Lisa > Lisa's Quotes

“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
― Horace Mann

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
― Saul Bellow

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Man can commit atrocities, or incite others to commit them, not because of a personality disorder, but because of his belief in ideas that provoke and justify atrocities.”
― Branimir Anzulovic

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“There was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“Books were in the world; the world was in books.”
― Lewis Buzbee, Steinbeck's Ghost

“It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.”
― Yasmina Khadra, Swallows of Kabul

“It is not an act of bravery to try to save your own village. It is an instinct to protect what you possess. Bravery is when you step in to help when you have nothing to lose.”
― Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden

“Sometimes you can’t let go of the past without facing it again.”
― Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden