Dana's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 75)

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

tags: book, inspirational
260 people liked it

"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

tags: writing
129 people liked it

"Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

39 people liked it

"His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

30 people liked it

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

tags: lies, lying, memory, truth
9,423 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
6,108 people liked it

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

tags: action, actions, disappointed, disappointment, discover, dream, dreams, explore, sail
7,752 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
2,028 people liked it

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it"
— Alice Walker

76 people liked it

" Ships at a distance have every man s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon never out of sight never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

15 people liked it

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: good, writing
1,914 people liked it

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: books, friends, novelist, quotes
1,637 people liked it

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: authors
210 people liked it

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

47 people liked it

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

tags: women
3,060 people liked it

"When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”"
— Virginia Woolf

tags: bookworms, heavenly, judgment, reading, rewards
141 people liked it

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

tags: life
182 people liked it

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Act 5, scene 5, 19–28 "
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

322 people liked it

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

334 people liked it

"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man
What is in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title,
Romeo, Doth thy name!
And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself....
- (Act II, Scene II)"
— William Shakespeare (Romeo And Juliet)

tags: love, romeo-and-juliet
458 people liked it

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
— William Shakespeare

tags: human-condition
697 people liked it

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."
— William Shakespeare

845 people liked it

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.
- (Act III, Scene I)"
— William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

130 people liked it

"When he shall die, take him and cut him out into little stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."
— William Shakespeare

156 people liked it

"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow."
— William Shakespeare

84 people liked it

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. "
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

36 people liked it

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

tags: reading, writing
142 people liked it

"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

tags: conformity, individuality, life, live, own-drummer, pace
195 people liked it

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
— Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience and Other Essays: Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau)

tags: life
163 people liked it

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

tags: books, classic, humor
5,556 people liked it

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

tags: husband, marriage, wife
853 people liked it

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

tags: books, library, reading
1,456 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
1,547 people liked it

"Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

9 people liked it

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Dead Poet's Society"
— John Keating

tags: movie, poetry
238 people liked it

"Carpe diem. Seize the day."
— John Keats

tags: carpe-diem
52 people liked it

"I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world."
— Walt Whitman

54 people liked it

"It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

tags: choices
3,016 people liked it

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

tags: dumbledore
1,038 people liked it

"Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

364 people liked it

"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."
— Joseph Campbell

22 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
6,243 people liked it

"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: compassion, justice, mercy
820 people liked it

"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to...

- Frodo to Sam"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: adventure
480 people liked it

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all."
— Emily Dickinson

tags: feathers, hope, inspirational, souls
723 people liked it

"There is no Frigate like a book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry..."
— Emily Dickinson

tags: books, reading
59 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
7,582 people liked it

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

tags: inspirational, optimism, perception, pessimism
5,045 people liked it

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: books, reading
2,677 people liked it