Katherine > Katherine's Quotes

“How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements... and into dreams that we can make come true.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“The seas and the weathers are what is; your vessels adapt to them or sink.”
― Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides

“The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.”
― Roger Scruton

“It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.”
― Roger Scruton

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in their power to improve, but do not imagine themselves to be saviours. In their humble struggle is true heroism.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one's whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses

“Restraints upon our natural inclinations, which left to themselves do not automatically lead us to do what is good for us and often indeed lead us to evil, are not only necessary; they are the indispensable condition of civilized existence.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
― Roger Scruton, How to be a Conservative

“We are needy creatures, and our greatest need is for home—the place where we are, where we find protection and love. We achieve this home through representations of our own belonging, not alone but in conjunction with others. All our attempts to make our surroundings look right—through decorating, arranging, creating—are attempts to extend a welcome to ourselves and to those whom we love.”
― Roger Scruton

“Free speech is not the cause of the tensions that are growing around us, but the only possible solution to them.”
― Roger Scruton

“In the face of sorrow, imperfection and the fleetingness of our affections and joys, we ask ourselves ‘why?’. We need reassurance. We look to art for the proof that life in this world is meaningful and that suffering is not the pointless thing that it so often appears to be, but the necessary part of a larger and redeeming whole.”
― Roger Scruton, Confessions of a Heretic

“Burke saw society as an association of the dead, the living and the unborn. Its binding principle is not contract, but something more akin to love. Society is a shared inheritance for the sake of which we learn to circumscribe our demands, to see our own place in things as part of a continuous chain of giving and receiving, and to recognize that the good things we inherit are not ours to spoil.”
― Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.”
― John Milton, Paradise Regained

“Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
― John Milton

“Gratitude bestows reverence.....changing forever how we experience life and the world.”
― John Milton

“I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.”
― Peter O'Toole

“The script sits in front of you. The writer’s translated into ink what is in his spirit and his soul and his mind. Bum. [Thumps table.] I come along, I pick it up, and the ink goes into my eyes, into my mind, into my body, flows around and that part starts to inhabit me. And I know a good part when I see one.”
― Peter O'Toole

“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.”
― Peter O'Toole

“The point of a knighthood for British actors is to enable them to play butlers.”
― Alec Guinness, A Commonplace Book

“An actor is no more than an assortment of odds and ends which barely add upp to a whole man. An actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who for an hour or two, can call on heacen and hell to mesmerise a group of innocents.”
― Alec Guinness Blessings in disguise

“I neither suffer myself, nor other fools, gladly.”
― Alec Guinness, A Commonplace Book

“Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes,' otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.”
― Ian Fleming

“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.”
― Ian Fleming, From Russia with Love

“Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale