Holly Blevins > Holly's Quotes

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.”
― Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them.

At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, all you have are places in your memory that you can go to.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
― Tagore

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.


From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“the real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
― Dr. Seuss

“But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Yet also I should be sad,' said Théoden, for however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?'
'It may,' said Gandalf. 'The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed. Let us now go on with the journey we have begun!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of the Lord of the Rings

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“People would rather believe than know.”
― Edward O. Wilson

“We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they're going to sit”
― David Suzuki

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.
But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?”
― Tony Campolo, Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics

“What is in the pencil is greater than what is around it. The talents in you are greater than the environment surrounding you. Your potentials will change your environment.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Oath of Fealty

“Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die.”
― Gil Scott-Heron

“Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

“Coal, with time and heat and pressure, will always become a diamond. But if you were freezing to death, which would you consider the gem?”
― Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light

“We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.”
― Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light