Thoughtful Quotes

“Mad Hatter: Am I going mad?
Alice: Yes, you're mad, bonkers, off the top of your head...but...I'll tell you a secret.
All the best people are.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“...just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives.”
― Steve Martin, Shopgirl

“I am so tired.
I have grown old from being serious.
I have grown ill from being serious.
I want to laugh at myself.
I want to forget myself.
I am so tired.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“One would be very fortunate in life, if they had choices… not ultimatums.”
― Rohith S. Katbamna, Gulab

“Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say."

Caleb didn't know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn't always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn't know that she had changed us all.”
― Patricia MacLachlan, Skylark

“time wasted is not always a waste of time.”
― Terri Blackstock, Seaside

“I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it."

[Patrick Ness slams library cuts (The Guardian, 23 June 2011)]”
― Patrick Ness

“The essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Something I am wondering:
if you cannot hear
do you have no sounds
in your head?

Do you see
a
silent
movie”
― Sharon Creech, Hate That Cat

“They open up the world. Because knowledge is useless if you don’t know how to find it, if you don’t even know where to begin to look. - on librarians”
― Patrick Ness

“Even when we do not actively participate in our destiny, we are still on a chosen path. Life has a way of making decisions for us.”
― Nina Guilbeau

“The most powerful thought is a prayerful thought. When I'm praying for you, I am praying for my own peace of mind. I can only have for myself what I am willing to wish for you.”
― Marianne Williamson, Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment

“Married women are far more depressed than married men -- in unhappy marriages, three times more; and -- interestingly -- in happy marriages, five times more. In truth, it is men who are thriving in marriage, now as always, and who show symptoms of psychological and physical distress outside it. Not only their emotional well-being but their very lives, some studies say, depend on being married!”
― Dalma Heyn

“Reflect your thoughts and watch others mirror them back to you.”
― Stephen Richards

“He who spends too long regretting his ruined crop will be neglect to plant next year's harvest.”
― François Lelord, Hector and the Secrets of Love

“Most sane human beings’ chances of being alive in a thousand years’ time are a hundred times higher than their chances of being sincerely happy for at least ten consecutive days.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most people, by the time they get old, have grown tough little shells around their hearts. Babies, like little Laila, start off with tender, loving, trusting hearts, but gradually, gradually, they learn to protect themselves and, as the years go by, grow tougher and tougher layers. Look at this! The outside layers of the artichoke are so tough they aren’t even worth eating but they become more and more tender as you come closer to the heart. These tough outer layers stop you feeling so much, so people walk around with hard little hearts that no one can touch. Of course there are some people who don’t have a choice – they just never learn to protect themselves...now that can be both a blessing and a burden.”
― Sita Brahmachari, Artichoke Hearts

“In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“The greatest stories appeal to our deepest selves, the parts of us snobbery can’t reach, the parts that connect the child to the adult and the brain to the heart and reality to dreams. Stories, at their essence, are enemies of snobbery. And a book snob is the enemy of the book.”
― Matt Haig

“She got icing all over her face. I think that's why I like her. For the good stuff, she's willing to get icing all over her face. Who wouldn't want a girl like that?”
― Laura Ruby

“But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“I was compared to Charles Bukowski yesterday. It was the best and worst compliment I've ever gotten.”
― Rosa Sophia

“In quiet places, reason abounds.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson

“And what does she mean by love, anyway? People use that word and mean all sorts of things by it.”
― Jude Morgan, The Taste of Sorrow

“Even those novelists most commonly deemed “philosophical” have sometimes answered with an emphatic no. Iris Murdoch, the longtime Oxford philosopher and author of some two dozen novels treating highbrow themes like consciousness and morality, argued that philosophy and literature were contrary pursuits. Philosophy calls on the analytical mind to solve conceptual problems in an “austere, unselfish, candid” prose, she said in a BBC interview broadcast in 1978, while literature looks to the imagination to show us something “mysterious, ambiguous, particular” about the world. Any appearance of philosophical ideas in her own novels was an inconsequential reflection of what she happened to know. “If I knew about sailing ships I would put in sailing ships,” she said. “And in a way, as a novelist, I would rather know about sailing ships than about philosophy.”
― Iris Murdoch

“Advantages never comes free. You have to create it the way you want it!”
― Ashish Patel

“Who needs a face when the masks in life are endless?”
― Diliana Ovtcharova, On The Way to Imaginarium Art of Daniela and Vladimir Ovtcharov and Stories by Diliana Ovtcharova

“Personal pleasures were like drying flowers, best kept away from the light to preserve their vibrance.”
― I.V. Ophelia, The Poisoner

“I thought I knew everything about everyone, but I guess sometimes I didn’t even really know myself.”
― Michelle Quach, Not Here to Be Liked