Joy > Joy's Quotes

“Faith, that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable, we never cease to be so, always panting for riches and never giving our souls or our bodies a moment’s peace. But those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it is liking one felt, or disliking?”
― Virginia Woolfová, To the Lighthouse

“Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Half one's notions of other people were, after all, grotesque. They served private purposes of one's own.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Time is the one thing that can’t be stopped. Like a sharp blade, it silently cuts through hard and soft, constantly advancing. Nothing is capable of jolting it even the slightest bit, but it changes everything.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.' Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“Like many people who have nothing to do, he was very resentful of any claims on his time.”
― William S. Burroughs, Queer

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Life reached an evolutionary milestone when it climbed onto land from the ocean, but those first fish that climbed onto land ceased to be fish. Similarly, when humans truly enter space and are freed from the Earth, they cease to be human. So, to all of you I say this: When you think about heading into outer space without looking back, please reconsider. The cost you must pay is far greater than you could imagine.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End