Kathleen > Kathleen's Quotes

“But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”
― Virginia Woolf

“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

“I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things, they say-even their looks-will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools."
-The Professor”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks.”
― Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

“In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.”
― Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

“...how absurd human beings are and how magnificent.”
― Benjamin Zander

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

“They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

“It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

“Tragedies come in the hungry hours.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

“Well, I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married.”
― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

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

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
― Virginia Woolf

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
― Virginia Woolf

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. ”
― Virginia Woolf

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream”
― Virginia Woolf

“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes makes its way to the surface.”
― Virginia Woolf

“When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

“You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

“As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out