May > May's Quotes

“From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.”
― Friedrich A. von Hayek

“It’s quite a library, anyway,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. “I’ve begun to think of it as more graveyard than library. End of the line, you know. Where book-of-the-month club comes to die.” As”
― Matthew J. Sullivan, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost...”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.”
― Jack London, White Fang

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

“They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen’s ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

“The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead -
There were no birds to fly.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Power is not a means; it is an end.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“To each his own fear';”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“You may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I’d rather climb back into Hostile One’s mouth.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I was having an emotion, and I hate that.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy

“O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Per ardua ad astra. Through adversity to the stars.”
― Stephen Baxter, Proxima

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Kings are the slaves of history.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace