Celeste > Celeste's Quotes

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”
― Euripides, Medea

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“You should be warned, though, whatever else you take from this, that knowledge is always carnage. Power is a siren song, bloodstained and miserly hoarded. Forgiveness is not a given. Redemption is not a right.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Complex

“I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Kevin was more demanding of himself than he was of anyone around him. He set his standards impossibly high and tried for them with everything he had, and he didn't understand why others wouldn't do the same.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court

“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

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“They all shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had the strange cold breath of the ancient world : they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks - sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I worry because I care. Gods help me, I know I shouldn't, but I do. So I will always tell you to be careful, because I will always care what happens.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight

“Our dead don't leave us. They'll hunt you as long as you let them.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys."
Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen— and the dreams that are answered.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so? Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls – which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“I give you my blood,
I give you my soul,
I give you my heart,
From this night until the end of nights.
From daybreak until our days are broken.
Your soul is my soul,
Your heart is my heart,
Your pain is my pain.
I bind myself to you.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Serpent and the Wings of Night

“You know, I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you’re worth a damn off the court— yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know it’s not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you’re physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don’t think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“A fair system only works if there’s an unbiased means of assessing merit. When there is no pride or selfishness involved.” He gives a soft snort, shaking his head. “Which means that fair systems cannot exist where people are involved.”
― James Islington, The Will of the Many

“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“Let someone in, give them the power to hurt you, and they'd do exactly that, in the end.”
― Sarah J. Maas, House of Earth and Blood

“Because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. Good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I was glad when he lost his hand. Exy is all he has and all he loves; I knew it would destroy him to lose it. A month in the nest without it, maybe two, and he would have no recourse but to kill himself. I was only alive because he made me promise to survive. If he died, who could hold me to that? I would have slashed the tires on his car before I let him escape us, and he knows it.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Golden Raven

“A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers. They would both remain perfectly content to linger in the liminal, endless space between truth and denial.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Don't feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“You could rattle the stars," she whispered. "You could do anything, if only you dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“History isn't a premade tapestry that we've got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key. He was the one who let me out.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“The brightest meadows grew from dead things.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven