Pensieve Thoughts > Pensieve Thoughts's Quotes

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.”
― Markus Herz

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?”
― Jerry Seinfeld

“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
― Horace Mann

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
― Joseph Joubert

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin

“If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Labyrinth

“A hectic schedule is a lifestyle choice . . .”
― Elaine St. James

“I would rather be a cripple and have your love for all of a single moment than to live as I am without ever having it.”
― Lorraine Heath, Waking Up With the Duke

“She angled her chin proudly. “Very well. If you insist.
I’ve come to invite you to my wedding.”
He shook his head sadly. “That I cannot do, my
love.”
“But it shall be the talk of London. I want you there.
Desperately.”
He gazed out to the sea. “I never thought you to be
cruel, Tess. I can deny you nothing. But please don’t
ask this of me.”
“But if you’re not there, my dear, dear Leo, then
however shall I marry you?
She watched as the shock of her words rippled
over his beloved features.
“Me? But you always said no when I asked for your
hand.”
“I was a foolish woman. Lynnford was the love of my
youth. And as we have talked these many weeks as
we’ve not been able to talk in years, so we
discovered that neither of us is the person that each
of us fell in love with. We were holding onto someone
who no longer exists.” She took a tentative step
toward him. “You love me as I am now. And I shall love
you always. Marry me, Leo. For God’s sake, marry
me.”
― Lorraine Heath, Waking Up With the Duke

“Sometimes little is better than nothing at all.”
― Lorraine Heath, Waking Up With the Duke

“Curiosity is not a sin.... But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.”
― Ayn Rand

“In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying 'You gave me the wrong key!”
― Anais Nin

“Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.”
― Groucho Marx

“We let ourselves loose on that simple blank piece of paper, and our bodies spill. The terror, the love…embodying our stories page after page. In a sense, the pen was our tongue, it is how we delineate the world.”
― Jamie Weise