Jessel > Jessel's Quotes

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“As I am. As I am. All or not at all.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Ay, I’m a poor man—a poor gentleman, in fact: those I would be friends with, won’t be friends with me; those who are willing to be friends with me, I am above being friends with.”
― Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
― C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson on Self Reliance

“Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Sometimes we get so tied up in our idea of what we think we want that we miss out on the amazingness of what we could actually have.”
― Lynn Painter, Better Than the Movies

“Be brave enough to go big.”
― Lynn Painter, Better Than the Movies