Alessandra > Alessandra's Quotes

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
― Jesse Jackson

“...for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Despair has its own calms.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“A great ox stands on my tongue.”
― Aeschylus, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

“She tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Purity in body and heart
May please some--as for me, I make no boast.
For, as you know, no master of a household
Has all of his utensils made of gold;
Some are wood, and yet they are of use.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Then you compared a woman's love to Hell,
To barren land where water will not dwell,
And you compared it to a quenchless fire,
The more it burns the more is its desire
To burn up everything that burnt can be.
You say that just as worms destroy a tree
A wife destroys her husband and contrives,
As husbands know, the ruin of their lives. ”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“All thinking men are atheists.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

“As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It