Martha's favorite quotes

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
— E.B. White

tags: activism, humor, life, pleasure

1,883 people liked it

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, friends, friendship, life

4,007 people liked it

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: life

3,023 people liked it

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

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy

7,359 people liked it

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

tags: books, humor

9,624 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

6,405 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

6,286 people liked it

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
— Henry David Thoreau

tags: writing

493 people liked it

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

tags: fiction, life, writing

237 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

578 people liked it

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: anais, nin, qoutes, writing

621 people liked it

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
— Flannery O'Connor

tags: criticism, humor, writing

367 people liked it

"A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing."
— Garrison Keillor

tags: writing

35 people liked it

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."
— Willa Cather

tags: life, writing

143 people liked it

"A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. (from the introduction)"
— Stephen King (Skeleton Crew)

tags: reading, writing

173 people liked it

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paper work."
— Peter Devries

tags: writers, writing

21 people liked it

Martha's quotes

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