Val > Val's Quotes

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”
― Mark Twain

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
― Virginia Woolf

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”
― Elizabeth Peters

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”
― Coco Chanel, Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From The World's Most Elegant Woman

“There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don't need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it”
― Alexandre Dumas

“If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”
― Gustav Mahler

“In any case you mustn't confuse a single failure with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. ”
― Walt Whitman

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations

“I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths - for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.”
― Walt Whitman

“I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester

“The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle:—
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From it's own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, not falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous,beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability!”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems