Lavinia > Lavinia's Quotes

“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.”
― Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer

“If gold rusts, what then can iron do?”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer

“How potent is the fancy! People are so impressionable, they can die of imagination.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer

“The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life.

But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were,
In habite as an heremite vnholy of workes,
Went wyde in þis worlde wondres to here.”
― William Langland, Piers Plowman: Selections from the B-text

“medieval English literature reached its height after the plague in the writings of William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer”
― Lynn Thorndike, The History of Medieval Europe

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier;
I have seen worse sights than this.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
― Homer, Iliad

“We men are wretched things.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground