M. Reali-Elliott > M.'s Quotes

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.”
― Ayn Rand., Atlas Shrugged

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none”
― Lois Lowry, Gathering Blue

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running towards is an illusion.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work.”
― Sid Fleischman

“That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“My hope for them is to always let their attitude shine like the sun, even when facing a rain storm. Maybe they will be the beacon of light that brightens someone else’s day and helps to spread this lesson to those who need it most.”
― M. Reali-Elliott, Summer 20XX

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies--these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If inner beauty could be reflected through every sun-kissed tan line or freckle, every wrinkle caused by your smile, the beach could only magnify it.”
― M. Reali-Elliott, Summer 20XX

“You can always choose to laugh. You can choose to smile instead of cry. When we make a mistake or face something we don’t like or things just aren’t going well, I want you to remember what just happened. Smiling is always a choice and that is what I want for you. Choose to smile and to laugh.”
― M. Reali-Elliott, Summer 20XX

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“That’s the indelible trade we make with water balloons: if adults are going to sacrifice five times the amount of time filling that children are in playing, we ask them to sacrifice five times the amount of play time in picking up afterward.”
― M. Reali-Elliott, Summer 20XX

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If you can’t find joy watching children laugh, I am certain there is no hope for your soul.”
― M. Reali-Elliott, Summer 20XX

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.”
― JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“It is my belief... that the truth is generally preferable to lies.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew - and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince