Ivy-Mabel Fling > Ivy-Mabel's Quotes

“Love was actions more than words. And not just easy actions like hugs and kisses. It was hard ones, like sticking by someone in bad times, not just in good. It was working for them, even when you were tired. It was putting their needs first, even before your own. It was taking care of them when they were sick. It was forgiving them when they disappointed you. It was protecting them and teaching them.”
― Gayle Rosengren, What the Moon Said

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass

“I agree that it's a shame some books have to suffer ratings that clearly are invalid. However I can't think of a way to prevent it, and I didn't see any ideas in the thread either (I did skim though).

I hope you'll appreciate that if we just start deleting ratings whenever we feel like it, that we've gone down a censorship road that doesn't take us to a good place.”
― Otis Y. Chandler

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Adventure is just bad planning.”
― Roald Amundsen

“Haven’t you forgotten the first and most important lesson in all of philosophy, the lesson taught to all of us by Socrates, the father of philosophy? That you are wise only when you are humble, that the very first bit of wisdom and the prerequisite for all others is the realization that we are not wise”
― Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering

“...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
― John Donne, No man is an island – A selection from the prose

“Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”
― Franz Kafka

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal, Screening History

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving. ”
― Alan Paton

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them from the reality of daily life and from the imagination. We are right to be afraid.”
― Grace Paley

“Put your heart aside. Duty comes first. But when fulfilling your duty, put your heart into it. It helps.”
― St. Josemaria Escriva'

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley, Small and Simple Things

“I’m afraid I’m not accustomed to the poor light, Mrs James.’ ‘Look at the sky, father. Keep your eyes on the lightest part of the sky and they’ll adapt little by little.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Peace begins with a smile..”
― Mother Teresa

“Tantos libros y tan poco tiempo!”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“Uno empieza siendo idealista, moralmente fuerte, si se quiere, pero entonces la ropa de tu fuerza moral se va desgastando poco a poco hasta que ya no puedes más y haces cosas que nunca pensaste que harías, o no haces cosas que siempre pensaste que harías.”
― Don Winslow, The Cartel