Caroline Mars > Caroline's Quotes

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, "I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“You never learned the secret,” said Roberta. “How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn’t think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They’re all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you’ve chosen to torture all of us instead. That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. It’s like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It’s nothing personal.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action
is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let
run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can
only be dynamic. So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers, body, blood, and heart do.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Be the flame, not the moth.”
― Giacomo Casanova

“The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis. A man grows what he can, and he tends it. 'Cause what you buy, is what you own. And what you own... always comes home to you.”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Seneca

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― seneca, Peace of Mind: De Tranquillitate Animi

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Seneca

“People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”
― Thomas Nagel

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”
― Lao Tzu

“Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes it law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow
is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling
within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into
space.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless,
encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from
love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet