Sylvia > Sylvia's Quotes

“When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“But see you, we should travel by night. Dark times for dark business, as they says. No sun to bother Valeriana or you, Kaylana's surely no' disadvantaged, and I know I work better in darkness. Anybody looking for us will have a harder time of it. Besides, marching in daylight is for the heroes. If we're going to do this, we may as well go all out.”
― Eve Forward, Villains by Necessity

“Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“because he's Will”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.”
― Max Ehrmann, Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

“Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?”
― Christopher Brennan

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
― Robert Browning, Men and Women and Other Poems

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt