Maria > Maria's Quotes

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“I’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don’t give kissing their whole attention. They can’t. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus—or their chances of making the gal—or their own techniques in kissing—or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn’t have technique . . . but when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe . . . and the moment is eternal because he doesn’t have any plans and isn’t going anywhere. Just kissing you.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The world won't come to me...so I must go to it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“In this miasma of forgotten wars, torture and the war on terror, there are no easy answers, especially in the face of a very real terrorism. But I can live my questions. As a humanitarian, I can act from a feeling of shared vulnerability with the victims of preventable suffering. I have a responsibility to bear witness publicly to the plight of those I seek to assist and to insist on independent humanitarian action and respect for international humanitarian law. As a citizen, I can assume my responsibility for the public world - the world of politics - not as a spectator, but as a participant who engages and shapes it. The larger force that can push back against the wrong use of power can be the force of a citizen's politics that openly debates the right use of power and the reasoned pursuit of justice. Catherine Lu, a political philosopher and my friend, has described justice as a boundary over which we must not go, a bond of common humanity between us, a balance among people of equal worth and dignity. I fight not for a utopian ideal, but each day I make a choice, against nihilism and towards justice.”
― James Orbinski, An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century

“Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“He brought out the worst in me, and was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
― Coco J. Ginger

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
― John Muir, The Mountains of California

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”
― John Muir, Our National Parks

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“Eroticize intelligence.”
― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice