Emma Palova > Emma's Quotes

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
― Henry Stanley Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

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

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

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”
― Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.”
― Earnest Hemingway

“write hard & clear about what hurts.”
― Earnest Hemingway

“He watched Richard Gordon lurching down the street until he was out of sight in the shadow from the big trees whose branches dipped down to grow into the ground like roots. What he was thinking as he watched him was not pleasant. It is a mortal sin, he thought, a grave and deadly sin and a great cruelty, and while technically one's religion may permit the ultimate result, I cannot pardon myself. On the other hand, a surgeon cannot desist while operating for fear of hurting the patient. But why must, all operations in life be performed with out an anesthetic? If I had been a better man I would have let him beat me up. It would have been better for him. The poor stupid man. The poor homeless man. I ought to stay with him, but I know that is too much for him to bear. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself and I hate what I have done. It all may turn out badly too. But I must not think about that. I will now return to the anesthetic I have used for seventeen years and will not need much longer. Although it is probably a vice now for which I only invent excuses. Though at least it is a vice for which I am suited. But I wish I could help that poor man who I am wronging.”
― Earnest Hemingway

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.”
― Earnest Hemingway

“And then instead of going on to Arusha they turned left,
he evidently figured that they had the gas, and looking down
he saw a pink sifting cloud, moving over the ground, and in
the air, like the first snow in a blizzard, that comes from
nowhere, and he knew the locusts were coming up from the
South. Then they began to climb and they were going to the
East it seemed, and then it darkened and they were in a
storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through a water-
fall, and then they were out and Compie turned his head and
grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as
wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white
in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro”
― Earnest Hemingway

“I’ve named everything that I’ve ever owned. Real or inanimate, I have to give it a first and last name. Everything in my apartment comes alive at night.”
― Amy Sedaris

“I think; therefore I am.”
― Rene Descartes

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)”
― René Descartes

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”
― Leonora Carrington

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”
― Joseph Pulitzer

“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“And as you walk yr road, as you live yr life, RELISH THE ROAD. And relish the fact that the road of yr life will probably be a windy road.”
― Suzan-Lori Parks

“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat...”
― Edward Lear

“In love, no question is ever preposterous.”
― Andre Brink, Before I Forget

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.”
― Djuna Barnes

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Great minds are always feared by lesser minds.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince