Simon > Simon's Quotes

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand”
― Italo Calvino

“We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“You may delay, but time will not.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Time is a game played beautifully by children.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything,”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy. ”
― Hans Christian Andersen

“I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. - The sea witch.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

“One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.”
― Michelle Obama

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who think diffenrently...”
― Michelle Obama

“Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.”
― Michelle Obama

“The past can't be changed, can it? It can just be forgiven.”
― Elizabeth George

“Tis a funny thing, reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”
― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
― Carl Sagan

“Yes, we too are stardust.”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
― Carl Sagan

“Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose
loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Does the difference matter? someone else asked. Does it matter whether the law seeks to protect you because you are an individual or because of the group of which you happen to be a member? That question floated around the room, and it has remained with me ever since.”
― Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"

“What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others,” the psychoanalyst”
― Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"

“We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”
― Liam Callanan, The Cloud Atlas

“Virtually every abductee receives information about the destruction of the earth’s ecosystem and feels compelled to do something about”
― John E. Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens

“this is not received merely cognitively, like a lecture. Abductees experience powerful images of vast destruction, with the collapse of governmental and economic infrastructures and the total pollution and desertification of the planet. This knowledge is felt profoundly in their bodies, and I have been greatly moved as they sob on the couch and experience heartache so intense that they can barely bring themselves to speak of it. It is the kind of knowledge that must be translated into action. Writer and futurist Jean Houston, at the Congress of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in September 1993, commented that all myths begin with a form of betrayal. Perhaps the human betrayal of the earth itself is giving rise to a new myth of interspecies relationship and creation.”
― John E. Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens

“Some have speculated that the alien beings have mastered time travel and come to us from the future. Sometimes they even communicate that this might be so. We do not know. But the guiding or regenerative myth of the abduction phenomenon offers a new story for a world that has survived many holocausts and may yet be deterred from a final cataclysm. The abduction phenomenon, it seems clear, is about what is yet to come. It presents, quite literally, visions of alternative futures, but it leaves the choice to us.”
― John E. Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens