Melanie > Melanie's Quotes

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside. ”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
― Benjamin Franklin Wade

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

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

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

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

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”
― Mark Twain

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
― Mark Twain

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”
― Mark Twain

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald (letter to his daughter)

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs