Yomama > Yomama's Quotes

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Seneca

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Seneca

“Only time can heal what reason cannot.”
― Seneca

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Seneca

“Often what people don't say or leave out, tells the real story.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Every country needs its whistleblowers. They are crucial to a healthy society. The employee who, in the public interest, has the independence of judgement and the personal courage to challenge malpractice or illegality is a kind of public hero.”
― Fuad Alakbarov

“Sometimes the best heroes are the ones in your head—but that doesn't make them any less real.”
― Ashley Poston, The Princess and the Fangirl

“I don’t like perfect heroes; I can’t recognize myself in them. I like flawed heroes, like me. I want to see how they struggle with their flaws and in spite of that manage to slay the dragon.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom

“You don't need a medal to do what's right.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“It is better to die for your virtues than to live for your vices.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“I was gifted light for a reason... There will be no darkness on my watch.”
― Celia Oliva, Cettia's Light

“Some heroes wake up and carry on, when carrying on is an intolerable burden: weighted with obscurity, loaded with loneliness, acknowledged by none - these are the quiet heroes we should call by one thousand holy names.”
― Judy Croome, the dust of hope: rune poems

“You just assumed he’d buy I was really your girl? What if he’d called your bluff? (Roya Clairen)
But he didn’t. (Zayvier Bynum)
How often have you used that trick? (Roya)
First time (Zayvier)”
― Temple Carver, Elite Deception

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.”
― John Updike

“But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.”
― John Updike, A&P: Lust in the Aisles

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”
― John Updike, Self-Consciousness

“Get to know the right, then you would know the people of right. Right Is not measured by its men, but men are measured by their right.”
― Ali Bin Abi Thalib

“Justice is better than courage as if everyone is fair to others, then there will be no need for courage.”
― Imam Ali

“The most complete gift of God is a life based on knowledge.”
― Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib

“Words have power, which is why Imam Ali says, “Speak only when your words are more beautiful than the silence.” After all, everything in existence sprouted from the vibration of the divinely uttered word “Be! And it is” (36:82). So remember, your tongue is like a knife; it can either kill like the sword of a samurai or save like the scalpel of a surgeon.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam