Evelyn > Evelyn's Quotes

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.”
― Erma Bombeck

“Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.”
― Erma Bombeck

“I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.”
― Erma Bombeck

“Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, 'No thank you' to desert that night. And for what?!”
― Erma Bombeck

“Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.”
― Erma Bombeck

“Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go. ”
― Erma Bombeck

“A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”
― Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.”
― William Shakespeare

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese

“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)”
― E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

“I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out upon my face.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“I may not always be with you
But when we're far apart
Remember you will be with me
Right inside my heart”
― Marc Wambolt, Poems from the Heart

“Time Does Not Bring Relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

“Oh phosphorescence. Now there’s a word to lift your hat to... To find that phosphorescence, that light within — is the genius behind poetry.”
― William Luce, The Belle of Amherst

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“When I Am Dead, My Dearest

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.”
― Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems

“I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“Right at the beginning, before the pianist could get her wheels up and fly into that storm, she was hit with a con brio, which I figured meant she had to play either with brightness, with coldness, or with cheese.”
― Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story – A New York Times Bestselling Philosophical Memoir of Hope and Intimacy

“No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.”
― Richard Bach

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
― Mark Twain

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”
― Mark Twain

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”
― Mark Twain

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.”
― Mark Twain

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
― Mark Twain

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
― Mark Twain