Shima > Shima's Quotes

“It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why. Especially since I know that if they went to another school, the person who had their heart broken would have had their heart broken by somebody else, so why does it have to be so personal?”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I hate you."
My sister said it different than she said it to my dad. She meant it with me.She really did.
"I love you," was all I could say in return.
"You're a freak, you know that? Everyone says so. They always have."
"I'm trying not to be.”
Then, I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.[pp.28]”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have.”
― Stephen Chbosky

“As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“These young men were insignificant; everyone has seen such faces; four specimens of the human race taken at random; neither good nor bad, neither wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools; handsome, with that charming April which is called 20 years.”
― Victor Hugo

“When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“J'ai alors dessiné l'intérieur du serpent boa, afin que les grandes personnes puissent comprendre. Elles ont toujours besoin d'explications.”
― Antoine Saint-Exupéry

“Like old men and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.”
― Víctor Hugo

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”
― Victor Hugo

“He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Elizabeth was excessively disappointed...but it was her business to be satisfied — and certainly her temper to be happy; and all was soon right again.”
― Jane Austen

“But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.”
― Jane Austen

“Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Oh, Marx,' Amanda sighed. 'You're so melodramatic. So what if it's this way or that way? When I was in convent school I used to stare out the windows at the clouds. I used to chase butterflies in the Mother Superior's flower patch. Those clouds and those butterflies, they didn't know secular from religious--and they didn't care.' 'I'm neither a cloud nor a butterlfy,' I snapped. 'We're all the same as clouds and butterflies. We just pretend to be something different.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“The most important thing in life is style. That is the style of one s existence the characteristic mode of one s actions is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing. The point is this happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content. And underscores the primacy of style. It is content or rather the consciousness of content that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us to move us it is style that makes us care.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“I am always late on principle, my principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories

“Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol 1

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J. D. Salinger

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye