (For One More Day)

""No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense." "
— John Trudell

"My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is."
— Ellen DeGeneres

"I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her."
— Ellen DeGeneres

"Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it's worse when they are wearing dark glasses and have streamers in their antlers because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot."
— Ellen DeGeneres

""Most people would rather be sheep than stand on their own with antlers on."
"
— Tori Amos

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"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)

"I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

"'Does it hurt?"' The childish question had escaped Harry's lips before he could stop it.

'Dying? Not at all,' said Sirius. 'Quicker and easier than falling asleep.'"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
— Walt Whitman

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
— Mary Oliver

"Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"
— Mary Oliver

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
— Bessie Anderson Stanley

"I enjoyed the meetings, too. It was like having friends."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"This truck is old enough to be your car's grandfather - have some respect.

- Bella Swan"
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things
for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

Beatrix Potter
"
— Beatrix Potter

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
— John Lennon

"For those of you in the cheap seats I'd like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!"
— John Lennon

"I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me."
— John Lennon

"Make your own dream.

That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story, that's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be.

There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you."
— John Lennon

"True love does not come by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
"
— Jason Jordan

"No matter how rich you become, how famous or how powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather."
— Michael Prichard

"Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop"
— Gabrielle Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac)

"Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me...I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street."
— Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere)

"I choose to believe that I owe my very
life to you--ay--smile, and think it an exaggeration if you will.
I believe it, because it adds a value to that life to think--oh,
Miss Hale!' continued he, lowering his voice to such a tender
intensity of passion that she shivered and trembled before him,
'to think circumstance so wrought, that whenever I exult in
existence henceforward, I may say to myself, "All this gladness
in life, all honest pride in doing my work in the world, all this
keen sense of being, I owe to her!" And it doubles the gladness,
it makes the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till
I hardly know if it is pain or pleasure, to think that I owe it
to one--nay, you must, you shall hear'--said he, stepping
forwards with stern determination--'to one whom I love, as I do
not believe man ever loved woman before.' He held her hand tight
in his. He panted as he listened for what should come. "
— Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)

"'Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!'

'Not good enough! Don't mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.'"
— Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)

"I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)