An. > An.'s Quotes

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
― Anne Frank

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

“We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life