Connor Coyne > Connor's Quotes

“She looked just like a painting dying to speak.”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
― Charles Dickens

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
― Alexander Graham Bell

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.”
― Djuna Barnes

“You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.”
― Indira Gandhi

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
― Isaac Asimov

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”
― Jack London

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.”
― Lord Byron

“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
― Simone Weil

“Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”
― Betty Friedan

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono

“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
― W.E.B. DuBois

“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”
― Susan B. Anthony

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?”
― Richard Bach

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving in the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life one hears it said that man is never content. In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complex nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency. And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others.

So that as soon as the cold, which throughout the winter had seemed our only enemy, had ceased, we became aware of the hunger; and repeating the same error, we now say: "If it was not for the hunger!...”
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man • The Truce

“Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light.”
― Imam Al-Haddad

“And my body slopes toward yours no matter how level the ground.”
― Rosmarie Waldrop, Reluctant Gravities

“Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.”
― Dylan Thomas

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.”
― George Eliot