Diane > Diane's Quotes

“The misery of having no time to read a thousand glorious books.”
― George Gissing

“Nowhere is the English genius of domesticity more notably evident than in the festival of afternoon tea. The [...] chink of cups and the saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.”
― George R. Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

“Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment.”
― George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

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

“If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.”
― Voltaire

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“[Their marriage] will not be all cakes and ale.... They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thick-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pinpricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon, given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding, disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the mutual love and sympathy tat, through all the vicissitudes, will surely grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will not know how to conceive a better one.”
― Ada Cambridge, The three Miss Kings

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.”
― Christopher Isherwood

“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”
― George Gissing

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.”
― Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?

“Isabel and Alma Trumbo are the sisters who reside in the brick rambler on Church Street. They are a bit, uh, different and unorthodox. Borderline eccentric, some of the townies say, especially Alma.”
“What do the borderline eccentric sisters Isabel and Alma know about solving a murder case?”
Dwight gave it a moment’s reflection. “They could probably write a book about it.”
― Ed Lynskey, Fowl Play

“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
― Albert Einstein

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.”
― Anthony Trollope

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If I lie down on my bed I must be here,
But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.”
― Stevie Smith, Selected Poems of Stevie Smith

“A man who plants a tree could never be called a pessimist.”
― Iain Cameron Williams, The KAHNS of Fifth Avenue

“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”
― John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.'
'How pleasant then to be insane!”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories