Marty Reeder > Marty's Quotes

“There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

“Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Leave well alone.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of the gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“We believe that to govern perfectly it is necessary to avoid governing too much.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon

“It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

“The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

“I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

“There is no dishonor in wisdom.”
― James Welch

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale