M > M's Quotes

“There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“The poor fool hadn't realized that if all mankind shares a folly or an illusion, and likes to share it even knowing what it is, then the illusion is much more valuable and fine a kind of thing than the ass who wants to upset it.”
― John Dickson Carr

“In a world that thought itself so wise yet behaved so stupidly, it was possible sometimes to believe that only the mad saw matters as they truly were, that only people like my brother were prepared to admit what they saw from the corner of their eye.”
― Robert Goddard, Closed Circle

“Kusanagi had met plenty of good, admirable people who’d been turned into murderers by circumstance. There was something about them he always seemed to sense, an aura that they shared. Somehow, their transgression freed them from the confines of a mortal existence, allowing them to perceive the great truths of the universe. At the same time, it meant they had one foot in forbidden territory. They straddled the line between sanity and madness.”
― Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X

“There is nothing in this world so hard to get at as truth, and there is nothing in this world but truth that I care for.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

“There is nothing like the silence and loneliness of night to bring dark shadows over the brightest mind.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

“Though the pictured face was floridly coloured, you suspected pallor; a mind lightly balanced, and liable to snap from sheer weight of dreams.”
― Carter Dickson, The Red Widow Murders

“If Pandora hadn't opened the box, somebody else would have."

"There was never any hope it could remain sealed for ever?"

"Not really." [...] "You see, Hope was one of the Spites imprisoned in the box."

My companion frowned. "Why did Hope have to be shut away?"

"Because it always lied. And, true to form, after its release, it deceived mankind into believing the other Spites could be overcome. They couldn't, of course, but thinking they could at least made them seem bearable.”
― Robert Goddard, Closed Circle

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band

“Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

“What a lovely thing a rose is!"

He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.

"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.”
― Jerome K. Jerome

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.

[author's dedication]”
― Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary

“Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre