Alison > Alison's Quotes

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“No one who is young is ever going to be old.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“All good things are wild and free.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.”
― Rachel Carson

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”
― Albert Einstein

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
― Albert Einstein

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ”
― Henry David Thoreau

“So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.”
― Ray Bradbury

“There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. ”
― Seamus Heaney

“If self is a location, so is love:
Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points,
Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance,
Here and there and now and then, a stance.”
― Seamus Heaney, District and Circle

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson