Abbey Stellingwerff > Abbey's Quotes

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“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

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do today.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
― John F. Kennedy

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“...for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.”
― Thomas Paine

“Things are always better in the morning.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike -- in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Assiduous and frequent questioning is indeed the first key to wisdom... for by doubting we come to inquiry; through inquiring we perceive the truth...”
― Peter Abelard, Sic Et Non: A Critical Edition

“There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books.”
― Richard Scarry, Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town

“What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.”
― Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.”
― C.S. Forester

“The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Lots of little Bigwigs, Hazel! Think of that, and tremble!”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Or, you say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly, and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things differently according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you—how many you can make your own. A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it should be, you will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book than it does a newspaper.”
― Mortimer Adler

“You may not like my burglar, but please don't damage him.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.”
― Charles Dickens