Alexandra > Alexandra's Quotes

“He loved her with the fire of a thousand suns, she was his solace in the chaos, his redemption.”
― Lenin

“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.”
― Ayn Rand

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
― Frida Kahlo

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.”
― Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
― Omar Khayyam, رباعيات خيام

“I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and—if you’re not careful—those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.”
― Brandon Sanderson

“Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me!
But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Dawn is such a private hour, don’t you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable—everyone together, sleeping in the dark.” “I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,” Anna said. “No, no,” the boy said. “Oh, no. Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.” He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. “Especially the company of one other soul,” he added, turning back to the sea.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“Sorry.

Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.

Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
― Charles Dickens

“These are the days that must happen to you.”
― Walt Whitman

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
― Voltaire

“You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“And now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“I’ve lived to bury my desires,
And see my dreams corrode with rust;
Now all that’s left are fruitless fires
That burn my empty heart to dust.”
― Aleksandr Puskin

“People are so like their first mother Eve: what they are given doesn't take their fancy. The serpent is forever enticing them to come to him, to the tree of mystery. They must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin