Kate > Kate's Quotes

“A fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts turning in her direction and wondering what strange side-alley of human experience this lonely woman had strayed into.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“did you not call this a glorious expedition? and wherefore was it glorious? not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were brave to overcome. for this was it a glorious , for this was it an honorable undertaking”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered so restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except some bat, or frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore - often, I say, was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.”
― Mary Shelley

“His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour[...]”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides