Quotes

I have been collecting quotes since middle school, scribbled on the back pages or margins of notebooks, on scraps of paper stuck in books, or highlighted in books. Some make me laugh, some make me cry, some make me stop to think, and some make me remember how amazing life is. This is a completely random list, and only a portion of my collection.

“If I could find a way to escape my destiny, do I deserve to?” – Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.” – Archimedes

“You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.” – Publilius Syrus

“Either dance well or quit the ballroom.” – Greek proverb

“I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I needed it.” – John Cage

“I am. I think. I will.” – Ayn Rand, Anthem 

“Don’t worry. They’re all against me. But I have one advantage: they don’t know what they want. I do.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Alvah Scarret had never hated anything, and so was incapable of love.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“He had never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“I know that if war is the answer, we are still not asking the right question.” – Terry Greenblatt

“Horace Bury had never developed any real appreciation for expensive liquors. He bought them to show his wealth, and for entertaining; but for himself anything would do. Coffees were another matter.” – Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God’s Eye

“Perhaps the worldlings have climbing pads on their hands and feet. Perhaps they have wings. Perhaps they have nothing more than cleverness and perseverance.” He capped his binoculars and returned them to their case. “I would fear that last more than all the others.” – Michael F. Flynn, The Clapping Hands of God

“Sometimes, in the quiet moments, I ache to be smitten.”- Christopher Russell (@cyktrussell)

“Do something today that makes you really happy…something that surprises your heart into laughing.” – Jen McCown (@JenniferMcCown)

“People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.” – Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire

“We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.” – Frederick Douglas

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” – Henry David Thoreau

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” – Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

“It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.” – Victor Hugo

If I never get lost, I will never go places I have never been.

“Elen sila lumenn omentievo.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy afternoon.” – Susan Ertz

“She is a true poet. The true poet knows life is laced with pain.” – Elli Friedmann

“And while they lived happily ever after, gentlemen, the point is they lived.” – Ever After

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

“You cannot see beyond the choices you do not understand.” – The Matrix

“Being related is simply an accident of DNA and provides no guarantee of affection or loving behavior. Rotten relatives are the reason we have friends.” – Margo Howard

“Try to take comfort in the fact that sometimes doing the right thing is not without cost.” – Margo Howard