Penny > Penny's Quotes

“Oxygen was called flammable air for a while, but it didn't catch on.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

“In the world I am
Always a stranger
I do not understand its language
It does not understand my silence”
― Bei Dao

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If there are no spots on a sugar cube then I’ve just put a dice in my tea.”
― Robert Rankin, The Antipope

“- It's a small matter, but one which I think shouldn't be overlooked.
- Oh Yes? And that is?
- That is the simple matter that time travel is an impossibility, you craven buffoon!
- Not with the latest miracle of modern horticulture...Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce you to THE TIME SPROUT !
'Pleased to be here' said the vegetable in question.”
― Robert Rankin, Armageddon: The Musical

“I looked into the literature on this," said Nightingale, "and it wasn't very helpful."
"There's a literature about this?"
"You'd be amazed, Constable, about what there's a literature on.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences' he wrote. 'No one can say that the O's roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or a girl's breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things”
― Simon Garfield

“Ecofont is designed to save ink, money and eventually the planet, but heaven save us from worthy fonts. Ecofont is a program that adds holes to a font. The software takes Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman and prints them is if they had been attacked by moths. They retain their original shape but not their original form, and so lose their true weight and beauty... a study at the University of Wisconsin claimed that Ecofonts, such as Ecofont Vera Sans, actually uses more ink and toner than lighter fonts such as Century Gothic...”
― Simon Garfield, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

“In 1979 the New York Times reported that in many {New York Subway} stations, the signs are so confusing that one is tempted to wish they were not there at all - a wish that is, in fact, granted in numerous stations and on all too many of the subway cars themselves.”
― Simon Garfield, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”
― Chinua Achebe

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984