Margot > Margot's Quotes

“He got up and went out, did some telephoning and explanations, placated his mother, apologized to his host, got himself shaved and trimmed up, and attended the office as usual. Masses of work awaited him. Nothing had changed in his life. Nothing remained in it. He was back with his loneliness as it had been before Clive, as it was after Clive, and would now be for ever. He had failed and that wasn't the saddest: he had seen Alec fail. In a way they were one person. Love had failed. Love is an emotion through which you occasionally enjoy yourself. It could not to do things.”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“We're freaks, the two of us, Franny and I. I'm a twenty-five-year-old freak and she's a twenty-one-year-old freak, and both those bastards are responsible. I swear to you, I could murder them both without batting an eyelash. The great teachers. The great emancipators. My God. I can't even sit down to lunch with a man any more and hold up my end of a decent conversation. I either get so bored or so goddamn preachy that if the son of a bitch had any sense, he'd break his chair over my head”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“Anne laughed and sighed. She felt very old and mature and wise — which showed how young she was.”
― L.M. Montegomery, Anne of the Island

“I have a dream," he said slowly. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends -- and you!”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“Besides, I've been feeling a little blue — just a pale, elusive azure. It isn't serious enough for anything darker.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“That doesn't sound very attractive," laughed Anne. "I like people to have a little nonsense about them.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep

“And when the abyss looks into you - and it will - may you look back unflinching.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep