Ashley ✨ > Ashley ✨'s Quotes

“And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“They were your friends?"
"Yes, they were my friends."
"And they will leave you to suffer alone?"
"Now I see it."
"And until this, were they friends you could trust?"
"I could trust them."
"I see what you mean. You mean they were the kind of friends that a good man could choose, upright, hard-working, obeying the law?
Tell me, were they such friends?
And now they leave you alone?
Did you not see it before?"
"I saw it.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“Courage, dear heart.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love...We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
― Warren Buffett

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I just want to break that song into pieces and love them all to death.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Nothing before you counts," he said. "And I can't even imagine an after."

She shook her head. "Don't."

"What?"

"Don't talk about after."

"I just meant that... I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too.... That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I'm trying to say is, you're it. This is it for me.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I don't like you, Park," she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. "I..." - her voice nearly disappeared - "think I live for you."
He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into his pillow.
"I don't think I even breathe when we're not together," she whispered. "Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it's been like sixty hours since I've taken a breath. That's probably why I'm so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we're apart is think about you, and all I do when we're together is panic. Because every second feels so important. And because I'm so out of control, I can't help myself. I'm not even mine anymore, I'm yours, and what if you decide that you don't want me? How could you want me like I want you?"
He was quiet. He wanted everything she'd just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with 'I want you' in his ears.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,’ he said, ‘and then take it back.’

‘I can,’ she said. ‘Life’s a bastard.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go."
"That's okay," he said.
"It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes..."
"Okay." He laughed.
"And you're smarter than I am."
"I am not."
"And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end. You're so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal."
"You're crazy."
"I have to go." She leaned over so the receiver was close to the base.
"Eleanor - wait," Park said. She could hear her dad in the kitchen and her heartbeat everywhere.
"Eleanor - wait - I love you.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park