Andrea > Andrea's Quotes

“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”
― Susan B. Anthony

“In order to be irreplaceacle, one must always be different.”
― Coco Chanel

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
― Helen Keller

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“…So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky”
― John Dryden, The Major Works

“I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Even a soul submerged in sleep
is hard at work and helps
make something of the world.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“So much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?"

"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness… Live, then and be happy beloved children of my heart and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words – wait and hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo