Mark > Mark's Quotes

“But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.”
― Randall Munroe, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“There’s no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word “NO” scrawled over and over in charred blood.”
― Randall Munroe, What If? 10th Anniversary Edition: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

“Does God think that, because it is raining, I am not going to destroy the world? - Lope de Aguirre after going mad in the Amazon”
― David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

“Fawcett, quoting a companion, wrote that cannibalism “at least provides a reasonable motive for killing a man, which is more than you can say for civilized warfare.”
― David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

“When I think about my life, I'm always thinking, 'I hope I live long enough to do all the stories I know.' And I know I'm not gonna, 'cos I got a list over there and it keeps getting a little bit longer.”
― Andrew Smith, Moondust

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed.”
― Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Story of Mankind

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

“He knows religion is bollocks," Collingswood said. "He just wishes he didn't.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

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

“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Everyone forgets Icarus also flew.”
― Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven: Poems

“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
― Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes

“I tell you I have nearly attained MY heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncovered by me.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.”
― Karl Lagerfeld

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, does the heart find its morning and is refreshed.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”
― Albert Camus

“But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations