Ashley's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 711)

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"
— Virginia Woolf

tags: life
179 people liked it

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

27 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
81 people liked it

"I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else."
— Virginia Woolf

8 people liked it

"i can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. it expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. "
— Virginia Woolf

tags: beauty, emotion, history, memory
50 people liked it

"What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

26 people liked it

"I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual"
— Virginia Woolf

44 people liked it

"Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. "
— Virginia Woolf (The Waves)

11 people liked it

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."
— Virginia Woolf (Between the Acts)

tags: books, soul
99 people liked it

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title."
— Virginia Woolf

33 people liked it

"...a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write..."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

8 people liked it

"Character is fate."
— Sylvia Plath

29 people liked it

"The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

46 people liked it

"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between."
— Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)

tags: mood-swings
204 people liked it

"What did my arms do before they held you?"
— Sylvia Plath

40 people liked it

"I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world."
— Sylvia Plath (The Journals of Sylvia Plath)

58 people liked it

"I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow."
— Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)

tags: bipolar, illness, mania, manic, mental, psychology
9 people liked it

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

tags: catholicism, christianity, forgiveness, god, goodness, happiness, honesty, kindness, relgion, world
2,818 people liked it

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
— Chuck Palahniuk

tags: god, life
1,513 people liked it

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: blues, god, life, music
526 people liked it

"God has no religion."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: god, religion
508 people liked it

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
— e.e. cummings

tags: god, joy, life, spirituality
212 people liked it

"The world is my country,
all mankind are my brethren,
and to do good is my religion."
— Thomas Paine

tags: god, life
116 people liked it

"I talk to God but the sky is empty."
— Sylvia Plath

tags: god
97 people liked it

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: faith, god, prayer
102 people liked it

"The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help."
— Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)

tags: god, life
74 people liked it

"I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: god, religion, truth
61 people liked it

"I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things."
— Vincent Van Gogh

tags: god, love
48 people liked it

"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong."
— John Lennon

tags: god
58 people liked it

"My arms are too short to box with God."
— Johnny Cash

tags: arms, boxing, god
39 people liked it

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

tags: women
6,746 people liked it

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

tags: cats, humor, women
3,696 people liked it

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

tags: women
2,950 people liked it

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
— Jane Austen

tags: humor, love, romantic, women
1,500 people liked it

"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
— Ann Richards

tags: dance, dancing, politics, texas, women
360 people liked it

"There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out."
— Mae West

tags: women
452 people liked it

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman my country is the world. "
— Virginia Woolf

tags: women
205 people liked it

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition"
— Timothy Leary

tags: feminism, women
150 people liked it

"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

tags: inspirational, women
183 people liked it

"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. "
— Roseanne Barr

tags: feminism, power, women
123 people liked it

"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

tags: humor, women, zealousness
142 people liked it

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: humor, men, women
81 people liked it

"If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next -- if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions -- you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning.
You'd never dare to."
— Margaret Atwood (Der blinde Mörder / The Blind Assassin)

tags: women
80 people liked it

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."
— Jane Austen

tags: equality, feminism, persuasion, women
63 people liked it

"You're only a man! You've not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory!"
— Georgette Heyer (Powder and Patch)

tags: humor, men, thoughts, women
62 people liked it

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
"
— — Joan of Arc

tags: feminism, historical, inspirational, legendary, women
54 people liked it

"The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad."
— Erica Jong

tags: anais, bad, erica, girl, good, jong, lovers, nin, sexuality, women
45 people liked it

"Educate a boy, and your educate and individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.
African proverb via Greg Mortensen "
— Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time)

tags: community, education, inspiriational, proverb, sharing, women
48 people liked it

"Build a house?" exclaimed John.
"For the wendy," said Curly.
"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!"
"That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants."
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

tags: women
42 people liked it