T.j. > T.j.'s Quotes

“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

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“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.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. ”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Black Tulip

“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

“True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution.
In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.”
― 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

“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

“I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask

“For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask

“Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“When you are in doubt as to which you should serve forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle for this is everything.”
― Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After

“A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.”
― Alexandre Dumas, Three Musketeers

“It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
― Robert Orben

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards.”
― Terry Pratchett

“My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.”
― William Shakespeare