Susana > Susana's Quotes

“Then listen to me,' he said and cleared his throat. 'It's true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme. Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Only bad things happen quickly, . . . Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues. ”
― Gordon Livingston M.D.

“If the map doesn't agree with the ground the map is wrong”
― Gordon Livingston, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now

“any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.”
― Gordon Livingston

“It is our determination to overcome fear and discouragement that constitutes the only effective antidote to the sense of powerlessness over unwanted feelings.”
― Gordon Livingston, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now

“Kumar was a man who felt in the end he had lost everything, even his Englishness, and could then only meet every situation—even the most painful—in silence, in the hope that out of it he would dredge back up some self-respect.”
― Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown

“There’s a difference between trying to stop an injustice and obstructing justice.”
― Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown

“Rumours began with the whispered gossip of native servants and spread quickly to the rest of the population.”
― Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown

“English is not spare. But it is beautiful. It cannot be called truthful because its subtleties are infinite. It is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.”
― Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown

“Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive.”
― Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“Walls, windows, roof, verandah–entirely commonplace, mean even–moved her with the austere poetry of their function. Here a man sheltered from and diminished the horror and vulgarity of the world by the simplicity of his arrangements for living in it.”
― Paul Scott, The Towers of Silence

“As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.”
― Paul Scott, The Towers of Silence

“Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.”
― Paul Scott, The Towers of Silence