Kitty > Kitty's Quotes

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“...the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.)”
― Gloria Steinem

“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“to clarify, I’m an atheist, and I’m not consumer oriented, so the midwinter shopping festival otherwise known as Christmas is of little interest to me.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Teach French and unteach sincerity.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.”
― Gloria Steinem

“There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“And where love ends, hate begins”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All right, he may not be queer. He's just a nothing, which is worse. He isn't normal enough to have any kind of sex life, if you know what I mean.”
― Patricia Highsmith, Ripley: The Talented Mr. Ripley / Ripley Underground / Ripley's Game / The Boy Who Followed Ripley

“There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“There is such a paucity of good manners on display in the so-called service sector!”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Their laughter seemed to have turned into low whispering now. It never ceases to amaze me, the things they find interesting, amusing or unusual. I can only assume they've led very sheltered lives.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I am going in order to be where you are," said he. "I cannot do otherwise."

"Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I...”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“She certainly seems to have a life, not just an existence.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine