Megan > Megan's Quotes

“Dead men don't bite”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (...). There is a tendency (...) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It is my fault, and the fault of everyone of my generation. I wonder what the future generations will say about us. My grandparents suffered through the Depression, World War II, then came home to build the greatest middle class in human history. Lord knows they weren't perfect, but they sure came closest to the American dream. Then my parents' generation came along and f***ed it all up - the baby boomers, the "me" generation. And then you got us. Yeah, we stopped the Zombie menace, but we're the ones who let it become a menace in the first place. At least we're cleaning up our own mess, and maybe that's the best epitaph to hope for. 'Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it was, to let it be.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“It was better not to remember such terrible details.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It is dreadful that one cannot tear the past out by the roots.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Throughout the performance Levin felt like a deaf person watching a dance. He was quite perplexed when the music stopped and felt very tired as a result of strained attention quite unrewarded.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The struggle for existence and hatred are the only things that unite people.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things, or people, or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“The bow tie is like the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party.”
― David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“Doing sketch comedy on live television while pregnant is like wearing a sombrero. You can pretend you are a serious person, but the giant hat gives you away.”
― Amy Poehler

“A watched cervix never dilates.”
― Amy Poehler

“If the style of the restaurant was old-fashioned, the parenting that went on there was distinctly modern. Moms and dads would patiently recite every item on the menu to their squirming five-year-olds, as if the many flavors of ice cream represented all the unique ways they were loved.”
― Amy Poehler

“It's important to know when it's time to turn in your kazoo.”
― Amy Poehler

“I don't like disappointing people. Some would say that this is "codependent behavior", which I have discovered is a term that explains how most everyone acts all the time, unless one is a sociopath or a Russian computer that plays chess.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“If I have learned anything from hip-hop, it's that there is nothing sexy about a baby that ain't yours.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?"

I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?"

To shrug.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“One does not bargain over inches of evil.”
― Ayn Rand

“What greater wealth is there than to own your own life and to spend it on growing?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I've always been short on time in my life, never on what to use it for.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Enlightenment does not mean getting rid of anything. It means changing one's frame of reference so that all things become enlightening.”
― Mark Epstein

“When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.”
― Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life

“Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met.”
― Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“The people who hire all these things done for them never know what they lose, for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them, and Meg found so many proofs of this that everything in her small neatness from the kitchen roller to the silver vase on her parlor table was eloquent of home love and tender forethought.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand, and to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“And indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision, for how can a man shake off his habits? What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying innumerable desires that he has created for himself?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov