Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Think! There's nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you're going to keep on living. You can't give up on life just because it's vague. It's a question of possibilities...”
― Koji Suzuki, Ring

“I'm thinking about the beautiful boy on the treadmill wearing the I STILL HAVE A DREAM T-shirt and realize that it might not have been ironic.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms

“Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.”
― Charles Lamb

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”
― Joss Whedon

“Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.”
― Clifford D. Simak, City

“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.
Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.”
― Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera

“My course is set for an uncharted sea.”
― Dante Alighieri

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”
― Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. ”
― George Carlin

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“Life is nothing if you're not obsessed.”
― John Waters

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [...]

I did not know what to say to this.

Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind.

Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why.”
― Dan Simmons, The Terror

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.”
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly