Kat > Kat's Quotes

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.”
― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Sojourn

“Never despise small beginnings, and don't belittle your own accomplishments. Remember them and use them as inspiration as you go on to the next thing. When you venture outside your comfort zone, wherever the starting point may be, it's kind of a big deal.”
― Chris Guillebeau

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.”
― Lillian Hellman

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
― Victor Hugo

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”
― Victor Hugo

“People do not lack strength, they lack will.”
― Victor Hugo

“When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom. ”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.”
― Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three

“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
― Hal Borland

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.”
― Marguerite Duras