Lily > Lily's Quotes

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“There is no perfection only life”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Was this what falling in love was like? Not something big and amazing that you knew about straight away, like in a story, but a slow thing that crept over you in waves until you woke up one day and found that you were head-over-heels with someone quite unexpected”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.”
― Nancy Garden, Annie on My Mind

“There seemed to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It's funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we're at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
― John A. Shedd

“That time always ends a second before you’re ready.

That life is the minutes you want minus one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.”
― Nancy Garden, Annie on My Mind

“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Yeah, but just being alive doesn't mean all that much on its own. How you live is more important.”
― Genki Kawamura, 世界から猫が消えたなら [Sekai kara Neko ga Kietanara]

“It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven't arisen. But what if that's not true? What if I'm the one who can't let myself be happy? Because I'm scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don't believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possibile straight away, so at least I don't have to feel anxious about it anymore.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment