Whitney > Whitney's Quotes

“Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Bereavement is not the truncation of married love,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“I would have to learn to live in a different way, seeing death as an imposing itinerant visitor but knowing that even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Our suffering can make us callous to the obvious suffering of another.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Oh Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them," exclaimed Anne.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend - as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Just looking at people made me care about them more. I fell in love with everything and everyone a little bit. They were all beautiful in some way. I just had to wait and watch and I'd catch it at the right time.”
― Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
― E.B. White

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”
― E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web