Madison > Madison's Quotes

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
― J.K. Rowling

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
― Bob Marley

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“What you seek you shall never find.
For when the Gods made man,
They kept immortality to themselves.
Fill your belly.
Day and night make merry.
Let Days be full of joy.
Love the child who holds your hand.
Let your wife delight in your embrace.
For these alone are the concerns of man.”
― The Epic of Gilgamesh

“What is this sleep which holds you now?
You are lost in the dark and cannot hear me.”
― The Epic of Gilgamesh

“Here is a rewriting of the British national anthem, by 'Camille, Australia'. It is, she explains, chiefly for the benefit of Microsoft Word and Outlook Express users:

Gd CTRL-S r gr8sh Qun.
Long liv r nobl Qun.
Gd CTRL-S the. Qun!
ALT-S hr vktrES,
HpE & glrES,
Lng 2 rain ovR S
Gd CTRL-S th. Qun!”
― David Crystal, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

“The only languages which do not change are dead ones.”
― David Crystal

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you've made, if they don't realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“Nothing is ever certain.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby