Jen > Jen's Quotes

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. ”
― Chinua Achebe

“We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. [S]he said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.”
― Ishmael Beah

“When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.”
― Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

“In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.”
― Libba Bray

“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
― Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“Or perhaps it is some combination of spirit and desire, love and hope, some alchemy that we each possess and can put to use, if we first know where to look without flinching.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I refuse to let the past find me here.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I changed the world; the world changed me.
Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas