Leandra > Leandra's Quotes

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”
― Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, […]”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Any event once it has occurred can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.”
― Lee Simonson

“If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.”
― Oscar Wilde

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“How slow life is, how violent hope is.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”
― Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road

“Shame isn't a quiet grey cloud, shame is a drowning man who claws his way on top of you, scratching and tearing your skin, pushing you under the surface.”
― Kirsty Eagar, Raw Blue

“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Getting Married

“Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.”
― A.J. Cronin