Shannon's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 337)

"If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

18 people liked it

"Estragon: Nothing to be done."
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)

13 people liked it

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor, scifi
3,328 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
6,324 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
2,060 people liked it

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: skeptic
198 people liked it

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
— Hunter S. Thompson

424 people liked it

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
— Douglas Adams

tags: learning
993 people liked it

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: love
881 people liked it

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation
7,751 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
2,252 people liked it

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein

tags: compassion, einstein, nature, philosophy
540 people liked it

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

tags: books, reading
410 people liked it

"Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake)

165 people liked it

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Duino Elegies)

tags: beauty, inspirational
39 people liked it

"Every angel is terrifying."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

31 people liked it

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

tags: inspirational, religion
455 people liked it

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: writing
169 people liked it

"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)

117 people liked it

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."
— Voltaire

205 people liked it

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: activism, life, philosophical
155 people liked it

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut

211 people liked it

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

tags: action, attitude, choice, imagination, inspiration, life, pretend
999 people liked it

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut

92 people liked it

"Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?"
— Christopher Brennan

tags: inspirational, love, philosophical, poetry
19 people liked it

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit."
— Max Ehrmann (Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life)

tags: inspirational, philosophical
20 people liked it

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: humor
184 people liked it

"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: humor, thinking
46 people liked it

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: fact-
219 people liked it

"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life? "
— Man with the long hair (Waking Life)

6 people liked it

"The major problem- one of the major problems, for there are several- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of whom manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: elections, hg2g, politics, president, rulers
506 people liked it

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor
1,376 people liked it

"People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don’t know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

4 people liked it

"A revolution cannot progress without the fuel of terror. With time that relationship inverts: the revolution presses forward for the sake of terror. Like an artist, the man creating terror should be detached, cold-blooded. He must keep in mind that the energy of the terror he releases can consume him."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

1 person liked it

"People unconsciously want to reveal their inner urges."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

2 people liked it

"I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

4 people liked it

"There are only two ways to be a god: through creation or murder."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

2 people liked it

"And still everything’s the same, even though I did my best to get as far away as I could."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

3 people liked it

"Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic."
— Young-ha Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself)

tags: fiction, pessimism, reality
7 people liked it

"I don't like reindeer. They seem like regular deer, only more dangerous."
— John Green

38 people liked it

"...what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?"
— Waking Life

tags: fear, inspirational, life
35 people liked it

"Beauty is a whore, I like money better."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

tags: absurd, beauty, life, money
46 people liked it

"Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively."
— Jon Stewart

tags: christianity, humor, religion
179 people liked it

"'I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.'"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

tags: evil, good, lies, love, mrs-coulter, truth
41 people liked it

"because he's Will"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

tags: inspirational
18 people liked it

"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."
— Albert Einstein

tags: einstein, science, systems
514 people liked it

"There are two types of people in this world. People who hate clowns...and clowns. (Bobby Pendragon)"
— D.J. MacHale (The Quillan Games)

tags: clowns, humor, people
349 people liked it

"Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup."
— Philip Pullman

tags: religion
29 people liked it

"As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms."
— Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials)

tags: controversy, inspirational, science
55 people liked it

"I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites."
— Philip Pullman

tags: reading, writing
90 people liked it

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