Esther > Esther's Quotes

“There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 29: The Illustrated London News, 1911-1913

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought.”
― Albert Pinkham Ryder

“Excess is excrement, ... Excrement retained in the body is a poison.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“American love — like coke in green glass bottles...they don't make it anymore.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it.”
― Alan Moore, Absolute Watchmen

“Nite Owl II: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?

The Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“I live my life free of compromise, and step into the shadows without complaint or regret.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Never despair. Never surrender.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“For Alice and Mattia, the high school years were an open wound that had seemed so deep that it could never heal. They had passed through them without breathing, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and eventually they had noticed that it didn't make all that much difference. They had formed a defective and asymmetrical friendship, made up of long absences and much silence, a clean and empty space where both could come back to breathe when the walls of their school became too close for them to ignore the feeling of suffocation.”
― Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score”
― Frederick the Great

“Quand je serai là, je serai sans souci”
― Frederick the Great

“Books make up no small part of human happiness.”
― Frederick the Great

“Do not fall in love with people like me.
I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.”
― Caitlyn Siehl, Literary Sexts: A Collection of Short & Sexy Love Poems

“Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“And, what's more, this 'precious' body, the very same that is hooted and honked at, demeaned both in daily life as well as in ever existing form of media, harrassed, molested, raped, and, if all that wasn't enough, is forever poked and prodded and weighed and constantly wrong for eating too much, eating too little, a million details which all point to the solitary girl, to EVERY solitary girl, and say: Destroy yourself.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“when your little girl
asks you if she’s pretty
your heart will drop like a wineglass
on the hardwood floor
part of you will want to say
of course you are, don’t ever question it
and the other part
the part that is clawing at
you
will want to grab her by her shoulders
look straight into the wells of
her eyes until they echo back to you
and say
you do not have to be if you don’t want to
it is not your job
both will feel right
one will feel better
she will only understand the first
when she wants to cut her hair off
or wear her brother’s clothes
you will feel the words in your
mouth like marbles
you do not have to be pretty if you don’t want to
it is not your job”
― Caitlyn Siehl