Holly > Holly's Quotes

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I enjoyed the meetings, too. It was like having friends.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“From now on, I don't care if my tea leaves spell 'Die, Ron, Die,' I'm chucking them in the bin where they belong.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Taking one’s chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck.”
― Lemony Snicket

“The sad truth is the truth is sad.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do, it makes you want to hide under the coffee table.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Most schools have a loud system of loud bells, which startle the students and teachers at regular intervals and remind them that time is passing even more slowly than it seems.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Every night I give a violin recital for six hours, and attendance is mandatory. The word 'mandatory' means that if you don't show up, you have to buy me a large bag of candy and watch me eat it.”
― Lemony Snicket

“For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I’m not sure. Perhaps because great books seem heavensent. Perhaps because I know that each nove is a puny but very valiant attempt at godlike behavior. Perhaps because there is no difference between the finest poetry and most transcendent mysticism. Perhaps because writers like Thomas Merton, who are able to enter the realm of the spirit and come away with fine, lucid prose. Perhaps because of more secular writers, like John Steinbeck, whose every passage, it seems to me, peals with religiousity and faith. It once occured to me that literature — all art really — is either talking to people about God, or talking to God about people.”
― Paul Quarrington, The Boy on the Back of the Turtle: Seeking God, Quince Marmalade, and the Fabled Albatross on Darwin's Islands

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs--if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye