Mai > Mai's Quotes

“At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.
”
― John Donne

“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

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Lord, my hands were made for blessing, but not my feet!”
― Giovanni Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo

“Where did you go to, if I may ask?' said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along.
To look ahead,' said he.
And what brought you back in the nick of time?'
Looking behind,' said he.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
― Raymond Chandler, The High Window

“Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?"
"Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Conviction without experience makes for harshness. ”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I love a lot of people, understand none of them...”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.”
― G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

“He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation.”
― G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”
― C.S. Lewis

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.”
― Francis de Sales