Edna Clair > Edna's Quotes

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
― Mother Teresa

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
― Benjamin Franklin Wade

“There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”
― Anne Perry, The Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Please don’t think so lightly of liking someone. It’s terribly important. It is a kind of loving, you know, and one that frequently lasts a lot longer than romance. You can fall out of love, as well in. Most of us do, especially if you don’t actually like the person as well. It doesn’t always grow into love by any means, but sometimes it does.”
― Anne Perry, Pentecost Alley

“I dream in a language I do not understand when I'm awake.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly blank out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at one time.”
― Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“No matter how many they may be we should go to God in all confidence and with true sorrow for our sins, saying “Our Father Who art in Heaven, forgive us our sins of thought and those of speech, forgive us our sins of commission and omission which make us infinitely guilty in the eyes of Thy Divine Justice.”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“For never will anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led astray by the devil. This is a statement which I would sign with my blood.”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“By saying it daily and by doing good works you will be tending your tree, watering it, hoeing the earth around it.”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“Father Dominic, a Carthusian, who was deeply devoted to the holy Rosary, had a vision in which he saw heaven opened and the whole heavenly court assembled in magnificent array. He heard them sing the Rosary in an enchanting melody, and each decade was in honour of a mystery of the life, passion, or glory of Jesus Christ and his holy Mother. Fr. Dominic noticed that whenever they pronounced the holy name of Mary they bowed their heads, and at the name of Jesus they genuflected and gave thanks to God for the great good he had wrought in heaven and on earth through the holy Rosary. He also saw our Lady and the Saints present to God the Rosaries which the Confraternity members say here on earth. He noticed too that they were praying for those who practice this devotion. He also saw beautiful crowns without number, which were made of sweet-smelling flowers, for those who say the Rosary devoutly. He learned that by every Rosary that they say they make a crown for themselves which they will be able to wear in heaven. This holy Carthusian's vision is very much like that which the Beloved Disciple had, in which he saw a great multitude of angels and saints, who continually praised and blessed Jesus Christ for all that he had done and suffered on earth for our salvation.”
― St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“When the Rosary is well said it gives Jesus and Mary more glory and it is more meritorious for the soul than any other prayer.”
― Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, The Secret Of The Rosary

“The Our Father contains all the duties we owe to God, the acts of all the virtues and the petitions for all our spiritual needs.”
― Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, The Secret Of The Rosary

“The fear of the Lord will chase away all pride and we will bow down before God in our utter nothingness.”
― Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, The Secret Of The Rosary

“The Rosary is a sure means of curing oneself of sin and of embracing a Christian life.”
― Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, The Secret Of The Rosary

“To ask God to save us from falling into sin when we are tempted is to give proof that we are fighting laziness and that we are genuinely seeking means to root out vicious habits and to work out our salvation.”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“[P]eople do not appreciate things they can get quickly and with very little trouble.”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret Of The Rosary

“It is written, "Give, and it shall be given to you" (Lk. 6:38). To take Blessed Alan's illustration of this: "Supposing I were to give you a hundred and fifty diamonds every day, even if you were an enemy of mine, would you not forgive me? Would you not treat me as a friend and give me all the graces that you were able to give?”
― Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin