Stephen > Stephen's Quotes

“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
― George Washington

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
― Albert Camus

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
― Charles Dickens

“Be authentic to yourself, but if you must cheat, cheat yourself out of the lies the world created.”
― Robert M. Drake, Beautiful Chaos

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.”
― Albert Camus

“For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli's eyes. And what he saw was...himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love." (Let the Right One In)”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”
― Stendhal

“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, As You Like It

“Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat.”
― Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
― Desmond Tutu (Foreword)

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
― C.S. Lewis

“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”
― L.M. Montgomery

“You‘re my best friend. You‘re the only somebody I got.”
― Damon Suede

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
― Norman Cousins

“Love is the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”
― Alexander Smith

“One dies only if he's not anymore in the hearts and minds of those who know him.
- Monkey D. Luffy”
― Eiichiro Oda

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“It’s foolish to fear what we’ve yet to see and know.”
― Masashi Kishimoto

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“If I were the rain. . . that binds together the Earth and the sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle. . . Would I be able to bind two hearts together?”
― Tite Kubo, Bleach, Vol. 1

“Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.”
― Mary Elizabeth Frye

“In choosing both, you lose both.”
― Sui Ishida

“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row