Monica > Monica's Quotes

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“Do you know when they say soul-mates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. "Soul-mate wanted". It doesn't mean too much now. But soul mates- think about it. When your soul-whatever that is anyway-something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape-when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to-even if you can't be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul's wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. In must be like all the weddings in the world-gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets,showers of roses. And after that happens-that's it, this is it. But sometimes you have to let that person go. When you are little, people , movie and fairy tales all tell you that one day you're going to meet this person. So you keep waiting and it's a lot harder than they make it sound. Then you meet and you think, okay, now we can just get on with it but you find out that sometimes your sould brother partner lover has other ideas about that. ”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“The wishes might not come true the way you think they will, not everything will be perfect, but love will come because it always does, because why else would it exist and it will make everything hurt a little less. You just have to believe in yourself.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“When thou are not pleased, beloved,
Then my heart is sad and darkened,
As the shining river darkens
When the clouds drop shadows on it!

When thou smilest, my beloved,
Then my troubled heart is brightened,
As in sunshine gleam the ripples
That the cold wind makes in rivers.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha

“Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.”
― Dean Koontz

“Lower your expectations of earth. This isn't Heaven, so don't expect it to be.”
― Max Lucado

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years”
― James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

“There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”
― Washington Irving, The Sketch Book

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“There are, I dare say, many lovers who would never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the second time.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
― Dale Carnegie

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Most helpful, Mr. Caelum," she said. "Very, very useful information. And now, shall we hear from Saint Augustine?"

I shrugged. "Why not?" I said

Dr. P read from a blood-red leather book. "My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry.... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind?"

She closed the book, then reached across the table and took Maureen's hand in hers. "Does that passage speak to you?" she asked. Mo nodded and began to cry. "And so, Mr. Caelum, good-bye."

Because the passage had spoken to me, too, it took me a few seconds to react. "Oh," I said. "You want me to leave?"

"I do. Yes, yes.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.”
― George Sand, Letters of George Sand

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
― Jane Goodall

“The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“If you remain calm in the midst of great chaos, it is the surest guarantee the it will eventually subside”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“Well it's all right to cry. It helps a great deal sometimes...”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“Sometimes I'm happy when he's gone, but I'm always happy when he returns. -Clare”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.”
― Wally Lamb, We Are Water