Quote post!

[chestnutcurls]

Kat posted the other day about quotes that mean a lot to her. As a collector of quotes, I liked that idea. So I went through my list and found the ones that have stuck with me most over the years, or are a good summary of what I'm about.


There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
- Zora Neale Hurston

Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.
- William Penn

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after one grows up.
- Pablo Picasso

It is the ordinary women that know something about love. The gorgeous ones are too busy being gorgeous.
- Katharine Hepburn

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
- Katherine Mansfield

I have always wanted to write in such a way that will make people think, "Why, I've always thought that but never found the words for it."
- Pamela Hansford Johnson

Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
- Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

The Spirit is the reason we Christians can do anything, the reason we do not live paralyzed in fear of messing up. The Spirit is how we unfold God’s will this side of eternity. The Spirit is the reason we can build a church and have confidence that we will get it at least a little bit right.
- Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
- Albert Einstein

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan

There’s always someone cooler than you.
- Ben Folds

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller

An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts.
- John Junor

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
- P.J. O'Rourke

If our God is a covenantal God, then all of our relationships are covenantal.
- Paige Benton

A good friend will bail you out when you get arrested. A best friend will be sitting next to you saying, “Dude, that was awesome!”
- Anonymous

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
- Robert Southey

Waiting is our destiny. We cannot bring about what we hope for, so we wait, we wait in darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write. We wait for a "not yet" that feels like a "not ever." Waiting is the hardest work of hope.
- Lewis B. Smeads

There is no greater burden than a great potential.
- Schroeder

"I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people know more…though I know that is the noblest ambition…but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me…to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born."
- from Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery

A good toe-nail is not an unsuccessful attempt at a hair; and if it were conscious, it would delight in being simply a good toe-nail.
- C.S. Lewis

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it.
- A.W. Tozer

Love (short definition): "Here's my heart, here's a sledgehammer... go for it."
- Michael Kellen

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
- La Rochefoucauld

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
- Anonymous

Love is being stupid together.
- Paul Valery

We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.
- George Whyte-Melville

I came here tonight because, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
- Billy Crystal, When Harry Met Sally

Marriage is so disrupting to one's social circle.
- Emma

When a man declares, "I am sure of my wife," it means he is sure of his wife. But when a woman declares, "I am sure of my husband," it means she is sure of herself.
- Francis de Croissset

Playing music is supposed to be fun. It's about heart, it's about feelings, moving people, and something beautiful, and it's not about notes on a page. I can teach you notes on a page - I can't teach you that other stuff.
- Richard Dreyfuss, Mr. Holland’s Opus

When in doubt, trill.
- John Phillip Sousa's advice to piccolo players

From heaven, even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel.
- Mother Teresa

Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s the day to day living that wears you out.
- Chekhov

And now having had my cry I will take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will try to look as pleasant as I can.
- Susan, Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn't last long.
- Shelley Winters

People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world.
- Louisa May Alcott

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
- Semisonic, "Closing Time"

It's a dangerous business, going out your door.
- Bilbo, The Fellowship of the Ring