I enjoy quotes…a lot. I stumbled upon one of my old blog sites and gathered up these lovelies here…
. . . And then I came to Three ways,
And each was mine to choose;
For all of them were free ways,
To take or to refuse.
“Now which shall be the best way,
East, West or South?” said I . . .
So then I went the West way-
I often wonder why.
. . . And then I came to Two ways,
And each was luring me:
For both of them were new ways,
And I was fancy free.
“Now which shall be the least way,”
Said I: “to gain my goal?”
And so I took the East way,
With freedom in my soul.
. . . And then I came to One way,
And to the South it ran;
Then lo! I saw this sun way
Was mine since time began;
My pitiless, my doom way;
No other could there be,
For at its end my tomb lay,
And it was waiting me. . . .
Poor fools! Who think you’re free.
—Robert Service
A hard beginning maketh a good ending.
John Heywood, Proverbes. Part i. Chap. iv.
I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.
Bernardo Bertolucci
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles
Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.
Jim Henson
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
the person you hate?
Pierre Corneille, Titus and Berenice, act 4, sc. 3
Love is whatever you can still betray . . .
Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre, A Perfect Spy
Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak;
sometimes it means you are strong enough to let go.
Anonymous
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
if you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two imposters just the same;
Rudyard Kipling, If
When love is lost, do not bow your head in sadness;
instead keep your head up high and gaze into heaven
for that is where your heart has been sent to heal.
Anonymous
Children find everything in nothing;
men find nothing in everything.
Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone Scelto
He shall love my soul as though
body were not all,
he shall love your body,
untroubled by the soul,
love cram love’s two divisions
yet keep his substance whole.
William Butler Yeats, The Lady’s Second Song
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
Zora Neale Hurston
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
Emily Brontë
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, act 1
There is more truth in honest lies,
believe me, than in half the truths.
Samuel Butler, Notebooks, pg 52
George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto iii, stanza 32
Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.
Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, 13th selection
Love is dead; let lover’s eyes,
locked in endless dreams,
the extremes of all extremes,
ope no more, for now love dies.
John Ford, The Broken Heart
A love that dies has never lived.
Franz Grillparzer, Notebooks and Diaries
The girl from all those songs
who made everything feel right
she came in like an angel, into your lonely life
and filling your world with light
oh and everybody told you “you’re oh so lucky”
Genesis, Evidence of Autumn
The turning point in the process of growing up
is when you discover the core of strength
within you that survives all hurt.
Max Lerner, The Unfinished Country
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
drowning love’s lonely hour in deep twilight of rest . .
William Butler Yeats, He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace
Peace and rest at length have come
all the day’s long toil is past,
and each heart is whispering, “home,
home at last.”
Thomas Hood, Home at last.
Any idiot can face a crisis – its day to day living that wears you out.
Anton Chekov
Unbeing dead is not being alive.
e. e. cummings
Life is easier than you’d think;
all that is necessary is to accept the impossible,
do without the indispensable,
and bear the intolerable.
Kathleen Norris
But what minutes!
Count them by sensation,
and not by calendars,
and each moment is a day.
Benjamin Disreali
You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by;
but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
James Matthew Barrie
He either fears his fate too much,
or his deserts are small,
that dares not put it to the touch
to gain or lose it all
James Graham, Marquess of Montrose
the moment of a miracle is unending lightning . . .
Dylan Thomas, On the Marriage of a Virgin
Curl like smoke and breath again
down your throat inside your ribs
through your spine in every nerve
where I watch and wait and yield to the hurt
And if you don’t believe
the sun will rise
stand alone and greet
the coming night
in the last remaining light.
Chris Cornell, Audioslave,
The Last Remaining Light, eponymous album
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, ch. 17
Dire combustion and confused events
new hatch’d to the woful time
Macbeth, act ii, scene iii
Fear makes us feel our humanity
Benjamin Disreali
A tragedy need not have blood and death: its enough . . .
that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the
pleasure of tragedy.
Jean Racine, Berenice, preface
I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
I will face my fear and I will let it pass through me
Frank Herbert, Dune
It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears.
Ovid
Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.
Albert Smith
Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none.
For we grieve only for what we know has happened,
but we fear all that possibly may happen.
Pliny the Younger
I will not ask from you
anything that you were not capable of giving
I would not ask from you
anything but that which I truly need
and I would not take from you
without giving equal value in return
Javan, Footprints in the Mind
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153
The chief lesson I have learned in a long life
is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him;
and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.
Henry L. Stimson
I count him braver who overcomes his desires
than him who overcomes his enemies.
Artistotle, In Stobaeus, Florilegium
Clouds now and again
give a soul some respite from
moon-gazing – behold.
Matsuo Basho, untitled haiku
Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then,
for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and
Works which have no direct bearing on it;
Miss then lost, for months or years, and again found,
for an interval, to be lost again.
If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years,
have half a dozen reasonable hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man,
it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.
Much Ado About Nothing, act I, sc. iii
the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of
nature, and he steps to the measure of the universe;
then there is true courage and invincible strength.
Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
Marquis de Sade, L’Histoire de Juliette,
ou les Prosperities du Vice, pt. 3.
Truth, like light, is blinding.
Lies, on the other hand, are a beautiful dusk
which enhances the value of each object.
Albert Camus, The Fall, p. 126
The truth is a snare; you cannot have it, without being caught.
Soren Kierkegaard, The Last Years: Journals 1853-55
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor.
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth
belong to any human disclosure;
seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised,
or a little mistaken.
Jane Austen, Emma
Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal.
We confirm our reality by sharing.
Barbara Grizzute Harrison, Secrets Women Tell Each Other
You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer
A little knowledge that acts
is worth infinitely more than much
knowledge that is idle.
Kahlil Gibran, In A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran
Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin
Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
Honoré De Balzac, Catherine de Medici expliquée, Souverain
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams
We’ve erased a lot of the distinctions between night and day,
between weekday and weekend.
Our notions of time and space are collapsing.
Susan Orlean, Saturday Night in America
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato
Love is something eternal, the aspect may change, but not the essence.
Vincent van Gogh
To love and to be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act I, sc. I
For you and for me the highest moment,
the keenest joy,
is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds.
Anais Nin, Feb. 1932 from Henry and June
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
John Milton, Satan, Paradise Lost, bk. 1
There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.
Rose Wilder Lane, The Ghost in the Little House
And thus it is that in the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair,
out of which springs hope and consolation.
Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life
Fire & Ice Glass 