Maureen Sylvester > Maureen's Quotes

“Intrinsically selfish in nature, grief was for the living. It was a measure of how keenly one felt their own personal loss, and in some cases, as Kim knew, their regret.”
― Angela Marsons, Silent Scream

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
― Thomas Edison

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“I can only teach you the way, that is all. What you do with it and what it does to you, those are beyond my influence.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“none of my children—not one—ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“What enables the enlightened rulers and good generals to conquer the enemy at every move and achieve extraordinary success is foreknowledge.”
― Sun- Tzu

“Hungarian doesn’t seem European, but instead has a distinctly Martian flavor: igen (yes), nem (no), kérem (please), köszönöm (thank you), elnézést (excuse me), a nevem . . . (my name is . . .), hol van . . . ? (where is . . . ?), mennyi? (how much?), szeretlek (I love you).”
― Francis Tapon, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us

“The Middle Ages were a shitty time for Europe. After making so much progress under the Greek and Roman Empires, Europeans went backwards during the Middle Ages. There was the devastating Black Death, an oppressive and corrupt church, brutal serfdom, constant wars, ugly art, no democracy, few scientific advancements, and they didn’t even have the cool wizards that they have in The Hobbit.”
― Francis Tapon, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us

“Your only real job in giving a talk is to have something valuable to say, and to say it authentically in your own unique way.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“After his years of service he returned to a Chechnya without Chechens. While he had fought and killed and shat for the U.S.S.R., the entire Chechen population had been deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia under Stalin’s accusations of ethnic collaboration with the fascist enemy.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Well, imagine a movie—a vast production with kings, fools, knights, ladies, peasants, preachers, prostitutes—every sort of person you find in the world. When the actors take off their costumes, they’re all equal. So it is with life. When death strips us of our roles, we’re all equals in the grave.”
― Sam Torode, The Dirty Parts of the Bible

“One of the best things about growing up is that, if you can learn from experience, you come to the realization that two things matter more than anything else, truth with a lowercase t and Truth with an uppercase T. You have to tell the truth, demand the truth from others, recognize lies and refute them; you’ve got to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be, not as others who wish to dominate you might say it is. Embracing truth frees you from false expectations, fruitless pursuits, disappointment, pointless anger, envy, despair.”
― Dean Koontz, The City

“is an immutable law of the universe that whenever you listen to NPR in a strange place, it will be Pledge Week.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Twisted Ones

“We’re all just a mess, Angelina, trying as hard as we can, we love imperfectly, Angelina, but it’s okay.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Anything Is Possible

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”
― Bob Marley

“And life, life has swept her along like a tiny seashell onto sand, has washed over her and now, suddenly, she is old. Her mother is dead. There is no one to ask the questions she needs to ask.”
― Hala Alyan, Salt Houses

“She has an enviable capacity for enjoying the familiar.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”
― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery

“Those stories shape the actual world, and they shape our actual lives. And so we must be careful which stories we tell ourselves, and which stories we share.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence. . . sort of like the Post Office with tanks. — Emo Philips, joking about the USSR”
― Francis Tapon, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us

“We do things that we never thought we were capable of in order to protect what we love.”
― Asha Lemmie, Fifty Words for Rain

“In an over-politicized world, my wish is for this work to humanize those we call “refugees”. This book is not about the politics of the Syrian Civil War or any other conflict. Its aim is not to convince readers to support any faction or political party. Instead, this story is about the unbreakable spirit of humanity.  It is about how humanity often shows its true strength during the darkest times.”
― Ammar Habib, The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War

“The advantage of having a little knowledge about the classical world is that few other people do. The second advantage is your awareness that every problem facing us today has already occurred many times previously, and the behavior of the players is always predictable and the consequences are always the same.”
― James Lee Burke, The New Iberia Blues

“Sara was thinking about the story of Penguin—the publisher had started the Armed Forces Book Club to spread a little joy and entertainment among the soldiers far from home and their families and their friends. Best of all was the fact that the smaller paperback format fit easily in their uniform pockets. “It was especially prized in prison camps,” Penguin’s official history claimed. Which Sara had always thought was a particularly sad sentence. But still, it said something about the power of books.”
― Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

“I pray for Nun Hiền often. Not only did she save my life, and Thuận’s life, but she also rescued my soul. Inspired by her, I became a Buddhist. I’ve been practicing Nhẫn, the principle of patience, which teaches me how to love other human beings. Only through love can we drive away the darkness of evil from this earth.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

“Most criminals are kind of dumb, which is why they’re criminals. If they weren’t criminals, they’d be doing something else to screw up people’s lives, like running elections in Florida”
― John Connolly, The Black Angel

“Once you step out of your world, it doesn’t wait for you. The world he used to know is gone forever.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists