Hilary > Hilary 's Quotes

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain

“Having come to the conclusion that there was so much to do that she didn’t know where to start, Mrs Fowler decided not to start at all. She went to the library, took Diary of a Nobody from the shelves and, returning to her wicker chair under the lime tree, settled down to waste what precious hours still remained of the day.”
― Richmal Crompton, Family Roundabout

“Moomintroll's mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table. And so Moominhouse was rather full -- a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow. Very often unexpected and disturbing things used to happen, but nobody ever had time to be bored, and that is always a good thing.”
― Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Dear, Missus, Mister - I beg you never to give thoughts to war, in no way, not to work for it, not by writing nor by reading about it nor by looking at the pictures nor on the television about it. Not in any way ever, at all. Not by being a soldier, sailor, airman, work in factory or above all at atom bombs. Above all at atom bombs. No obligation for this, dear fellow creature. Signed Your Fellow Creature.'
'P.S.,' said Gerald slowly, without turning from the window, 'If we all do this, we shall succeed.”
― Stella Gibbons, Starlight

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”
― Tove Jansson

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

“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!”
― Tove Jansson, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 01

“And also don’t forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
― Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare

“Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.”
― Charles Lamb

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play— I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Photographs are so strange; they are always in the present tense, everyone captured in a moment that will never come again.”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars.”
― Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried ... nothing is so warming and companionable.”
― Elizabeth Goudge

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”
― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous: Essays

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“The most important thing, I believe, about books for babies and very young children is that they are shared between the child and a caring adult. It is time for physical closeness and comfort, of quiet and harmony, of sharing ideas and emotions, laughing and learning together. The learning and benefit that take place are not only enjoyed by the child. Any adult who takes time to share books with small children will be rewarded, enriched, and revitalized by it, every time.”
― Jan Ormerod

“Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.”
― Gerald Durrell

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde