Dan > Dan's Quotes

“The way he looked at you. I got it then. He loved you, and it was killing him. He won't get over you, Clary, he can't.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

“...unrequited love does not die; it's only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and those who come after pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.”
― Elle Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief

“There’s no reason to live, but there’s no reason to die, either. The only way we can still show our contempt for life is to accept it. Life is not worth the bother of leaving it. Out of charity, one might spare a few individuals the trouble of living, but what about oneself? Despair, indifference, betrayal, fidelity, solitude, the family, freedom, weight, money, poverty, love, absence of love, syphilis, health, sleep, insomnia, desire, impotence, platitudes, art, honesty, dishonor, mediocrity, intelligence – nothing there to make a fuss about. We know only too well what those things are made of, no point in watching for them.”
― Jacques Rigaut

“You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.”
― Bill Watterson

“We live in a vale of tears...We can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

“I was born for the storm, and a calm does not suit me.”
― Andrew Jackson

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.”
― Wm. Shakespeare , Hamlet

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.

The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I hate New Year's Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven't yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn't matter.”
― Gregory Maguire, The Next Queen of Heaven

“It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!”
― Eugene O'Neill

“Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.”
― Walter E. Williams

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
― Calvin Coolidge

“Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell”
― Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The House of Life

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help a man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
― William Faulkner, William Faulkner Reads

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
― Mark Twain

“Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think, 'It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.”
― Babe Ruth

“A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”
― Mickey Mantle

“The same people who say they’re against organized religion are all card-carrying members of the Church of Universal Human Equality, which is perhaps the best organized, most well-funded, and least tolerant mythological system on Earth. I don’t even think Islam can compete.”
― Jim Goad, The New Church Ladies: The Extremely Uptight World of "Social Justice"

“India is often said to be the most diverse country on Earth. And diversity worked so well there that its eastern and western provinces split off into Pakistan and Bangladesh amid oceans of blood. According to the map in a Daily Mail article titled ‘Worlds Apart,’ Africa is the most ethnically diverse continent on Earth, yet it continues to eat itself alive due to ongoing tribal conflicts that may have been exploited by colonialists but that existed long before Europeans ever set foot in Africa and have persisted—and even escalated—once the colonialists began their slow retreat. European history is replete with homicidal group conflicts that may on their surface appear to have been rooted in religion or ideology but were more deeply entwined with things such as cultural, linguistic, and phenotypical differences.”
― Jim Goad, The New Church Ladies: The Extremely Uptight World of "Social Justice"

“The term ‘racist’ has come to mean ‘any white person who’s OK with being white.”
― Jim Goad, The New Church Ladies: The Extremely Uptight World of "Social Justice"

“Afraid to Love

I turn away
and close my heart—
to the promise of love
that is luring.

For the past has taught
to not be caught,
in what is not
worth pursuing—

To never do
the things I've done
that once had led
to my undoing.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure

“EDMUND: It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”
― Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson

“I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1