tata > tata's Quotes

“I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being pliable.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains. ”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf!
And he is--Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because it's beautiful and he isn't here to see
it with me. But maybe you've loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.

That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. ”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff?

I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“She was by nature a sunny soul”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Please be thinking about me. I'm quite lonely and I want to be thought about”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life- written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and forseeing to the exact hour the time you would die. How many people do you suppose you have the courage to read it then? Or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope, without surprise? Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so often. But imagine how deadly monotonous it would be if nothing unexpected could happen between meals?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“If this book should ever roam, Box its ears and send it home.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him”
― Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party