Laura > Laura's Quotes

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“The devil prince of this world, but this world don’t last so long for mortal man.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”
― George Carlin

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Man is the cruelest animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda

“The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise.”
― Gerald Lawson Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lightened inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“Everything comes down to time in the end - to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things - even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos - ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? Long-ago people smiling, a child who would be an old lady now, a cat that died, a flowering plant that's long since withered away and the pot itself broken or misplaced...Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I hate that mouse”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“And seriously…It’s clear that General Lee can outrun a police cruiser. Why doesn’t Rosco just go to the Duke farm and arrest them when they’re not in the car?”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Think they’re going to forget that?”
“You asked my opinion. Don’t like it? Go fuck yourself.”
“You’re such a delicate flower, Annie. How’d you end up NASA’s director of media relations?”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” Annie said.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“I broke an arm once,” Muriel said. “An arm is no comparison.” “I did it training dogs, in fact. Got knocked off a porch by a Doberman pinscher.” “A Doberman! Came to to find him standing over me, showing all his teeth. Well, I thought of what they said at Doggie, Do: Only one of you can be boss. So I tell him, ‘Absolutely not.’ Those were the first words that came to me—what my mother used to say when she wasn’t going to let me get away with something. ‘Absolutely not,’ I tell him and my right arm is broken so I hold out my left, hold out my palm and stare into his eyes—they can’t stand for you to meet their eyes—and get to my feet real slow. And durned if that dog doesn’t settle right back on his haunches. Good Lord, Macon said.”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King