MJ VanGompel > MJ's Quotes

“We take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”
― Cynthia Ozick

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
― Ayn Rand

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?”
― Edward Albee

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun. ”
― George Plimpton

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
― Hal Borland

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.”
― Lemony Snicket

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”
― Sue Grafton, M is for Malice

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall