Author Quotes

It is better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.

Georges Courteline

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight."

Charles Dickens

I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.

A great enormous thing, like — like nothing. A huge big — well, like a — I don't know — like an enormous big nothing.

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

In November, 1964 when I was a patient at the Mayo Clinic I though seriously about killing myself.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.

François Mauriac

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

It is amazing how nice people are to you when they know you are going away.

Now as all the sciences are connected with each other, Philosophy is never completed. In a complete system of all the sciences will philosophy for the first time be made manifest.

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

Please understand the reason why Chinese vegetables taste so good. It is simple. The Chinese do not cook them, they just threaten them!

Jeff Smith (chef)

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

In every sorrowing soul I pour'd delight, And poverty stood smiling in my sight.

Those whom we called brutes had their revenge when Darwin showed us that they were our cousins.

George Bernard Shaw

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid — these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth.