Elena Petkovska > Elena's Quotes

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“Supposing I know of a flower that is absolutely unique, that is nowhere to be found except on my planet, and any minute that flower could accidentally be eaten up by a little lamb, isn't that important? If a person loves a flower that is the only one of its kind on all the millions and millions of stars, then gazing at the night sky is enough to make him happy. He says to himself "My flower is out there somewhere." But if the lamb eats the flower, then suddenly it's as if all the stars had stopped shining. Isn't that important?”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them . . . On my planet I had a flower; she always was the first to speak . . .”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
― Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Love those you hate you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I love, I can only love the one I've left behind, stained with my blood when, ungrateful wretch that I am, I extinguished myself and shot myself through the heart. But never, never have I ceased to love that one, and even on the night I parted from him I loved him perhaps more poignantly than ever. We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering in order to love. I want and thirst this very minute to kiss , with tears streaming down my cheeks, this one and only I have left behind. I don't want and won't accept any other.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I've never been a coward at heart, although I've always been a coward in action”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky