Chu > Chu's Quotes

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
― Raymond Carver

“The things we felt most are hardest to put into words. Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How shall I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?”
― Josephine W. Johnson, Now in November

“That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”
― Raymond Carver

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Invictus

“Omit needless words.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style; How to Speak and Write Correctly

“Instead of announcing what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.”
― William Strunk/E.B. White

“Rather, very, little, pretty -- these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then. ”
― William Strunk/E.B. White

“Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.”
― William Strunk Jr.

“None are so fallible as those who are sure they're right.”
― William Strunk Jr.

“Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason.”
― William Strunk/E.B. White, The Elements of Style

“Avoid fancy words....If you admire fancy words, if every sky is beauteous, every blonde curvaceous, every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have a bad time. Reminder 14.”
― William Strunk

“1. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements Of Style

“1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.”
― William Strunk, The Elements Of Style

“3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.”
― William Strunk, The Elements Of Style

“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”
― Che Guevara

“Out of the starless night that covers me,
(O tribulation of the wind that rolls!)
Black as the cloud of some tremendous spell,
The susurration of the sighing sea
Sounds like the sobbing whisper of two souls
That tremble in a passion of farewell.

To the desires that trebled life in me,
(O melancholy of the wind that rolls!)
The dreams that seemed the future to foretell,
The hopes that mounted herward like the sea,
To all the sweet things sent on happy souls,
I cannot choose but bid a mute farewell.

And to the girl who was so much to me
(O lamentation of this wind that rolls!)
Since I may not the life of her compel,
Out of the night, beside the sounding sea,
Full of the love that might have blent our souls,
A sad, a last, a long, supreme farewell.”
― W.E. Henley, A Selection of Poems

“You're a beautiful drunk, daughter.
But you're a drunk.”
― Raymond Carver

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.”
― Alice Munro, Runaway: Stories