katherine ౨ৎ > katherine ౨ৎ's Quotes

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”
― Ian McEwan

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. ”
― Walt Whitman

“She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She’s the only divine thing he’s ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Drowning Faith

“They were monsters!" Rin shrieked. "They were not human!"

"Have you ever considered" he said slowly "that that was exactly what they thought of us?”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession