Sidran > Sidran's Quotes

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

“If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
― Sojourner Truth

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.”
― Mary Anne Radmacher

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
― Albert Einstein

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
― Colette

“I'm not young enough to know everything.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
― Confucius

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein

“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”
― Margaret Drabble

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”
― Jim Morrison

“Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.”
― Anne Bradstreet

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
― A.A. Milne

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis

“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”
― Bob Dylan

“Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own.”
― Joss Whedon

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I used to think the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.”
― Robin Williams

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”
― Cornel West

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing