Olivia > Olivia's Quotes

“It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“But if, sometimes, an unspeakable horror arises from the smallest error, I choose to believe that it’s possible for an equally unimaginable grandeur to grow from the tiniest gesture of love. I choose to believe that it works both ways. That great terror is the result of a thousand small but evil choices, and great good is the outcome of another thousand tiny acts of care.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“To always know how quickly life could change, how quickly everything important could disappear, to always be trying to feel this unexpectedly beautiful life to its core.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“I've been practicing in my mind, trying to find some words, but they've all been taken, all used for ordinary considerations that mean nothing in comparison to what he has meant. We say "Thank you very much" and "I so appreciate what you have done" to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offer us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether?”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called To Rise

“I’d rather live knowing I made a mistake than wondering if I could have made a difference if I’d tried. The way I see it, nothing in life is a rehearsal. It’s not preparation for anything else. There’s no getting ready for it.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“...resentment, the emotion that, Jane Amery would write, 'nails every one of us onto the cross of his ruined past.' ”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Tante Isabelle says it’s better to be bold than meek. She says if you jump off a cliff at least you’ll fly before you fall.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Don't think about who they [the Nazis] are. Think about who you are and what sacrifices you can live with and what will break you [Mother Superior to Vianne].”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I wept because i had no shoes,
until i met a man who had no feet.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Guilt is a hunter.
Fate is a hunter.
Shame is a hunter.
Fear is a hunter.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I think of Dr. Brulov in Spellbound: “My dear girl, you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“If there's one thing I've learned in all my time working with children, if I could whittle those years down to a single revelation, it's this: They are extraordinarily resilient. They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Your now is not your forever.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again. aa”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice on the matter.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down