Julia > Julia's Quotes

“You are like nobody since I love you.”
― pablo neruda

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?”
― David Foster Wallace

“I thought you were makin’ small talk about the weather.”
“When have I ever made small talk with you?”
“When we first met.”
“No, I made small talk with Bessie, your shotgun, until you removed her double barrels from my kisser.”
Violet and a typical conversation with Harvey”
― Ann Charles, An Ex to Grind in Deadwood

“Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures.
No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“[About the main character approaching death in old age, observed by her husband . . .] He saw that she had already laid down a large portion of her life long ago. Piece by piece she had given it away as she wrestled with existence, as her self was absorbed as nourishment into his life and the life of the children and the community. And laid down most piercingly, as she abandoned, one by one, the shapes of the dreams she had planned. Only to take them up again in other forms.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on His Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. . . . Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord. . . .”
― Charles Spurgeon

“We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards, gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists, or Phi Beta Kappa keys, in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.”
― John Holt

“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.”
― John Holt

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I never thought of it like that. I always thought of you as a part of me, like my own eyes or my own hands. You don't go around thinking 'I love my eyes, I love my hands', do you? But think what it would be like to live without your eyes or your hands. To be mad, or to be blind. I can't talk about it. It's how I feel.”
― Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Perilous Gard

“I wish I knew when I was going to die,' ninety-six-year-old Dame Frances Anne often said, 'I wish I knew.'
'Why, Dame?'
'Then I should know what to read next.”
― Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

“Although these days we commonly talk, hear, or read about 'ethical dilemmas' --- those difficult situations in which we truly are perplexed as to the right course of action --- it is crucial to recognize that these dilemmas, for most of us, represent the exception and not the rule in our lives...What typically is the rule in our daily lives is not a matter of knowing what is right and good but having the character to do what is right and good.”
― Russell W. Gough, Character Is Destiny

“Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem. Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias,” which is Latin for

“It is difficult suddenly to put aside a long-standing love; it is difficult, but somehow you must do it.”
― Catullus, Gaius Valerius