Ali > Ali's Quotes

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw.”
― Movie, Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre

“Nothing stands still, except in our memory.”
― Philippa Pearce, Tom's Midnight Garden

“Try to be a filter, not a sponge.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time. ”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
― Fred Rogers

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“The first duty of love is to listen.”
― Paul Tillich

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
― Benjamin Spock

“...of eighteen kittens reared in the company of rodents, only three became rodent-killers later on. The other fifteen could not be trained to kill later by seeing other cats killing. For them the rodents had become 'family' and were no longer 'prey'. Even the three killers would not attack rodents of the same species as the one with which they were reared.”
― Desmond Morris, Catwatching: The Essential Guide To Cat Behaviour

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust

“Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.”
― Stendhal

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan

“In that instance, my body had decided that this baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it is my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Think higher, feel deeper.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Never is an awfully long time.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anais Nin

“The attempt to see through eyes that are not your own. To understand that your way of looking at the world is not the only one. To think what it might mean to love those that are not like you. To rejoice in the complexity of things.”
― Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between