Vana > Vana's Quotes

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

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

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”
― Mary Oliver

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

“The Poet With His Face In His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.”
― Mary Oliver

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
― Mary Oliver

“How I go to the wood

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.”
― Mary Oliver White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.”
― Mary Oliver

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“It's not a competition, it's a doorway.”
― Mary Oliver

“I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“The proof of the pudding is the eating.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason , so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.”
― Cervantes Saavedra

“I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de La Mancha, Vol. 1

“All sorrows are less with bread. ”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“He who sings scares away his woes.”
― Cervantes

“Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Those who will play with cats must expect to be scratched.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote