Sue > Sue's Quotes

“Our children, when young, are part of ourselves. When they grow up they are just other people.”
― Barbara Vine, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
― Jane Goodall

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”
― Evelyn Waugh

“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”
― Paul Klee

“The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.”
― Lao Tzu

“Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. ”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of no where, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading. And then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates and no matter how often I reread the same lines they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“And yet there’s nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they’re adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. “Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is” is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that’s not true, it’s too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that’s left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can’t find any meaning in your life,...”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”
― Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

“One must care about a world one will not see.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“Men have physical needs, and they have emotions. While physical needs are unsatisfied, they take first place; but when they are satisfied, emotions unconnected with them become important in deciding whether a man is to be happy or unhappy.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed over British Rail sandwich?”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“When is the night over? Is it the start of sunrise or the end of it? Is it when you finally go to sleep or simply when you realize that you have to?”
― Rachel Cohn, David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“I miss him in so many ways, but right now I miss him in the way you always miss someone when you're single among a room full of couples.”
― Emily Giffin, Baby Proof

“Knowledge is Life with wings”
― William Blake

“When a dead man knocks on the car window, I think fainting is a reasonable response.”
― Marjorie F. Baldwin

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Socrates

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

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
― Joe Klaas, The Twelve Steps to Happiness: A Practical Handbook for Understanding and Working the Twelve Step Programs for Alcoholism, Codependency, Eating Disorders, and Other Addictions

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”
― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous: Essays