Feeling-bookish > Feeling-bookish's Quotes

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“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

“We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“Perhaps it is a secret yearning of all Hallmark employees to use the phrase 'you big fat pain in the butt' in an anniversary card.”
― Stephan Pastis

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
― Cynthia Occelli

“The primary urge that motivates and engenders writing...is the writer's desire to invent and tell a story, and to know himself. But the more I write, the more I feel the force of the other urge, which collaborates with and completes the first one: the desire to know the Other from within him. To feel what it means to be another person. To be able to touch, if only for a moment, the blaze that burns within another human being.”
― David Grossman

“M'sieur, I am as a slave to my wife." He kissed the tips of his fingers. "I am as the dirt beneath her feet." He clasped his hands. "I must bestow on her all that she desires, or die!"

"Pray make use of my sword, " invited his Grace. "It is in the corner behind you.”
― Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades

“Wonderful!" said the Duke. "We progress!"
"We...? Progress? You said we? Progress?"
"It seems I erred," Avon sighed. "We remain at the same place.”
― Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades

“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

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
― Mark Twain

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
― Mark Twain

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

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

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Immaturity

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Look here,' said Nigel suddenly, 'let's pretend it's a detective novel. Where would we be by this time? About halfway through, I should think. Well, who's your pick'

'I am invariably gulled by detective novels. No herring so red but I raise my voice and give chase.'

'Don't be ridiculous.' said Nigel.

'Fact. You see in real detection herrings are so often out of season.'

'Well, never mind, who's your pick?'

'It depends on the author. If it's Agatha Christie, Miss Wade's occulted guilt drips from every page. Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter would plump for Pringle, I fancy. Inspector French would go for Ogden. Of course, Ogden, on the face of it, is the first suspect.”
― Ngaio Marsh, Death in Ecstasy

“Innocent sleep. Sleep that soothes away all our worries. Sleep that puts each day to rest. Sleep that relieves the weary laborer and heals hurt minds. Sleep, the main course in life's feast, and the most nourishing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth