Shannon > Shannon's Quotes

“Our lifestyle is evolutionarily unstable--and is therefore in the process of eliminating itself in the perfectly ordinary way.”
― Daniel Quinn

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“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

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry?

You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you’ll never know.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

“The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I'm the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"
“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

“Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life. It has also convinced me that carefully writing everything down is the only real defense we have against forgetting something important that once was and is no more, including the spruce tree that should have outlived me but did not.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not sick. If you are not sick, shut up and help. Twenty-five years later, I still cannot reject this as an inaccurate worldview.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“I have learned that raising a child is essentially one long, slow agony of letting go.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Something so hard can be so easy if you just have a little help. In the right place, under the right conditions, you can finally stretch out into what you’re supposed to be.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“People are like plants: they grow toward the light.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.”
― John Green

“You must never stop being whimsical.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them solely and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe – that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays