Quotes

Favorite Quotes

I congratulate myself on not having arrived into the world until the present time.
This age suits my taste. ~ Ovid

For the strength of the pack is the wolf,
and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
~ Rudyard Kipling

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile
and into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.
~ Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight 
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight
~ Bruce Cockburn, Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror.
To learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
~ Frank Herbert

One should die proudly,
when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
~ F. Nietzsche

Be free always, because of all things,
freedom is best, though it is not easily won
and must be chosen by those who will enjoy it.
~ Alice Borchardt

Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
~ Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity

We all know that it is women who take the decisions,
but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs.
It is an act of kindness on the part of the women. ~ Mma Ramotse

Imagine a world...
in which the principle of private ownership of the means of production is fully realized, in which there are no institutions hindering the mobility of capital, labor, and commodities, in which the laws, the courts, and the administrative officers do not discriminate against any individual or groups of individuals whether native or alien. Imagine a state of affairs in which governments are devoted exclusively to the task of protecting the individual's life, health, and property against violent and fraudulent aggression. In such a world the frontiers are drawn on the maps, but they do not hinder anybody from the pursuit of what he thinks will make him more prosperous. No individual is interested in the expansion of the size of his nation's territory, as he cannot derive any gain from such an aggrandizement.
Conquest does not pay and war becomes obsolete.
~ Ludwig von Mises

Away with the whims of governmental administrators,
their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs,
their government schools, their state religions, their free credit,
their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions,
their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
~ Frederick Bastiat

There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than
the kind which the market economy brings about.
~ Ludwig von Mises

Fairy tales are more than true.
Not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
~ G. K. Chesterton

Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

They that can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~ Ben Franklin

The living is not perfect because it is liable to change;
the dead is not perfect because it does not live.
~ Ludwig von Mises

The price of liberty is, and always has been, blood.
The person who is not willing to die for his liberty
has already lost it to the first scoundrel
who is willing to risk dying to violate that person’s liberty.
Are you free?
~ Andrew Ford

I do not take a single newspaper...
and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Not all those who wander are lost.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you
~ The Cure

No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another.
~ Picard

There are no evil thoughts
– except one –
the refusal to think.
~ Ayn Rand

He who breaks a thing to find out what it is,
has left the path of wisdom.
~ Mithrandir

The day is cold, and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past
But the hopes of youth fall think in the blast.
And the days are dark and dreary.
By still, sad heart! And cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun in shining;
Thy fate is the common fat of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
~ H W Longfellow

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
~ H W Longfellow

If thou’rt of air let grey mist fold thee
if of earth let the swart mine hold thee,
if a Pixie seek thy ring,
if a Nixie seek thy spring.
~ Sir Walter Scott

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read.
~ David McCullough, "No Time to Read?"

I am a grown woman - mostly - and I can guzzle champagne with whomever I chose. ~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 60

Marriages are made in heaven. But, then again, so are thunder, lightning, tornadoes and hail. ~ Unknown

James: There is more than one person involved. So, more than one set of interests. So, invariably, somewhat more than one plot. How much more, we have yet to learn.
Susan: Many. How many more.
James: I tend to think of plotting as an infinitely expandable miasma, rather than a group of discrete objects. But I don't feel strongly enough about it to defend the grammar.
~ Freedom and Necessity, Emma Bull & Steven Brust

There's a double meaning in that!
~ Shakespeare's Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing

Quotes about Books and Reading (for Sandman Book Co t-shirts; quotes in italics are not directly related to books but are still good candidates)

Fairy tales are more than true.
Not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
~ G. K. Chesterton

There are no evil thoughts
– except one –
the refusal to think.
~ Ayn Rand

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left over I buy food and clothes.
~ Erasmus

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
~ Jorge Luis Borges

The World is Made Up of Stories, Not Atoms.
~ Muriel Rukeyser

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
~ Cicero

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
~ C.S. Lewis

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
~ Oscar Wilde

There is no friend as loyal as a book.
~ Ernest Hemingway

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that
brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 10

Reading keeps you from going gaga.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p.32

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.
~ Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 53

My library was dukedom large enough.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

another list of quotes about literature