Ashleigh Watson > Ashleigh's Quotes

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
― Mark Twain

“Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”
― Mark Twain

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
― Mark Twain

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
― Aristotle

“Philosophy can make people sick.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain

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

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”
― Mark Twain

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
― Olin Miller

“Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development”
― Aristotle

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving

“Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes.”
― Augusten Burroughs, This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Work as if you were to live a thousand years, play as if you were to die tomorrow.”
― Ben Franklin

“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.”
― George W. Bush

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”
― George W. Bush

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
― Winston Churchill

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
― Nelson Mandela

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
― Dr. Seuss

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
― Atwood H. Townsend

“There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles