Emily > Emily's Quotes

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.”
― James Thurber

“There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”
― James Thurber

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
― James Thurber

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“That killed me.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”
― John F. Kennedy

“A child miseducated is a child lost.”
― John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
― John F. Kennedy

“The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”
― John F. Kennedy

“We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.”
― John F. Kennedy

“I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“You are the music while the music lasts.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”
― T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

“Only through time time is conquered”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“I can connect
Nothing with nothing”
― T.S. Eliot

“Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets