Luci > Luci's Quotes

“I asked a professor of nanotechnology what they use to measure the unthinkable small distances of nanospace? He said it was the nanometre. This didn't help me very much. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. I understood the idea but couldn't visualise what it meant. I said, "What is it roughly?" He thought for a moment and said, "A nanometre is roughly the distance that a man's beard grows in one second". I had never thought about what beards do in a second but they must do something. It takes them all day to grow about a milllimetre. They don't leap out of your face at eight o'clock in the morning. Beards are slow, languid things and our language reflects this. We do not say "as quick as a beard" or "as fast as a bristle". We now have a way of grasping of how slow they are - about a nanometre a second.”
― Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative

“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.”
― Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

“I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.”
― Maya Angelou

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
― Maya Angelou

“A Woman in harmony with her spirit
is like a river flowing.
She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination
prepared to be herself
and only herself ”
― Maya Angelou

“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely”
― Ntozake Shange

“Singing when no one else is around is always good. I especially like belters. Good, loud singing is probably better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. I also think people should never turn down an opportunity to hold a baby. There's something about the feel of a new baby in your arms that just fixes you.”
― Erin McKean, The Secret Lives of Dresses

“Although many of us may think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think”
― Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

“If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.”
― Brené Brown

“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.”
― George Gordon Byron

“We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
― Joni Mitchell

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead.”
― Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.”
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“Omit needless words.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style; How to Speak and Write Correctly

“And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
― Raymond Carver

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.”
― Paula Fox

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.”
― A.J. Cronin

“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
― Benjamin Spock

“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.”
― Carl Sagan

“Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.”
― Ingmar Bergman

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
― Anna Quindlen

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
― William Saroyan