Alex > Alex's Quotes

“You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization. And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from? You said you knew justice when you heard it. Well, what is your justice but you allowed to treat us as you like, and us condemned for even attempting to defend ourselves?”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Most of all, though, I wanted my mother to forgive me, and bless me, and tell me everything would be all right, just as she had when I was little, and there were only the two of us in the whole wide world. But perhaps that was part of not being a child anymore.”
― Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger

“In Cantonese, two was a good number because it made a pair. Three was also good because it was a homophone for sang, or life. Four, of course, was bad because it sounded like death. Five was good again because it made a complete set, not just of the Confucian Virtues, but also for the elements of wood, fire, water, metal, and earth.”
― Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger

“Chinese say that good things come in pairs, such as the character for double happiness, cut out of red paper and pasted on doors for weddings, and the two stone lions that guard temples.”
― Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“... it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on Earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“In a way, I was safe writing”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial