Hannah Sillars > Hannah's Quotes

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“But what was more violent than making people disbelieve in the worth of their own lives? What was more violent than making them believe they deserved less and less every day?”
― Ishmael Beah, Radiance of Tomorrow

“We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.”
― Ishmael Beah, Radiance of Tomorrow

“It isn't about knowing the most stories, child. It is about carrying the ones that are most important and passing them along.”
― Ishmael Beah, Radiance of Tomorrow

“It taught me that . . . there can be no true humility and no true compassion where there is no courage. ”
― Whittaker Chambers, Witness

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

“The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”
― P. G. Wodehouse

“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

“Why do you want a letter from me? Why don't you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don't you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular 'experts' who have picked it up as inaccurately as you? Why don't you learn the facts in this field as honestly as your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook on church history will tell you where they came from?
Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity - God the three in One - yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E=mc2? What makes you suppose that the expression "God ordains" is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression, "Science demands" is taken as an objective statement of fact?
You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs.
I admit, you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.
Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I'm giving you personal opinions or Christian doctrines. Don't bother. Go away and do some work and let me get on with mine.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Here's a haiku/palindrome I wrote called, "Obsession."

Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,
Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,
Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob”
― Jarod Kintz, A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dipped Carrot

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

“If you did not want much, there was plenty.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Go away, the old buildings said. There is no place for you here. You are not wanted. We have secrets.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Madam, my father has left me flopping like a flounder at low tide and you say what's the matter.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.'
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“I remembered a piece of sisterly advice, which Feely once gave Daffy and me:
"If ever you're accosted by a man," she'd said, "kick him in the Casanovas and run like blue blazes!"
Although it had sounded at the time like a useful bit of intelligence, the only problem was that I didn't know where the Casanovas were located.
I'd have to think of something else.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag