Celestarius > Celestarius's Quotes

“Being fathomed was even better than being flattered, it turned out.”
― Scott Westerfeld, Afterworlds

“Don’t aim for perfection. Evolution, and life, only happen through mistakes.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I thought you needed to be tougher. But I've been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”
― Holly Black, Doll Bones

“That's what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable - and all the time we're being carved, and shaped, and whittled away.”
― Lauren Oliver, Annabel

“Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy

“I wish I could remember it. I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Fever

“I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like DYING.”
― Holly Black, Doll Bones

“Our weaknesses are always evident, both to ourselves and others. But our strengths are hidden until we choose to reveal them--and that is when we are truly tested. When all that we have within is exposed, and we may no longer blame our inadequacies for our failure, but must instead depend upon our strengths to succeed ... that is when the measure of a man is taken, my boy.”
― James A. Owen, Here, There Be Dragons

“I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don't want to be un-friends.”
― E. Nesbit, The Railway Children

“Also she had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it's not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you.”
― E. Nesbit, The Railway Children

“Have you ever watched people when they don't know you're watching them? Like in a movie theater or a concert. When people get caught up in watching something, their faces change. The lines on their faces get softer, because whatever they're watching has made them forget how they think they're supposed to be looking. Instead, they just ARE — just sitting there, listening and watching and being real.”
― Claire Legrand, The Year of Shadows

“Fight with realistic
hope, not to destroy

all the world's wrong,
but to renew its good.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“And what some people don't understand was that bleeding wasn't a sign of weakness; it was a sign of strength. It demonstrated to the world that you were vulnerable and ordinary, but when you wanted something enough, and fought hard for it, you were capable of doing extraordinary things.”
― Natasha Ngan, The Elites

“Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“The moments that define lives aren't always obvious. They don't scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there's no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren't always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words.

"I'll go first.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“If nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.”
― Wendy Mass, The Candymakers

“The thing about leaving something behind for the last time is that you rarely realize you're doing it.”
― Wendy Mass, The Candymakers

“Why do you like books so much?” he asked. Miles answered without taking his face away from the window. “You never know what you’ll learn when you open one. And if it’s a story, you sort of fall into it. Then you live there for a while, instead of, you know, living here.”
― Wendy Mass, The Candymakers

“The strangest think I have learned is that it's impossible to know what's inside someone. The wizards didn't teach me this, but I have learned it myself. Those who appear tall and straight and very good are sometimes rotten on the inside, and others, huge and clawed and apparently very bad, sometimes contain a pure and sweet form of goodness. The biggest trap is to judge a person by their outer casing. Their skin. Their hair. Their snow-white feathers.”
― Karen Foxlee, Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

“If you ever shoot a great magical owl with an arrow, you should remember this, Ophelia. Everything is connected. If you touch the ground, you touch the tops of trees. If you touch the trees, you touch the wings of birds.”
― Karen Foxlee, Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

“Maybe that is what beauty was, for humans. Accidents, imperfections, placed inside a pretty pattern. Asymmetry. The defiance of mathematics.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Let's not forget The Things They Do To Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes - shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semi-autobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I care so much I’m sick.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451