Melissa’s Bookshelf > Melissa’s Bookshelf's Quotes

“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

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Literature has the power to change lives, minds, and hearts.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

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

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Love Forever

If I were the trees ...
I would turn my leaves to gold and scatter them toward the sky so they would circle about your head and fall in piles at your feet...
so you might know wonder.

If I were the mountains ...
I would crumble down and lift you up so you could see all of my secret places, where the rivers flow and the animals run wild ...
so you might know freedom.

If I were the ocean ...
I would raise you onto my gentle waves and carry you across the seas to swim with the whales and the dolphins in the moonlit waters,
so you might know peace.

If I were the stars ...
I would sparkle like never before and fall from the sky as gentle rain,
so that you would always look towards heaven and know that you can reach the stars.

If I were the moon ...
I would scoop you up and sail you through the sky and show you the Earth below in all its wonder and beauty,
so you might know that all the Earth is at your command.

If I were the sun ...
I would warm and glow like never before and light the sky with orange and pink,
so you would gaze upward and always know the glory of heaven.

But I am me ...
and since I am the one who loves you, I will wrap you in my arms and kiss you and love you with all of my heart,
and this I will do until ...
the mountains crumble down ...
and the oceans dry up ...
and the stars fall from the sky ...
and the sun and moon burn out ...

And that is forever.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“He's still there, unchanged, even when we can't feel Him. When the grief's too loud to let us hear His voice.”
― Roseanna M. White, The Number of Love

“Life does often get in the way of one's reading.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“But as a wise and great teacher once explained so patiently, all good stories - stories that touch your soul, stories that change your nature, stories that cause you to become a better person from their telling-these stories always contain truth.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Just when we think we have our own stories figured out, heroes arise in the most unexpected places.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"
"I've felt it all my life," she said.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
― C.S. Lewis

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
― Henry Stanley Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”
― M.L Stedman

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”
― M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

“I believe that sometimes people come into your life at exactly the right moment to give you exactly what you need at that moment.”
― Lisa Mangum, After Hello

“Emotions are tricky things. If you don't control them, they will control you. And if you're living your life out of control, you'll never be able to make clear and rational decisions.”
― Lisa Mangum, After Hello

“We often fail to recognize our greatest godsend simply because it comes bundled in suffering.”
― Jessica Dotta, Price of Privilege

“One should never save cake for later when it can be eaten now.”
― Marissa Meyer, Winter

“And they all lived happily to the end of their days.”
― Marissa Meyer, Winter

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.”
― Jean Webster

“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being pliable.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs