Manna > Manna's Quotes

“Wendy," Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
― J.M. Barrie , Peter Pan

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“All those layers of silence upon silence.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But what Ramanujan wanted more, more than anything, was simply the freedom to do as he wished, to be left alone to think, to dream, to create, to lose himself in a world of his own making.”
― Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

“They must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them.”
― Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

“He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Be lost. Give up. Give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were really all as stupid as they seemed).”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“I was never like the rest of you, making plans about the great things I'd do, I never saw myself as anything much, just shy, stupid little Beth, who's only use was at home. Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home, but I don't like being left behind. Now I'm the one going ahead, No one can stop God if He wants me, But I'm afraid I shall be homesick for you... even in heaven.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women