Pamela Jayson > Pamela's Quotes

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
― Walt Whitman

“Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.”
― Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works

“God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.”
― Walt Whitman

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“for my greatest skill has been to want but little.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Classic Collection

“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?”
― Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

“You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.”
― THOMAS HARDY

“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”
― James Joyce, The Dead

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“I know the place

I know the place.
It is true.
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between death and me
And you.”
― Harold Pinter

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”
― Harold Pinter

“I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.”
― Harold Pinter

“It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion, the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, Tarry Flynn

“My advice is this, do whatever pleases yourself. These things don’t matter. What does matter is that if you have anything worth while in you, any talent, you should deliver it. Nothing must turn you from that.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, Tarry Flynn

“We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, The Complete Poems

“When something or someone is no longer bringing you up, but pulling you down—it’s time to let go. When something or someone is no longer adding to your life, but subtracting from it—it’s time to let go.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman's Sassy Survival Guide: Letting Go and Moving On

“I would rather be alone with dignity than in a relationship that requires me to sacrifice my self respect.”
― Mandy Hale

“No matter how attractive a person's potential may be, you have to date their reality.”
― Mandy Hale

“There’s a quote by Ethel Person that says: “People should not judge failed love affairs as failed experiences but as part of the growth process. Something does not have to end well for it to have been one of the most valuable experiences of a lifetime.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman's Sassy Survival Guide: Letting Go and Moving On

“Sometimes you have to move on without certain people. If they’re meant to be in your life, they’ll catch up.”
― Mandy Hale

“The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people...the more peaceful your life will become.”
― Mandy Hale