Must Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Must. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
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Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
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Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.
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Garrison Keillor
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Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
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Albert Einstein
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Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
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Charles Bukowski
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One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
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Toni Morrison
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Mother Night)
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In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
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Jane Austen (Pride And Prejudice)
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All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
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Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?" "Yes." "You called her a liar?" "Yes." "You told her He Who Must Not Be Named is back?" "Yes." "Have a biscuit, Potter.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
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Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
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Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
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SΓΈren Kierkegaard
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Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
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C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
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When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #9))
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If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.
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Carter Crocker
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You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
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Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You)
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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart
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Helen Keller
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He must have known I'd want to leave you." "No, he must have known you would always want to come back.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
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Elie Wiesel
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Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
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Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost)
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There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
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Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches)
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The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.
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Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)
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But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.
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Jeanette Winterson
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A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
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Franz Kafka
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You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
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Eleanor Roosevelt (You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
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If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
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Stephen King
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β€ŽLife is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
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Voltaire
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We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
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Joseph Campbell
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Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
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Margaret Mead
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Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes.
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Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
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War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
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If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
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George Orwell (1984)
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I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
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Herbert Hoover
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When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.
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Paulo Coelho (Brida)
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Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.
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Kate DiCamillo (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane)
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No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
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In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.
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Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
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I must have loved you a lot.
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Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
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There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.
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Adrienne Rich
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I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
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AnaΓ―s Nin
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There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. " Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.
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Alexandre Dumas
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Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.
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Albert Einstein
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It must require bravery to be honest all the time.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others.
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Brian Jacques (Redwall (Redwall, #1))
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You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
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Maya Angelou
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You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, β€˜I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.
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Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
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The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
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Lorraine Hansberry
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The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
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Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10))
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There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
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Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
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Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
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Oscar Wilde
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I know how devastated you must be to miss me, but leave a message, and I'll try to ease your agony
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Richelle Mead (Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, #4))
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Well, she's not responding to my advances," he observed more brightly than he felt, "so she must be dead." "Or she's a woman of good taste and sense.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
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Albert Einstein
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The mountains are calling and I must go.
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John Muir
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To survive, you must tell stories.
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Umberto Eco (The Island of the Day Before)
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What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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The mind I love must have wild places.
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Katherine Mansfield
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My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.
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William Shakespeare
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One must dare to be happy.
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Gertrude Stein
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People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
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Bill Watterson (The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book)
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You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hands on his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The other ten percent.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
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Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
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It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
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Ray Bradbury
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Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?" Will demanded with mock horror. "Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not something wrong, as the case may be." He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andβ€”in spite of True Romance magazinesβ€”we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonelyβ€”at least, not all the timeβ€”but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
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Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)
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I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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I'm coming back into focus when Caesar asks him if he has a girlfriend back home. Peeta hesitates, then gives an unconvincing shake of his head. Handsome lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, what’s her name?" says Caesar. Peeta sighs. "Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know I was alive until the reaping." Sounds of sympathy from the crowd. Unrequited love they can relate to. She have another fellow?" asks Caesar. I don’t know, but a lot of boys like her," says Peeta. So, here’s what you do. You win, you go home. She can’t turn you down then, eh?" says Caesar encouragingly. I don’t think it’s going to work out. Winning...won’t help in my case," says Peeta. Why ever not?" says Caesar, mystified. Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. "Because...because...she came here with me.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
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Really, the combination of the scabs and the ointment looks hideous. I can't help enjoying his distress. "Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say. "It must be. The sensation's completely new. How have you managed it all these years?" he asks. "Just avoid mirrors. You'll forget about it," I say. "Not if I keep looking at you," he says.
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Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
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An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.
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Albert Camus
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THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
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Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
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There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.
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Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
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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.
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Franz Kafka
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No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?" "They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer. "And what is hell? Can you tell me that?" "A pit full of fire." "And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?" "No, sir." "What must you do to avoid it?" I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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The major problemβ€”one of the major problems, for there are severalβ€”one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
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Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
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Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must." "I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically." "None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow. "How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun." Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
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Rosemarie Urquico
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Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.
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Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
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I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic β€” on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg β€” or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
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C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
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Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-runβ€”in the long-run, I say!β€”success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)
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I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door. Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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Demon pox, oh demon pox Just how is it acquired? One must go down to the bad part of town Until one is very tired. Demon pox, oh demon pox, I had it all alongβ€” Not the pox, you foolish blocks, I mean this very songβ€” For I was right, and you were wrong!" "Will!" Charlotte shouted over the noise, "Have you LOST YOUR MIND? CEASE THAT INFERNAL RACKET! Jemβ€”" Jem, rising to his feet, clapped his hands over Will's mouth. "Do you promise to be quiet?" he hissed into his friend's ear. Will nodded, blue eyes blazing. Tessa was staring at him in amazement; they all were. She had seen Will many thingsβ€”amused, bitter, condescending, angry, pityingβ€”but never giddy before. Jem let him go. "All right, then." Will slid to the floor, his back against the armchair, and threw up his arms. "A demon pox on all your houses!" he announced, and yawned. "Oh, God, weeks of pox jokes," said Jem. "We're in for it now.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
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make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
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To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd!
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself β€” educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
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Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)