Celete > Celete's Quotes

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Something that is yours forever is never precious”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“The dreams are not torture. They often begin with an elation unlike any I have experience in life. The anguish comes on as I feel this happiness receding, and I struggle to keep it, and lost it, and grieve. Whether I weep openly each time, I don't know. But then I didn't know before how much I might show to anyone who saw me when these dreams take me.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“The ghosts of my heart strolled in.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“Somehow I felt better toward him, knowing that he had possessed some instinct to fight back. It was something I needed to believe - that all men possess, somewhere, the dignity to value their own lives. If only enough to scratch the arm of the one who throws you to the wolves.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“It was Christmas but that was not a day or a season - it was an expectation, a promise of joy and peace, an obligation to pierce the veil of singleness, separating me from all the universe, a duty more compelling because of the night itself, the real Christian anticipation that God Almighty, God Himself, would in the silent moments of that night leap the gap between the divine and the human and commune with us all. An expectation and a challenge: to find the peace I could not find, to find the joy that was not mine, to forgive and be forgiven, when, in fact, my only sin and my only virtue, then and now, was my aloneness.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“We hope and dream; somewhere we find faith. Then doubt spreads through us as a dark liquid stream, fed not so much by the world outside us but through some source within our own souls. Faith and doubt appear in our lives like two visitors - coming uninvited and leaving at their whim. We feed them both, and when they leave us by ourselves we remember the voice of each and ask which one spoke our true hearts - when both did.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“I found myself wondering about her as I wondered about myself. Who are we really? Are we who we are at our worst, or at our best?”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“If there is anything in life I know to be true, it is that life itself is a matter of the spirit. A man with a broken spirit, whose soul nourished nothing except the belief that the poison within his own heart is shared by the whole human race, and hopes anything beyond the desire that everyone he meets will share in his misery, is sick indeed, and his body, however healthy in its potential, is on a path toward corruption; but the person with a purpose, warmed by the impression that, for all his other shortcomings, something resides within him that is capable of loving and of being loved, can bear all things, believe all things, endure all things. That person's body will heal faster than medical minds imagine. It will overcome pain; in many cases, it will not feel it at all.”
― Randall Wallace, Love and Honor: A Novel

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man- that it is an unnatural state- will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“She was still clutching the book. She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“I don’t know exactly what’s happened to me, and for the first time today, I don’t really care. I shouldn’t have to care. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out indeed, to be threatening place. So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist