Henry Avila > Henry's Quotes

“Some men are wise and some are otherwise.”
― Tobias George Smollett, Roderick Random

“Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering. ”
― Saint Augustine

“Tolle, lege: take up and read.”
― St. Augustine, Confessions

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
― Linda Grayson

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
― John Steinbeck

“I need this wild life, this freedom.”
― Zane Grey

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
― Ronald Reagan

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Expect nothing and you'll always be surprised”
― Daniel Defoe

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare

“Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently, and for the same reason.”
― Eça de Queirós

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I know not by what power I am drawn to you, but it is as a moth is drawn to the flame, and I cannot fight it, I must be consumed.”
― Andrea Zuvich, His Last Mistress

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

“Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Sketches and Travels, Etc.

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”
― Confucius

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
― Kahlil Gibran