Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.”
― Anne bronte, Agnes Grey

“My head is a hive of words that won't settle.”
― Virginia Woolf

“You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are.”
― Joyce Meyer

“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”
― Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. 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. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
― Bernard Shaw

“It wasn't that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.”
― Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”
― Maya Angelou

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
― Toni Morrison

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
― Nelson Mandela

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.”
― Edith Wharton

“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.”
― Edith Wharton, Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses