Sriraman > Sriraman's Quotes

“no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
― Robert Frost

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those who are not entirely beautiful.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
― William Butler Yeats

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends...”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Oh, no said her mother sadly. You know nothing of the pettiness of women. When brothers agree to split a joint family they sometimes divide lakhs of rupees worth of property in a few minutes. But the tussle of their wives over the pots and pans in the common kitchen--that nearly causes bloodshed.”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Childhood memories were like airplane luggage; no matter how far you were traveling or how long you needed them to last, you were only ever allowed two bags. And while those bags might hold a few hazy recollections—a diner with a jukebox at the table, being pushed on a swing set, the way it felt to be picked up and spun around—it didn’t seem enough to last a whole lifetime.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, This Is What Happy Looks Like

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.”
― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“But no one came. Because no one ever does.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure