Momo > Momo's Quotes

“Oh Tigger, where are your manners?"

"I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”
― A.A. Milne

“It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“Swearing doesn’t make your argument valid; it just tells the other person you have lost your class and control.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Being classy is my teenage rebellion.”
― Rebecca McKinsey

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
― Bell Hooks

“God gave you a gift of 84,600 seconds today. Have you used one of them to say thank you?”
― William Arthur Ward

“Handsome is as handsome does”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“And now, gentlemen, like your manners, I must leave you.”
― Dylan Thomas, Rebecca's Daughters

“Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.”
― Elsie de Wolfe

“Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

“A hat should be taken off when greeting a lady, and left off the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People

“You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”
― Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley

“Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

“All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

“I'll have to calm down a bit. Or else I'll burst with happiness”
― Tove Jansson, Moominsummer Madness

“You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.”
― Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland

“The hemulen woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn't know.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

“The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won't find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

“There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

“It looks rather ordinary," said the Snork. "Unless you consider that a top hat is always somewhat extraordinary, of course.”
― Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll

“There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominsummer Madness

“But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase.”
― Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland

“Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

“Someone who eats pancakes and jam can’t be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.”
― Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll

“It’s strange,” Moominmamma thought. “Strange that people can be sad, and even angry because life is too easy. But that’s the way it is, I suppose. The only thing to do is to start life afresh.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea

“Everything's much too big here,' thought Moominmamma. 'Or perhaps I'm too small.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea

“...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominpappa's Memoirs

“He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck.”
― Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley

“It's funny about paths and rivers," he mused. "You see them go by, and suddenly you feel upset and want to be somewhere else--wherever the path or the river is going, perhaps.”
― Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland