Christine > Christine's Quotes

“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”

[Roark] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Drama dies without an audience”
― Jen Sincero, Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick

“Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Even though I'm trying hard not to let it show, I want to swim past the breakers, and sink to the bottom and stay there with my eyes closed and the water covering my ears.

And yes, I know that's an overreaction. When you read this you'll think "Mom, please. Really?" You'll roll your eyes in that carefree way of yours and shrug those rebellious bangs off your forehead. You'll offer the one-sided smirk that says "you and I are the weird ones in the family - the two that always get each other's hidden meanings".

Only this time, you don't get it. You can't. You won't for another 25 or 30 years - until you lie on the sand, or sit in a stadium seat somewhere or stand at your kitchen stove and catch a glimpse of your first born, your baby, suddenly inhabiting the body of an adult. Someone you barely recognize. In that instant, you'll think "how did this happen? When did this happen? Have I taught enough? Have I listened enough? Have I coached and planned and laughed and worried enough? Can I let go enough?"

I'm afraid I won't be able to do it gracefully when the moment comes. I'm not ready. It's too soon. Instead of compiling pictures for a tasteful collage to make your dorm room homey, I want to climb inside the photos and live them again. Every bedtime story, lost tooth, birthday cake, backyard campout, ballgame, wildflower bouquet, rainy day and homemade Mothers Day card. All the golden moments and all the quiet, ordinary ones. I'd treasure them even more the second time around. If only life came with a rewind button, with do overs.”
― Lisa Wingate, Tending Roses

“Nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a celebratory fist in the air did it from their comfort zone. They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death.”
― Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

“Your life is your party. You get to choose how you invite people and experiences and things into it.”
― Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

“The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.”
― Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

“I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday.”
― Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

“In philosophy, “you’re either with us or against us” is considered a false dichotomy or a false dilemma. It’s a move to force people to take sides. If other alternatives exist (and they almost always do), then that statement is factually wrong. It’s turning an emotion-driven approach into weaponized belonging. And it always benefits the person throwing down the gauntlet and brandishing those forced, false choices.”
― Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
― Maya Angelou

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
― Ray Bradbury