Mary Storm > Mary's Quotes

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”
― Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”
― Steve Jobs

“We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say so we represent that hour to ourselves as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time, it never occurs to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned, or may signify that death — or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again — may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon every hour of which has already been allotted to some occupation. You make a point of taking your drive every day so that in a month’s time you will have had the full benefit of the fresh air; you have hesitated over which cloak you will take, which cabman to call, you are in the cab, the whole day lies before you, short because you have to be at home early, as a friend is coming to see you; you hope that it will be as fine again to-morrow; and you have no suspicion that death, which has been making its way towards you along another plane, shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, has chosen precisely this day of all days to make its appearance, in a few minutes’ time, more or less, at the moment when the carriage has reached the Champs-Elysées.”
― Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

“We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!”
― Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
― Pema Chodron

“Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Though you might conquer in battle
A thousand times a thousand men,
You're the greatest battle-winner
If you conquer just one - yourself.”
― Anonymous, The Dhammapada

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought:”
― Anonymous, Dhammapada, a collection of verses; being one of the canonical books of the Buddhists

“If he makes himself as good as he tells others to be, then he in truth can teach others. Difficult indeed is self-control.”
― Anonymous, The Dhammapada

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.”
― Philip Pullman

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
― Will Rogers

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”
― O. Henry

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
― George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

“God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.”
― Woody Allen

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”
― Dorothy Parker

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.”
― Dorothy Parker

“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.”
― Dorothy Parker

“You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope