Ritu > Ritu's Quotes

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides.”
― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography

“when your hopes and dreams and goals are dashed, search among the wreckage, you may find a golden opportunity hidden in the ruins.”
― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Why were you lurking under our window?"
"Yes - yes, good point, Petunia! What were you doing under our windows, boy?"
"Listening to the news," said Harry in a resigned voice.
His aunt and uncle exchanged looks of outrage.
"Listening to the news! Again?"
"Well, it changes every day, you see," said Harry.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Neither had realized the loneliness each had lived with for such a long time until the loneliness was interrupted by genuine affection.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“You may say that it was the book, but it’s how you read a book that is most valuable, rather than any power it might have itself.”
― Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

“Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more. More of those lazy afternoons when nothing happens, despite your best efforts to the contrary. More of those annoying arms that picked you up to stop you doing something crazy. More tellings-off from the mother who you thought was a nag. More glimpses, even, of your father hurrying somewhere, always busy. More soft embraces from the wife who loved you all your life, and more trusting looks from your children’s young eyes.”
― Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees

“Because, sometimes, things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“No, I need all this electricity, this scientific manure—all of this. I also need the medical science that cures animal diseases. But we need to throw to the winds the notion that animals exist solely for human utility.”
― S.L. Bhyrappa, Orphaned

“Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothing.”
― Tom Waits

“The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny--helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.'
'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.'
'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals--mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.'
'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.”
― Vivekananda

“if Hindus cannot—or are not allowed to—perform something as fundamental as Puja, they’re destroyed in ways our imagination cannot even fathom.”
― Sandeep Balakrishna, 10 Lessons from Hindu History in 10 Episodes: Tales of Grit, Heroism and Valour

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To me the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collecting of facts. If I had to do my education over again, and had any voice in the matter, I would not study facts at all. I would develop the power of concentration and detachment, and then with a perfect instrument I could collect facts at will.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Meditation And Its Methods: Swami Vivekananda Guides on the Practice of Meditation by Swami Vivekananda

“Tell them to walk in the shade. To listen with their eyes, to see with their skin, and to feel with their ears, because life speaks to us all and we just need to know and wait to listen to it, see it, feel it.”
― Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees

“A big shot is a little shot who keeps on shooting, so keep trying.”
― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire

“The purpose of reading history is not to deride or vilify anybody. And it shouldn’t be. At best, the study of history should help us to honestly, dispassionately understand the rights and wrongs of people we regard as our ancestors and use those lessons to shape our present and future.”
― Translated by Sandeep Balakrishna S.L. Bhyrappa, Aavarana: The Veil

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“It is in the deepest darkness that one sees things most clearly.”
― Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees

“I am naturally drawn to numbers but one of the ironies of working with numbers is that the more I work with them, the more skeptical I become about purely number-driven arguments.”
― Aswath Damodaran, Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business