Ria Ali > Ria's Quotes

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#1

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
― Aristotle, Politics

580 likes

#2

“It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give. ”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

275 likes

#3

“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

255 likes

#4

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

tags: love

6689 likes

#5

“You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

90 likes

#6

“Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

tags: childrens, wisdom

358 likes

#7

“Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide. ”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

528 likes

#8

“True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

tags: endings

149 likes

#9

“There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too. A few stale lessons from tired governesses, dull walks, unthinking pastimes. But it was not enough. All knowledge – any knowledge – called to Faith, and there was a delicious, poisonous pleasure in stealing it unseen.”
― Frances Hardinge

4 likes

#10

“If there had been some tiny bead present in the brain of all humans, that had told each other, They are like you; that had drawn some thin silk thread of empathy, person to person, in a planet-wide net – what might then have happened? Would there have been the same wars, massacres, persecutions and crusades?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time

41 likes

#11

“I don't know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn't that, it's that I don't want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

tags: individualism, liberty, science-fiction

42 likes

#12

“No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

227 likes

#13

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

tags: character, empowerment, flaws, freedom, gender, identity, image, independence, integrity, realism, self-awareness, self-determination, women

14003 likes

#14

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession

tags: censorship, free-speech, progress

233 likes

#15

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

tags: banned-books, censorship, evil, fear, freedom, hypocrisy, intellectual-freedom, literature, perversion, puritanism, sterility

109 likes

#16

“Now, don't be angry after you've been afraid. That's the worst kind of cowardice.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

127 likes

#17

“There’s another option. You can consider the reader, not as a helpless victim or a passive consumer, but as an active, intelligent, worthy collaborator. A colluder, a coillusionist.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

18 likes

#18

“Do you not enslave people now?” asks the man. “Chains are forged of many strange metals. Poverty is one. Fear, another. Ritual and custom are yet more. All actions are forms of slavery, methods of forcing people to do what they deeply wish not to do.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades

39 likes

#19

“the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

36 likes

#20

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: frost, glitter, gold, lost, poetry, roots, strength, strong, wander, wither

58303 likes

#21

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”
― Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road

tags: jellicoe-road, melina-marchetta

922 likes

#22

“And he doesn’t like religious spaces, in general—the obsession with wrong and right, purity and pollution, modernity and eternity, it doesn’t make sense to him.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

5 likes

#23

“He asks, “What will it take to convince you that I mean no harm?” “There’s nothing you can say or do that will convince me of that,” Klara says. “Men always mean harm. The question is simply ‘when’.”
― Veronica Roth, When Among Crows

2 likes

#24

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: books, mind

16646 likes

#25

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'
'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: bravery, courage, fear

7291 likes

#26

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: friendship, loneliness

3060 likes

#27

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: childhood, summer, winter

819 likes

#28

“The man who fears losing has already lost.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: fear

760 likes

#29

“There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

559 likes

#30

“Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

tags: a-game-of-thrones, george-r-r-martin, ned-stark, varys

350 likes

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