Bri > Bri's Quotes

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”
― Philip Roth

“What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.”
― Edward Albee

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
― Christopher Morley, Pipefuls

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”
― Washington Irving

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie Du Mariage: Ou Meditations De Philosophie Eclectique, Sur Le Bonheur Et Le Malheur Conjugal

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“I read like a wolf eats.
I read myself to sleep every night.”
― Gary Paulsen

“One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
― George Sand, Correspondance, 1812-1876; Volume 5

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”
― Carol Shields, The Republic of Love

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
― Jean de La Fontaine, Fables

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.”
― Guy de Maupassant, The Complete Short Stories of de Maupassant

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.”
― Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères

“If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith

“The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
― Samuel Johnson, Works of Samuel Johnson. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, A Grammar of the English Tongue, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the English Poets & more [improved 11/20/2010]

“How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters