E. > E.'s Quotes

“Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I'm a vegetarian.
You're a what?
I don't eat meat.
How can you not eat meat?
I just don't.
He says he does not eat meat.
What?
No meat?
No meat.
Steak?
No...
Chickens!
No...
And what about the sausage?
No, no sausage, no meat!
He says he does not eat any meat.
Not even sausage?
I know!
What is wrong with him?
What is wrong with you?
Nothing, I just don't eat meat!”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
― Oscar Wilde

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
― Mark Twain

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“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

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx