Larissa > Larissa's Quotes

“Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode.”
― Brian Aldiss

“Be mild, and cleave to gentle things,
thy glory and thy happiness be there.”
― William Wordsworth

“Silence does not always mark wisdom.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“A great mind must be androgynous.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.”
― Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my author's defects.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

“I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

“But alas! my Lord, what is blood! what is nobility! We are all reptiles, miserable, sinful creatures. It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must return.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

“He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
― William Blake

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“I had melancholy thoughts...
a strangeness in my mind,
A feeling that I was not for that hour,
Nor for that place.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.”
― William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

“We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”
― H.G. Wells

“My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“The sun,--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.”
― Harold Bloom

“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”
― Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why

“Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.”
― Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall