Mhari > Mhari's Quotes

“Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”
― Isadora Duncan, Isadora Speaks: Uncollected Writings and Speeches of Isadora Duncan

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.”
― Zig Ziglar, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“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

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.”
― Lemony Snicket

“There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.”
― John Boyne

“People change and forget to tell each other.”
― Lillian Hellman

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.”
― Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea

“Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.”
― Greg Bear

“Nature does not ask permission. Blossom and birth whenever you feel like it.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“Many of us have lived desert lives: very small on the surface, and enormous under the ground.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves