booklearner > booklearner's Quotes

“He turned to Miss Minerva. "I'm relying on you, at any rate. You've got a good mind. Anybody can see that."
"Thank you," she said.
"As good as a man's," he added.
"Oh, now you've spoiled it!”
― Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key

“A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

“I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.”
― Beatrix Potter

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”
― Beatrix Potter

“Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.”
― Beatrix Potter

“In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester.”
― Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester

“With opportunity the world is very interesting.”
― Beatrix Potter

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“Although my vision is far from 20/20, 2020 is a great year to write a book about enjoying the adventures and advantages of poor eyesight.”
― Ken Brandt

“Indulge your passion for science…but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“The crisis of community has its source in the corruption of character.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“There can be no such thing as a “global village.” No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“I value my own
independence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than that
of having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing
me, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He might
be the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel and
resent his interference...”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.”
― Dante Alighieri

“A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...”
― Pamela Redmond Satran

“Trifles make the sum of life. ”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“what I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush, waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“I have often remarked- I suppose everybody has- that one's going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for a change in it.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
― Homer, The Odyssey