Victoria Starbuck > Victoria's Quotes

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.”
― Dorothy Allison

“Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.”
― Dorothy Allison

“Isn't it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? Like tonight, watching all those brave men meet their fate here, on this shore, on this gentle night, through a karma ordained a thousand lifetimes ago, or perhaps even one.

Isn’t it only through laughter we can stay human?”
― James Clavell, Shōgun

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.

Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”
― James Clavell, Shōgun

“I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“On what slender threads do life and fortune hang… !”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“It was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
And if you please to call it a rush candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”
― William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

“It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was. ”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Hope just means another world might be possible, not promise, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.”
― Dorothy Allison

“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

“What lies ahead seems unlikely; when it becomes the past, it seems inevitable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“You'll stay with me?'
Until the very end,' said James.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows