Webster Wade > Webster's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Collective madness is called sanity ..”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“There are some experiences in life they haven't invented the right words for.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Married by Morning

“I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.”
― Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories

“When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”
― Ansel Adams

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”
― T.H. White, Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome

“If there's one thing I've discovered, it's that stifling yourself will only lead to more misery. [...] I polluted all other happiness because I was afraid to let myself create and change. You have to have courage. Real courage to explore, to fail, and to pick yourself back up again.”
― Siobhan Vivian, Same Difference

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy until I reached a kind of orgasm of negativity.'... The Brits don't merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“No, thanks. I'm busy being an island of sanity in a sea of utter madness.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories

“I've decided that I'm going to collect as many spiders in a jar as I can and then pour them all over you, William Flecter. Seeing as how it's good to face your fears.”
― Sharon Biggs Waller, A Mad, Wicked Folly

“What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.”
― Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems

“fiction writers are fully ten times more likely to be bipolar than the general population, and poets are an amazing forty times more likely to struggle with the disorder. Based on statistics like these, psychologist Daniel Nettle writes, “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the canon of Western culture was produced by people with a touch of madness.” Essayist Brooke Allen does Nettle one better: “The Western literary tradition, it seems, has been dominated by a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above.”
― Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

“May infinite wisdom cure us of the madness of self-confidence.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Christian Classics: Six books by Charles Spurgeon in a single collection, with active table of contents

“Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.”
― Jasper Fforde

“The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.”
― Abigail Van Buren

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“All sacrifice and suffering is redemptive. It is used to either teach the individual or to help others. Nothing is by chance.”
― A.J. RUSSELL

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
― Isaac Newton

“The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.”
― John Russell

“Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.”
― Brian Tracy

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”
― Cornel West

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!”
― Homer