Melanie > Melanie's Quotes

“When in doubt, be ridiculous.”
― Sherwood Smith, Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.

But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.

What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray--but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Sophos turned red, and I wondered about the circulation of his blood; maybe his body kept an extra supply of it in his head, ready for blushing.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“No 'Glory shall be your reward' for me. Oh, no, for me, it is, 'Stop whining' and 'Go to bed'.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Calf love doesn't usually survive amputation, Your Majesty.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia

“Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances."
Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?”
― Megan Whalen Turner, A Conspiracy of Kings

“It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
― Charles Dickens

“Mr. Cruncher... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it. ”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
― Charles Dickens , A Tale of Two Cities

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

“Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"

"You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables