James Tomasino > James's Quotes

“I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is - oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
to drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears.”
― William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

“I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”
― Walt Whitman

“But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.”
― Plato, Timaeus and Critias

“The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

“Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. A printed work which cannot be read becomes a product without purpose.”
― Emil Ruder, Typography: A Manual of Design

“St. Thomas Aquinas understood virtues to be habitual or abiding dispositions that help us to realize the good in our decisions and actions. These habitual dispositions, acquired through repetition and an effort over time (and, at the same time, given to us by God through grace), make accomplishing the good easier, more immediate, requiring less internal deliberation and struggle.”
― Mark O'Keefe

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving—we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

“Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium. – Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.”
― Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi

“In fair weather, prepare for foul.”
― Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: A Collection of the Proverbs, Maxims and Adages That Inspired Benjamin Franklin and Poor Richard's Almanack

“For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, –
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, — then mourned for all!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems

“It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.”
― Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

“Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me. Father, a servant’s place. ”
― Christina Rossetti, Poems of Christina Rossetti

“Remaining" is an essential part… What the Church Fathers call perseverantia–patient steadfastness in communion with the Lord amid all the vicissitudes of life–is placed center stage here. Initial enthusiasm is easy. Afterward, though, it is time to stand firm, even along the monotonous desert paths that we are called upon to traverse in this life–with the patience it takes to tread evenly, a patience in which the romanticism of the initial awakening subsides, so that only the deep, pure Yes of faith remains. This is the way to produce good wine.”
― Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

“Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.”
― E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
― Anaïs Nin

“As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have free hand.”
― Mother Teresa

“I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

“In the canoe, the Indian smiled. Once he paused in a stroke, and rested his blade. For that instant he looked like his own Paddle. There was a song in his heart. It crept to his lips, but only the water and the wind could hear.

You, Little Traveler! You made the journey, the Long Journey. You now know the things I have yet to know. You, Little Traveler! You were given a name, a true name in my father’s lodge. Good Medicine, Little Traveler! You are truly a Paddle Person, a Paddle-to-the-Sea!”
― Holling Clancy Holling, Paddle-to-the-Sea

“There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune