Maria > Maria's Quotes

“The individual is the product of power.”
― Michel Foucault, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”
― The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“Change should be watched, moderated, and questioned. But that conservative view shouldn’t rein in progress or put a damper on hope.”
― James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising

“It would be cruel to break that hope before it fades on its own.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“When in Rome; burn it.”
― Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
― Dan Simmons, Endymion

“And she has always gotten very angry at people who won’t play the roles she puts them in.”
― Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor

“for a purpose without reason”
― Donald Kingsbury, Courtship Rite

“Escape is a commodity like anything else.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“I felt like a kid at Santa Claus's funeral.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

“Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

“Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Palm of the Hand Stories

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter”
― John Keats, Ode On A Grecian Urn And Other Poems

“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world. You'd think the dreamers would find the dreamers, and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true.
See, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun.
And the realists?
Well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.”
― Modern Family

“We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”
― Dave Ramsey, The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“[B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.”
― Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

“Allowing this childish curiosity to continue on my whole life has given me a sense of satisfaction, and maybe even a sense of meaning. No matter how old I get I have the feeling that if I can keep this curiosity flame lit I will see the world in a way that never gets stale ... life will have a taste that delights”
― Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
― Henry Miller