John S. > John's Quotes

“I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Age is a seasoned trickster. To our parents, we will always be children. Within ourselves, the same yearnings of youth; the same aspirations of adolescence, will last a lifetime. Only to the young - blinded by our grey hair and slowing gait - do we appear old and increasingly beyond the pale.”
― Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe

“It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.”
― Erwin McManus

“Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word 'why' has lived and grown along with me. It's a well-known fact that children ask questions about anything and everything, since almost everything is new to them. That is especially true of me, and not just as a child. Even when I was older, I couldn't stop asking questions.
I have to admit that it can be annoying sometimes, but I comfort myself with the thought that "You won't know until you ask," though by now I've asked so much that they ought to have made me a professor.
When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex

“If life was fair, we’d get treated the way the we treat others and if life was fair, we’d get paid exactly what we are worth. And in the end, we’d all get exactly what we deserve. So, son, maybe it’s better if life isn’t fair. Sometimes I’m thankful that life isn’t fair.”
― Mike Williams

“Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now--in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally. ... Indeed, God is transforming the world now--through us--because God loves us.”
― Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“This duet was my soundtrack. What my grandmother would call a ‘poor pearl’ mindset—always careful to overly dramatize the phrase and make ‘poor’ sound more like ‘paw’ before drawing out the ‘purl’ in her trademark Brooklyn/Italian drawl. Somewhere, Sergeant Stunod was rubbing his hands together, maniacally watching me slip into his shadow world. He could taste victory with each ‘poor purl’ I added to the string I was tripping over.
— Chapter One: Mosquitos | Miseries | Mindsets, p. 18”
― John S. Johnson, Breaking Building Belonging: Why the Voices We Follow Matter

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven

“Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it?”
― Robert Jordan

“Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.”
― Robert Jordan

“Duty is heavy as a mountain, death is light as a feather.”
― Robert Jordan

“In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes”
― Robert Jordan, To the Blight

“Better to have one woman on your side than ten men.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“The wheel weaves as the wheel wills”
― Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time: Boxed Set #3

“Here is your flaw, Shaitan, Lord of the Dark, Lord of Envy, Lord of Nothing, here is why you fail. It was not about me. It’s never been about me.”
It was about a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet. A woman who had crawled when she had to. That woman still fought.
It was about a man that love repeatedly forsook. A man who found relevance in a world that others would have let pass them by. A man who remembered stories and who took fool boys under his wing when the smarter move would have been to keep on walking. That man still fought.
It was about a woman with a secret, a hope for the future. A woman who had hunted the truth before others could. A woman who had given her live, then had it returned. That woman still fought.
It was about a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall in his sorrow and protected those he could.
It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not heal those who had been harmed.
It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.
It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shown with a light for all who watched, including Rand.
It was about them all.
~Rand al Thor”
― Robert Jordan, A Memory of Light

“We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can always be braver than we expect.”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“Maybe he showed up because I needed him, not just for play, but to shield me from another voice entirely. Maybe Colonel O'Truth was a product of protection from the terrifying God I encountered at the Catholic church in the form of statues and crucifixes, or the stories my grandmother and mother were always telling me about how He was going to punish me if I misbehaved. Regardless of where he came from, the Colonel was a comforting voice.”
― John S. Johnson, Breaking Building Belonging: Why the Voices We Follow Matter

“I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re beautiful
but because i need you to know
you are more than that”
― Rupi Kaur

“There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”
― Sophie Kinsella, The Undomestic Goddess

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption