Monte Desai > Monte's Quotes

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up.”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”
― Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays

“A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”
― Francesco Petrarch

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“Love blinds. We have both tried to give our sons, not what they needed, but what we needed. We’ve been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we’ve blighted their present.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

“...a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution.”
― Arnold Bennett

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“IF LIFE WAS A THING THAT MONEY COULD BUY .....THE RICH WOULD LIVE AND THE POOR WOULD DIE.”
― John H. Sibley

“I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.”
― Margaret Cho

“Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.”
― Gwyneth Paltrow

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You've heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What's so sweet about that?”
― Stephen King, Joyland

“Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for.”
― Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck

“You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”
― Carol Shields, The Republic of Love

“A wise man once told me, “As a man, you have to die once in order to live.” I never fully appreciated his advice, nor did I understand it until I experienced it firsthand. From that time on, I understood the origins of the Jerk vs. Nice Guy battle. Readers may be asking themselves, “What in the world is this guy talking about?” Well, I’m referring to the widely known fact that women habitually date men that are jerks while the “nice” guys are often left twiddling their thumbs in solitaire. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Figuratively speaking, in order for a man to enjoy the company of women and be able to seduce them, his inner nice guy must first die through heartache. It is at this point that his inner bad boy surfaces and goes on the prowl.”
― Glenn Geher, Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love

“Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you." -Rhett Butler”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“There's a right thing to do," Holden said.
"You don't have a right thing, friend," Miller said. "You've got a whole plateful of maybe a little less wrong.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Sometimes your dream is so special that... you can't kill it. You can't die even if you try. Life will find a way to fulfill it, and a way to keep you alive. Because the Earth needs dreamers to survive.”
― Haidji, SG - Suicide Game

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet