cat reads > cat's Quotes

“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.”
― Peter Jackson

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams

“Don't Panic.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I'm an idealist without illusions.

[Ca. 1953, attributed to John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 'A Thousand Days'”
― John F. Kennedy

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
― Rumi

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Science is magic that works.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“The unfed mind devours itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
― Gore Vidal

“Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.”
― Gore Vidal

“The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.”
― Robert Green Ingersoll

“The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything...”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.”
― Robert Ingersoll

“The rhetoric of hate is often most effective when couched in the idiom of love.”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to get the truth back.”
― Gore Vidal

“Thought creates character.”
― Annie Bessant

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
― Carl Sagan