Manda > Manda's Quotes

“What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“. . . it seemed to me that where others had prayed before to their God, in their joy or in their agony, was of itself a sacred place.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

“A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly — better than always doubting and doubting and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell , Cranford

“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.”
― Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“I am the immense shadow of my tears”
― Federico Garcia Lorca

“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”
― Federico García Lorca

“A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.”
― Doris Lessing

“It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”
― Doris Lessing

“Don't be the kind of person who sees groups instead of people.”
― Katie Coyle, Vivian Apple at the End of the World

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“...In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world's in danger, evil's on the rise, but if you're really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine.

"But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“You should not confuse your career with your life.”
― Dave Barry

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it”
― Buddha

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn't it?
You're not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity