Mark > Mark's Quotes

“We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.”
― Jane Goodall

“One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.”
― Jane Goodall

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”
― Anne Sexton

“The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.”
― Anne Sexton

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
― Mark Twain

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”
― Hubert H. Humphrey

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin, Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934

“Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or
less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have
problems with our friends or family, we blame the other
person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will
grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive
effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason
and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no
reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
understand, and you show that you understand, you can
love, and the situation will change”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Patriotism, red hot, is compatible with the existence of a neglect of national interests, a dishonesty, a cold indifference to the suffering of millions. Patriotism is largely pride, and very largely combativeness. Patriotism generally has a chip on its shoulder.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Most men’s eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”
― Robert Benchley

“There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children.”
― Robert Benchley, Pluck and Luck

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”
― Robert Benchley

“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.”
― Robert Benchley

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
― Dorothy Parker

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”
― Dorothy Parker, You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker