Gregory Simenson > Gregory's Quotes

“Well, one of the kids from school called me stupid because I didn’t catch the football,” I said.
“Was this kid named Albert?” Mom asked.
“No, it was Kenny.”
“Listen. Unless Albert Einstein is at your school, you’re the smartest one there. Look how fast you solved the Rubik’s cube. I bet none of your classmates can even solve it at all, let alone in under a minute. And… what’s 316 times 128?”
I paused for a moment. “40,448.”
“I guarantee that nobody in your school can do that either. Stupid? Forget about it.”
― Darin C. Brown, The Taste of Despair

“Most of us knew in our bones that things with the world weren’t right, long before it became a crisis.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“Life without madness is mediocrity.”
― Nelou Keramati

“Every man has somewhere about him some belief for which he'd die. Only isn't it improbable that your parents and guardians told it to you? If there is one won't it be part of your own flesh and spirit?”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“Nothing dies in Hell.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Plague of Angels

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“And then he says it, right there on the Hill, and of all the words I have hidden and saved and treasured, these are the ones I will never forget, the most important ones of all. 'I love you.”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.”
― Rachel Carson

“When I realized what the drawing was depicting, I thought I would feel horror-stricken and petrified, but a strange calm had settled over me. I said, “This blackness was in my nightmare. It was coming for me to take me away . . . and I was running, trying to escape.”
― Misty Mount, The Shadow Girl

“It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity thing felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“a long time ago I’d given up on religion, thinking it wasn’t for me when so many were bigoted, narrow-minded, and cruel.”
― V.C. Andrews, Seeds of Yesterday

“Be good, be honest and fair, find something I believe in, work hard and keep the faith no matter how long it takes?”
― Dave Pelzer, A Man Named Dave

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“The feeling of love is the emotion that accompanies the experience of cathecting. Cathecting, it will be remembered, is the process by which an object becomes important to us. Once cathected, the object, commonly referred to as a “love object,” is invested with our energy as if it were a part of ourselves, and this relationship between us and the invested object is called a cathexis.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“pig and an elephant”
― Jon Scieszka, Terrifying Tales

“If God had let me come at once, as I prayed, then everything would have been different, I should only have had a little bread to bring to grandmother, and I should not have been able to read, which is such a comfort to her; but God has arranged it all so much better than I knew how to; everything has happened just as the other grandmother said it would. Oh, how glad I am that God did not let me have at once all I prayed and wept for! And now I shall always pray to God as she told me, and always thank Him, and when He does not do anything I ask for I shall think to myself, It's just like it was in Frankfurt: God, I am sure, is going to do something better still. So we will pray every day, won't we, grandfather, and never forget Him again, or else He may forget us.”
― Johanna Spyri, Heidi

“And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face upto hers, and smiles, and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.

Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great presence, all human life's like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.”
― Jerome K. Jerome

“Margaret Mead once said, 'Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.' He paused. 'Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.”
― Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

“I suppose all this sounds very crazy — all these terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words. They are not meant to be spoken — only felt and endured.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams