Aria > Aria's Quotes

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

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

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

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

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
― Nicolas Chamfort

“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
― Benjamin Spock

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.”
― Jane Austen, Love and Friendship

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
― Jane Austen

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin