Anne Ruijter > Anne's Quotes

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
― Elie Wiesel

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.”
― Stephen Fry

“Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.”
― Lisa Lutz, The Spellmans Strike Again

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Stop comparing yourself to other people, just choose to be happy and live your own life.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“It happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. So you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”
― Hafez

“Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
― Erin Hanson

“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“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

“So dawn goes down today... Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I don't mind worriers," I said. "Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Photographs are just light and time,”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Maybe you are what you can't not be.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”
― George Carlin

“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”
― William Golding

“Magic
Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,
Eddie touched a troll,
Laurie danced with witches once,
Charlie found some goblins gold.
Donald heard a mermaid sing,
Susy spied an elf,
But all the magic I have known
I've had to make myself.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

“I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit