SE > SE's Quotes

“The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it.”
― Katharine Graham

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”
― Emily Dickinson

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

“I am not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
― Lorraine Hansberry

“If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.”
― Katharine Hepburn

“The world's perverse, but it could be worse.”
― Mona Van Duyn

“It is never too late to be wise.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”
― Sue Grafton, M is for Malice

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.”
― Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”
― Wole Soyinka

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”
― Amelia Earhart

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.”
― Annie Proulx

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”
― Maria Montessori

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

“Luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword