Laura Ryan > Laura's Quotes

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
― Henry Stanley Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street

“The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“All good things are wild and free.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“There is truth in wine and children”
― Plato, Symposium / Phaedrus

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Le diable et le bon dieu

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre , Nausea

“Life begins on the other side of despair.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”
― Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Socrates

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
― Albert Einstein

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
― Gautama Buddha

“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin