Cecily > Cecily's Quotes

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

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

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. ”
― George Burns

“Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.”
― Chuck Norris

“If you have the opportunity today, please go home and tell your mother how much you love her. Do this for your mother. And do it for your new friend, Eddie, who cannot tell it to his mother.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“My father used to say to me there is more pleasure in giving than in taking, that the important things in life - friends, family, kindness - are far more precious than money. A man is worth more than his bank account.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“If enough people had stood up then, on Kristallnacht, and said, ‘Enough! What are you doing? What is wrong with you?’ then the course of history would have been different. But they did not. They were scared. They were weak. And their weakness allowed them to be manipulated into hatred.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“I never lost sight of what it was to be civilised. I knew that there would be no point surviving if I had to become an evil man to do it.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor

“You don't want to fall in love with a reflection of yourself! A strong partnership is with a man or a woman who is different from you, who challenges you to try new things, to become a better person.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“In my mind, this is really the best revenge, and it is the only revenge I am interested in – to be the happiest man on Earth.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“You see, your food is not enough. There is no medicine for your morals. If your morals are gone, you go.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“it took many years to realise that as long as I still held fear and pain in my heart, I would not truly be free.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of unified Germany, once warned the world to watch out for the German people. With a good leader, they were the greatest nation on Earth. With a bad leader, they were monsters.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth

“it was sometimes hard for the good Germans to make themselves known. They had to know that they could trust you. If they were caught helping a Jew, it would mean death for them too. The oppressors were just as afraid as the oppressed. This is fascism – a system that makes victims of everybody.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor

“Auschwitz was a living nightmare, a place of unimaginable horrors. But I survived because I owed it to my friend Kurt to survive, to live another day so that I might see him again. Having even just one good friend means that the world takes on new meaning. One good friend can be your entire world.

This, more than the food we shared or the warm clothes or the medicine, was the most important thing. The best balm for the soul is friendship. And with that friendship, we could do the impossible.”
― Eddie Jaku

“Perhaps you do not love your job, or you work with difficult people. You are still doing important things, contributing your own small piece to the world we live in. We must never forget this. Your efforts today will affect people you will never know. It is your choice whether that effect is positive or negative. You can choose every day, every minute, to act in a way that may uplift a stranger, or else drag them down. The choice is easy. And it is yours to make.”
― Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor