Christopher Grey > Christopher's Quotes

“One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“And perhaps those artful people in the Bible are right, and the only way to get happiness is not to think about it, or to think of other people having it instead, and so, fooling it, catch it at last in the nets of one’s own indifference.”
― Elizabeth Taylor

“The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.”
― Saul Bellow, Novels 1984–2000: What Kind of Day Did You Have? / More Die of Heartbreak / A Theft / The Bellarosa Connection / The Actual / Ravelstein

“How admirable the attitude of one who has made good use of the time granted him and who did not interfere by trying to be his own judge. Duration of human life belongs to those who mould each moment, sculpture it and do not trouble about the verdict.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Difficulty of Being

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“Why is it that when one is enjoying, say, a piece of music, or a beautiful summer evening, or a conversation with a sympathetic companion, the occasion seems rather a hint at an infinite felicity existent elsewhere than a real felicity actually being experienced?”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“I'd like to be in love like this description, wouldn't you?

...they moved among the carriages, the crowds, the noise, oblivious of everything but themselves, hearing nothing, as if they had been walking together in the country on a bed of dead leaves.”
― Gustave Flaubert, A Sentimental Education