Alyssa > Alyssa's Quotes

“Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.”
― Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.”
― John Masefield, King Cole

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
― George Sand, Correspondance, 1812-1876; Volume 5

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”
― Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“We are always the same age inside. ”
― Gertrude Stein

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.”
― Charles Chaplin

“A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.”
― Ruth K. Westheimer

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”
― Dan Brown, Digital Fortress

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The days will always be brighter because he existed.
The nights will always be darker because he's gone.
And no matter what anybody says about grief, and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.”
― Tiffanie DeBartolo, God-Shaped Hole

“I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf

“To my mind there is nothing so beautiful or so provocative as a secondhand book store...To me it is astonishing and miraculous to think that any one of us can poke among the stalls for something to read overnight--and that this something may be the sum of a lifetime of sweat, tears, and genius that some poor, struggling, blessed fellow expended trying to teach us the truth.”
― Lionel Barrymore

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
― Irwin Shaw

“I am grateful you're alive", he said. "I am grateful that you're beside me. I am grateful that you're eating."
She rested her head on his shoulder.
"You're better that waffles, Matthias Helvar."
A small smile curled the Fjerdan's lips.
"Let's not say things we don't mean, my love.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J. D. Salinger

“truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a
long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”
― Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

“THE TAME BIRD WAS IN A CAGE

THE tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.
They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.
The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to the wood."
The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both live in the cage."
Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?"
"Alas," cries the caged bird, "I should not know where to sit perched in the sky."

The free bird cries, "My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands."
The cage bird sings, "Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned."
The forest bird cries, "No, ah no! songs can never be taught."
The cage bird says, "Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands."

There love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing.
Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other.
They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, "Come closer, my love!"
The free bird cries, "It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage."
The cage bird whispers, "Alas, my wings are powerless and dead.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces