Mark > Mark's Quotes

“For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
― Vaclav Havel

“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.”
― Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala

“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.”
― Václav Havel

“If you're feeling helpless, help someone. ”
― Aung San Suu Kyi

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's amusing to me that we refer to people who live in their heads as detached, disturbed, or mad, when reality for anyone is actually a matter of the individual's state of mind. The mad truth—all people live in their heads. Whatever you think life is, it is.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“They” are violent. “They” are dangerous. And “we” are innocent.”
― David French, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation

“No one is more empowered by free speech than the historically marginalized and dispossessed. I’ll repeat Frederick Douglass’s declaration from 1860: free speech is the “great moral renovator of society and government.” He argued that “slavery cannot tolerate free speech” and that “five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South.”
― David French, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
― Julian of Norwich

“Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“The wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. had been long forgotten. “The church must be reminded that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state—never its tool,” King said. “As long as the church is a tool of the state it will be unable to provide even a modicum of bread for men at midnight.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“People look at you peculiar if you talk about the feeling you got for animals, saying animals have no souls, no sense of good or bad, no value up next to humans," he said. "I don't know about that. Sometimes I think animals are the ones who should be saying such things about us." He shook his head. "Animals can tear your heart out. They can maim you. They can kill you dead on instinct alone and saunter into the next minute like it was nothing. But at least you know the ground rules with animals. You can count the cost of breaking the rules. You never know with people. Even the good can hurt you bad, and the bad, well, they're going to hurt you but good." He dropped his arm from the window to rub his gnarled hand. "It's why I keep choosing animals. Even if it kills me. One day, it probably will.”
― Lynda Rutledge, West With Giraffes

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921”
― Lynda Rutledge, West With Giraffes

“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
― James Baldwin

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”
― Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture