Catherine > Catherine's Quotes

“Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.”
― Philip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”
― Carol Shields, The Republic of Love

“Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds it's way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory...”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.”
― Terry Goodkind, Chainfire

“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen

“...you'll find that being a friend is to like a person for who they are, even the parts you don't understand. You don't have to understand, or do the same, or live their lives for them. If you truly care for them, then you want them to be who they are; that was why you liked them in the first place.”
― Terry Goodkind

“Once you teach me something, it's mine to use.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Even a foolish old woman like me knows that lazy people don't think for themselves; they only think about themselves.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“Everybody knows it. Wizards are supposed to have beards. It's common knowledge.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person.

We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.”
― Terry Goodkind, Blood of the Fold

“Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.”
― Terry Goodkind

“I'd rather look a fool than be right and fail to act.”
― Terry Goodkind, Soul of the Fire

“Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“Love is not about what you want. It's about finding happiness for the one you love.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule