Joni > Joni's Quotes

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“... People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.”
― L.S. Vygotsky

“Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.”
― Randall Munroe, xkcd: volume 0

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
― Pema Chodron

“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”
― Pema Chodron

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that. And if he wants to leave then let him leave. You are terrifying and strange and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire

“What struck me—with her and with many other female American friends I have—is how invested they are in being “liked.” How they have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this “likable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools!”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula