C. > C.'s Quotes

“I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail.”
― Ricky Skaggs

“Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Justine

“Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.”
― Gordon Parks

“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy, of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or of what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us.”
― Walter Pater

“Life is too short to learn German”
― Oscar Wilde

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I grabbed his arm. “Wait. Why are you helping me?” Melvil looked at me as if I were some alien being. “I’m a librarian. We help people.” “Even after you’re dead?” He shrugged. “You never stop being a librarian.”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.”
― B. R. Myers

“At the Zoo? Me? A quiet, orderly person who knows that early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?”
― P. L. Travers

“The mundanity of those chores, the repetition, acts as a kind of meditation. I start each day with a series of numbers and questions written on a piece of paper, put them in my pocket and get on with the business of farming. By mid morning the answers are clear.”
― Hannah Rothschild, House of Trelawney

“I read nonfiction for information, fiction for truth.”
― Michael M. Thomas

“In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage

Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.

Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.

Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.

Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.

Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“Carrying a torch," George Mouse called it, and Auberon, who had never heard the old phrase, thought it just, because he thought of the torch he carried not as a penitential or devotional one, but as Sylvie. He carried a torch: her. She flared brightly sometimes, sank low other times; he saw by her, though he had no path in particular he wanted to see.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big

“O great wide beautiful wonderful World
With the wonderful waters around you curled
And the beautiful grass upon your breast
O World you are beautifully dressed.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big

“He's been given the boot!' Lofton insisted, directing his anger now at Mister Walton. 'And I think it wise not to interfere!'
'I don't like to benefit from another's misfortune,' said Mister Walton with a straight face, and never losing his peaceful demeanor. ' But the hotel's loss, in this case, is my gain, I fear.'
'Mr. Hubbard will be gravely offended!' said Lofton darkly.
'I can't imagine it,' quipped the bespectacled fellow. 'Only small people are easily offended.'
Lofton, who until now had done his best to appear offended, found himself at a loss for a response.”
― Van Reid, Cordelia Underwood: Or, The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”
― Greg Keyes, Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization

“I have an idea," Cazio said after a moment.

"What a lonely creature it must be.”
― Greg Keyes, The Briar King

“If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society,”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
― John Dewey

“Practice restraint, and know it by touch.
Use Cards when they’re needed, and never too much.
For too much of fire, our swords would all break. Too much of wine a poison doth make.
Excess is grievous, be knave, maid, or crown.
Too much of water, how easy we drown.”
― Rachel Gillig, One Dark Window

“The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed trough the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with coversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music…but no, of curse there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. they drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing these they added a small, sullen silenceto the lager, hollow one. it made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone heart that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. and it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a strech of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

The man had true-red hair, red as flame. his eyes was dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

The Waystone was is, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wapping the other inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“HOW TO REFUSE DEFEAT Life is fragile and uncertain. Sooner or later, you will experience a great loss in life, when suffering reveals that the world is not the place you think it is, and that your dreams will not come true after all. What then? Don’t blame others for what happened to you, even if it might well be their fault. This is a dead end. And don’t settle for stoic acceptance of your fate. Merely bearing up under strain is noble, but it’s wasting an opportunity for transformation. You have the power to turn your burden into a blessing. What if this pain, this heartbreak, this failure, was given to you to help you find your true self? Make adversity work for you by launching a quest inside your own heart. Find the dragons hiding there, slay them, and bring back the treasure that will help you live well.”
― Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

“It is better to choose to know the painful truth rather than settle on a comforting lie. Resolve to look for and to accept the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Nothing built on lies lasts.”
― Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.”
― Niall Ferguson

“Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
― Graham Chapman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

“On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the light shall have the harp of gold.

By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,
On Cadfan’s Way where the kestrels call;
Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall,
Yet singing the golden harp shall guide
To break their sleep and bid them ride.

When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon’s sword the Dark shall fall.

Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu,
ac y mae’r arglwyddes yn dod.”
― Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising Sequence