Laura > Laura's Quotes

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.”
― Edwin Percy Whipple

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Sorry," [Hamlet] said, rubbing his temples. "I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”
― Anne Fadiman

“I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe”
― Albert Camus

“There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.”
― Leonard Michaels

“How to Comfort Yourself When You Have Acted Like a Jackass
Everyone does this occasionally, and you shouldn't feel too upset about it unless it happens quite often, such as three times a day, in which case you must simply get used to it. Remember, other people like you as well or better for it, because it makes them feel so superior; so you've spread a little sunshine. And at the very least, you've served as a bad example.
”
― Peg Bracken, The I Hate to Housekeep Book

“Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.”
― Cory Doctorow