April > April's Quotes

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it.”
― Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
― Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“Books. Cats. Life is Good.”
― Edward Gorey

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.”
― Lemony Snicket

“O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!" he bawled.

"Take a large bowl," I said. "Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei — which means 'dry cup' — and drink to the dregs."

Procopius stared at me. "And I will be wise?" he asked.

"Better," I said. "You will be Chinese.”
― Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”
― Margaret Mead

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
― Irwin Shaw

“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.”
― Bill Watterson

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
― Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said.
"Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
"Absol—well, okay."
"Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?"
"All right, I'll grant you that, but—"
"Saving civilization from a horde of—"
"It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?”
― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

“Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”
― Elizabeth Peters

“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms -- you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
― Seneca

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks.

The drinks, people.

That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.

But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, 'Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator.”
― Jim Butcher, Summer Knight

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency