Bernadette > Bernadette's Quotes

“Besides, no one has ever seen the light by being told there are darker places out there.”
― Abbie Emmons, 100 Days of Sunlight

“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

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Weston is everything
And all at once.
Weston is gentle
And harsh.
Weston can be blindingly bright
But then he can also be
Delicately soft.
Weston is a paradox.”
― Abbie Emmons, 100 Days of Sunlight

“That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“A real diamond is never perfect.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“His presence is a healing balm, letting me know that I am not alone.”
― Miriam James Heidland, Loved as I Am: An Invitation to Conversion, Healing, and Freedom through Jesus

“You are enough. You are so enough. It is unbelievable how enough you are.”
― Sierra Boggess

“Is it right,” Jutta says, “to do something only because everyone else is doing it?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Every trail has its end, and every calamity brings its lesson!”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

“History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

“Your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers’, but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

“I've realized that you might have big waves, and you may have small waves. But it never matters because the waves always break. And what if they don't? That just means that you must keep swimming until your wave appears.”
― Ali Marie, What Went Wrong Last Summer

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.”
― Jodi Picoult

“Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.”
― Ethan Hawke, The Hottest State

“Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up.”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Don't try to make me grow up before my time…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it's for the same two things."
"What?"
"Love and gelato.”
― Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato