Will > Will's Quotes

“The hawk had filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Flannery O'Connor said that a good story "resisted paraphrase”
― Alice LaPlante, The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing Fiction and Nonfiction

“. . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.”
― Sonia Sodamayor, My Beloved World

“Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.”
― Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“He embraced this goodness--his greatness--and nothing was the same again. And, really, what is death compared to knowing that? No bullet can pierce it.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Weniger aber besser. The English translation is: Less but better.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”
― Edith Wharton