Raya Fagg > Raya's Quotes

“Summer night--
even the stars
are whispering to each other.”
― Kobayashi Issa

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”
― Raymond Chandler, Long Goodbye

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”
― Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“The mind I love must have wild places.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts.”
― Earl Nightingale, The Strangest Secret

“No man can get rich himself unless he enriches others.”
― Earl Nightingale, The Strangest Secret

“Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon”
― Adam M. Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

“First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“He’d travelled the world, seen the misery out there in Africa, in the Far East and South America and discovered that this world is founded on despair and suffering, the exploitation of one man by another - of many women by many men - and understood that in comparison his suffering was not so great.”
― Seb Kirby, Each Day I Wake

“but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” “And are you?” “No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“African Americans continue to be the canaries in our coal-mine—the citizens whose unequal opportunities and unequal rights reveal a deeper truth about the fundamental sins of our nation.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Poverty, injustice, and reading comprehension issues go hand in hand,”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve.”
― Matt Bai, All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid

“(“If you think education is expensive, wait until you find out how much ignorance costs,” Hart was fond of saying.)”
― Matt Bai, All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid

“It wasn’t really up to the writer to decide what questions were relevant. The conversation “out there” had already done that, and all the poor writer could do was to shake his head sadly and try to bring some clarity to it. Surely politics would be better if we could all just refocus the debate on the things that really mattered, but it never seemed to be the journalist’s job to do the refocusing.”
― Matt Bai, All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid

“As in the American south, an exaggerated sense of romantic honor may have been an unconscious way for slaveholders to flaunt their moral superiority, purge pent-up guilt, and cloak the brutish nature of their trade.”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“To have a good enemy, choose a friend: He knows where to strike. DIANF DE POITIERS, 1499-1566, MISTRESS OF HENRI II OF FRANCE”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. TACITUS, c. A.D. 55-120”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“There was always plenty of collateral damage; politics left a trail of pain and tortured families in its wake.”
― Michael Dobbs, House of Cards

“What was it about a little rain that turned normal drivers into morons?”
― Patricia Perry Donovan, Deliver Her

“What breaks my heart is when someone says they are tired of looking at black youth in the city as potential predators, as if they are the ones at fault . . . when someone of seeming affluent white privilege seems so far removed from so much of the city and its residents, and can only seem concerned with how these problems are affecting her and those like her.”
― Stefanie DeLuca, Coming of Age in the Other America

“I shrugged. ‘My life is unremarkable.’ She smiled. ‘No life is unremarkable.”
― Mark Edwards, Follow You Home